Tuesday, March 07, 2017

Blue Pill

If I know you I've likely mentioned this, and I post so infrequently I doubt many folk are reading anyway! But in case anyone is reading and didn't already know I started taking PrEP a little over a month ago. The linked page there explains what it is in more depth but in essence PrEP is the regular use of an anti-retroviral as a prophylactic, and it has proven very effective at preventing HIV infection. It offers 99% effective protection against the virus.

At present it's not available on the NHS here in Scotland (hopefully it'll clear the regulatory hurdles soon) so at present - like a lot of gay men have been recently - I'm buying the medicine myself. My local NHS sexual health clinic (Chalmers) have been quietly encouraging "high risk" individuals to consider this ahead of it becoming available on prescription, and they're supporting me with liver/kidney function tests etc. to ensure the drug isn't causing any harm.

Some of you will need some context here. Some of you will probably have had a chill reading that I'm considered "high risk" for infection. Some of you will be breathing a sigh of relief remembering holding my hand through past scares (thank you!). A handful of you will have had a similar experience of living in a world where sex and the spectre of an incurable (and once fatal) infection have been inextricably intertwined for longer than you've fully understood what sex was. That's at the root of my choice to start taking PrEP so let's start there.

Or rather, here:

If you lived in the UK and were old enough to watch TV when that advert aired you'll remember it. If you're also gay it probably coloured your attitudes to sex in a pretty profound way, and probably not positively.

It was clearly well intentioned, and commendably for the time it doesn't equate HIV and homosexuality... it's somewhat coy about it though, and since pretty much everything else at the time did equate the two, the impact for me and a lot of guys around my age was tying our formative sense of our own sexuality to an urgent and imminent danger of incurable infection and death.

That formative influence plays out differently in different people. Among guys I've talked about it with it splits roughly down the middle between instilling an almost religious faith in condoms, or resulting in a more empirical awareness that barrier protection is good but not perfect and so we accept a degree of risk whenever we have sex.

I've never been very religious.

That idea that even safer sex isn't safe is explored in more depth in the opening parts of the excellent Jeffrey which if you haven't seen already, you must, it's brilliant. For the purposes of this blog I'm going to lazily point to it's opening quarter as an in-depth exploration of the issue and move on.

My point being that I (like a great many gay men) accepted and internalised early on that my sexuality carries an inherent risk, and when you acknowledge that that risk is present to a greater (without condoms) or lesser (with condoms) degree, it colours your thinking. Bluntly it means you generally use the blasted things, but that you are inclined, under certain circumstances, to say to yourself: "there's risk either way so what the hell". (If that sounds like an over simplification it is, and I will come back to it, but it gets the point across for now)

I hadn't fully realised how fatalistic I felt about HIV until I was talking over things with a health advisor at Chalmers a number of years ago. In the course of the conversation she asked me directly (based on a few comments I'd made) if I felt my infection someday was inevitable? The question shocked me, but the realisation - that, yes! on some level I felt exactly that - was more shocking.

Sex and fear of HIV have been inextricably linked for me for as long as I can remember understanding and thinking about sex. As I mentioned growing up the spectre of HIV was always linked with being gay and as I came to accept myself as gay I think on some level I also accepted wrongly or rightly that one day I'd probably wind up positive.

To date I've remained negative.

As I said that chat with the health advisor years back shocked me, and I took up the offer of counselling to explore my own attitudes to my sexual health and my responsibilities to others concerning theirs. That counsellor was excellent, we covered a lot of ground and I'm not recounting it all here, but the upshot was an exorcism of sorts. I shed the ingrained fear that had got tangled up with my sexuality, and I built some good habits, like a properly regular sexual health screening habit, and the habit of being more direct and open in talking about sexual health, the habit of discussing condom use (or not) and trying to make informed shared decisions with different partners about what level of risk was or wasn't appropriate for us.

All of which is of course against a backdrop of HIV becoming eminently treatable and no longer the terrifying death sentence it loomed as in "Tombstone", Jeffrey or in my youth. It's also against a backdrop of various of my friends over the past decade or so testing positive, and my seeing the virus' still significant impact first hand.

Broadly though, fear and that sense of inevitability went away, and were replaced with a sense of ownership of my own sexual health choices, a strong sense of my responsibility to my partners and an ability to talk about those choices, but each choice still boiled down to putting my faith in condoms or not, and that seems a good point to come back to my gross over simplification from earlier.

A great many gay men maintain they always use a condom. If you do and that's true then that's great -good for you. However a great many gay men who maintain they always use a condom, don't, and that's dangerous. Throughout my 20s I maintained I always used condoms. Throughout my 20s I did not always use condoms. In my 30s I began being more honest about that and immediately ran into the main reason most gay men simply lie.

