p(standfirst). Introducing or suggesting condoms during sexual encounters can be difficult and for various reasons it may be even more difficult when you are away from home. Not all countries have the same kind of culture of safe sex that exists in Australia.

Suggesting condoms for fucking can sometimes be interpreted as a disclosure that you are HIV positive, even if this is not the case. Not introducing or suggesting condoms can also be interpreted in different ways.

Yeah, there was a guy who was dead keen on giving barebacks and I wouldn’t — and I said to him, look, you know, what’s the story? Because in Melbourne if you use a condom you’re assumed to be HIV positive and in Sydney you’re assumed to be HIV negative. Or vice versa, I don’t know what the mythology is. And he couldn’t tell me. He said, oh I don’t know and I thought, oh you’re a dickhead. — CON

One of the problems then, in about ’89 or ’90, was that if you did go into a cubicle with somebody and produced the condoms and the lube, the reaction was, oh there is something wrong with him. That would be the guy’s reaction. Often the door would be opened and out they would scuttle like frightened rabbits. — MALCOLM