Early on in my attempts to be honest and discuss sexual health choices with prospective partners I was staggered by how vehemently some men responded, and the abuse I got for trying to have a grown up discussion about it. To be clear I'm happy using condoms, but I honestly prefer not to if it's an option, and I don't share some peoples' blind faith in them (they break) but even knowing what a touchy subject it can be, I was staggered by how even just discussing the issue was taboo for some guys.

There's tremendous pressure to say we always do, but saying when we don't always use a condom is vital because it's the first step in owning our own and our partners' health. Pressurising people, sermonising and judging people who are honest about their own fallibility (or their own informed choices) is dangerous in my opinion.

Now I - like many other gay men - have added a layer to my armoury of preventative measures. As well as having condoms to hand if they're the preferred option, I also take a pill every morning which blocks that one incurable virus from infecting me should I be exposed, as part of the medical care surrounding that pill I also get a full sexual health MOT every three months. By any rational measure I'm being very responsible but just like before I and other men on PrEP find ourselves being vilified as irresponsible by a significant number of our peers and the press - "just use a condom" is trotted out as if that's what everyone else is doing. As if that's always going to work.

So to finish I'm going to share an infographic I made as part of a self promotion project, it's intended to both explain what PrEP is to folk encountering it for the first time, and to drive home why it's such a miraculous thing, and why increasing numbers of gay men are shelling out for it themselves (whether or not they can really afford it).




The numbers come from here and are among the more modest results. New HIV infection rates in places like San Fransisco (where PrEP has been available longer) have been dropping steeply since 2012. If "just" using a condom had been the answer to HIV we'd not be seeing these kinds of results.

Personally that one blue pill each morning has eradicated the last scraps of fear and inevitability still tied to my own sexuality. It gives me peace of mind, and a greater sense of control and security about my own and my partners' health. It's something that I strongly feel needs to be talked about more openly and more widely until we can kick this absurd reactive taboo surrounding grown-up conversations about our actual sexual health choices (instead of the "always" lie so many of us tell).

Part of the idea of rebranding business-me as inforock.it last year was to create a church/state kind of separation between personal and work "me" but life's never that clear cut so it tickles me that my first post here in six months represents a slightly muddy mix of the two :D )

Friday, August 19, 2016

Is it me?

So just now I was walking home from the office. A big project ran on late.

I was happy to stay back and work on it. I love my job.

Walking home I go through the meadows, and (as usual) I avoid the main drag in favour of the less well used path beside Melville Drive. I like it. It's quiet.

Halfway home I spot a couple ahead. They're moving a little slower than I am but I'm not worried. They're a couple for one thing so I won't spook them, but also they seem solid. Big. Manly...

I get closer and see that I'm behind two men. Two large manly men. Two large manly men who are holding hands as they walk.

I love this.

I want to hug them just for being there.

I'm going to pass them soon.

...

How do I tell them how amazing they are without being weird. I mean, I'm seeing them as me, I'm almost 40. I still relate to the world through that filter... but "large manly men" might be as young as 20, or younger. For them this might be unremarkable.

My heart skips a beat.

This might be unremarkable.

...

It might not though.

It's dark, we're on a lightly used path, these men might just as easily be my age. They might be as aware as me of how miraculous and beautiful their simple, quiet, inoffensive act of togetherness is.

I need to acknowledge it.

...

I know. That's idiotic. I still do.

...

I pass them. I hold out my arm at right angle to my body and I make an emphatic thumbs up. I hold it for 30 seconds. And I let go.

I love these men. Whoever they are, whether or not they saw my gesture of solidarity, whether or not the understood it. I love that they exist.

Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Happy blogday

It was this poor neglected little blog's birthday on Monday. 13 years ago I began this infrequent rambling sequence of thoughts and observations.

13. Years.

How'd that happen? It's apropos nothing, I just have it in my calendar and never remember to do anything about it, so in characteristically tardy fashion happy birthday little blog o' mine.

...

Why yes, I am struggling to compose my thoughts on recent events, how'd you guess? I'm working on it...

Thursday, April 28, 2016

Snow!

Amazing weekend was had with Justin and Ivan.

Justin's written it up and posted some of the photos here.

Not sure how it's happening - since my conscious efforts to improve my fitness always seem to fall on their face - but I think I'm fitter than I was. The steep ascent of Lochnagar with ice axes was definitely challenging (really Patrick, don't look down!) but I wasn't wiped out afterward, and I had to use my arms! (if you've seen my arms you'll understand why that's astonishing). Fun to find you can do more than you thought you could, especially when it feels like you've been a lazy slug all winter.

Also fun to find my malfunctioning digestive system doesn't ruin the weekend for me. When I'm careful. And medicated. Not going into grizzly details, but the past few months have had plenty of days/weeks when the idea of being out of the house all day (let alone up a hill!) was unthinkable thanks to what we'll gloss over by calling a grumpy gut. Thanks to the efforts of the NHS on that front I was fine all weekend which also felt like a triumph.

Anyway

Revisiting Aberdeen with Justin was fun, Ivan's patience with our nostalgia trip was admirable, and even though they've changed things [mutters darkly about car parks and the A90] there's a deep fondness for the place which came back in spades from being there. Must visit properly some time.

As I said, Just has put loads of pictures up so you can see more there but my favourite from the weekend is probably this one, taken from the summit after the whiteout cleared and we could see the Cairngorms (and beyond) spread out in all their snowy splendour.

More of that.

Monday, February 08, 2016

It's in here somewhere...

... a post about a lettuce that someone thought was a cabbage. I think it was quite a good one too (the post. The lettuce was a lettuce) but I'm buggered if I can find it now*. 13ish years worth of waffle and no search function... I'd put one in but a: I don't like search functions on websites and b: it would rob me on evenings like this re-reading assorted random posts. Which is after all what they're for. :)

It helps if I remember to write posts now and then mind you.

So at work (job2) today Clyn found her way here while I was blethering about what I'm doing with work (job1) and Adam said nice things about one of the posts he'd read and it all reminded me I wanted to get back in the habit of posting here (plus ça change - if there was a search function I could tell you how many posts start with ramblings about how long it's been since I posted). That and yoga. I wanted to get back in the habit there too... I'm managing intermittently. I expect this'll be the same.

Anyway.

First bit of news is that I'm in the slow-ish process of untangling my work life from this place. I'm moving it over to this place and refocussing my freelance business (aka "job1") a bit. The past five years I've muddled along alright as a jobbing designer, but the market for logos and websites is awfu' crowded and the blunt truth is I don't make nearly enough to live doing it (hence there being a job2). Over the festive break, with some incredibly insightful and helpful input from some of my many talented and wonderful friends and relations, a plan crystallised: a rebrand and a refocus, in no small part prompted by some of the rewarding work I'm doing for Alyn just now (more about that later but not in this post - 's under wraps). Mainly though it's about refining what I do into what I do that not any other designer could do. I'm excited about it.

More about that will appear in time over at inforock.it and in the spirit of reclaiming splateagle.com for personal stuff I shall now shut up about work.

There that's not work. I finally got past my block (induced by attempting to recreate a clear blue Japanese sky in my scruffy impressionistic daubings) and I'm pleased with the result. Next up is a bigger 3 canvas bit. That'll either be a leafy waterfall or one of the Sandwood Bay sunset photos I took a while back writ large - leaning toward the latter as I keep picturing the waterfall with sunlight and that gets me back to those tricksy blue skies... The finished one isn't staying on the floor - in fact it's up on the wall now - but there was proper daylight when I finished it and the snap I took just now came out muddy. Which it isn't, so you're getting good light and bad focus instead.

Oh and I sent my sister a photograph of a toothbrush at the weekend (well it wouldn't be my blog if I weren't ocasionally intentionally cryptic for my own future amusement).

*There is of course a perfectly excellent search function here on the editing end of the blog. The Lettuce happened in November 2011

Sunday, October 18, 2015

Irrationally sad about celophane



For no good reason this makes me sad.

Not having four new unwatched Who DVDs - that makes me giddyhappy. Having to take the cellophane off them all at once (and not even when I'm watching them because I promised to wait and watch two of them with a friend who keeps being busy at the weekends [glares meaningfully at Keith]).

It's daft. I know it's daft, but there's something about saving my treats and enjoying them one at a time that I really enjoy. Yes, I am one of those dreadful people who carefully unpicks the wrapping paper instead of ripping into it. I enjoy the deferred gratification thing... hey there had to be at least one character trait that's adult right? ;)

So against my inclinations I just torn through four DVDs, unleashing their faint free-hydrocarbon new-DVD smell all in one orgiastic rush and for what? Well because the 5th (and the first I watched) had a manufacturing fault making it unwatchable. They're birthday presents and the duff one needs to go back. The broken one (and three of the others) are from my (sensible grown up) sister, who innocently suggested (a week ago) that if I was returning the broken one I should probably check the others are OK.

She was absolutely right. And yet somehow that's delayed the whole process for a week while I tried to avoid unwrapping them all...

Yes. I'm laughing at myself too.

On the bright side they all look fine, so 2Entertain's QC department only cocked up 1/5 of the time.


Sunday, July 05, 2015

Phew!

So, roughly 14 years ago I had my (then) Mac laptop on my glass coffee table, tripped over the power cord and sent it crashing to the floor. It broke. Roughly 14 minutes ago I went to put my (now) Mac laptop on (the same) glass coffee table and wasn't looking properly...

Apart from my near coronary as I watched it fall, no harm done.