Gay Sex: When did the rules change?

I reread a piece by Sarah Kershaw from last Wednesdsay's Times about the rise in HIV cases (and full-blown AIDS) in young gay men in the city. I'd kept it to read again and study because of the tidal shift I have perceived in the way gay men - and not just the 22 year olds - are dealing in a new century with the nightmare scourge of the last one.

I first became aware of "gay cancer" in the summer of 1982 and by 1984 we were all pretty much practicing safe sex all the time - no exceptions. I met my lover in 2002 and stayed in that monogomous relationship until Spring of 2006. Somewhere in those four years, a change occurred. Maybe it was the natural reaction to the success of antivirals and protease inhibitors. HIV was manageable. AIDS wasn't a death sentence.

By the summer of 2006 I had jumped into the dating pool with righteous enthusiam and there I remain. Safe sex, before 2002, was non-negotiable. Never in those almost twenty years had any date ever broached the subject of making love without a condom. Hell, I can remember a couple of sweaty nights when neither my date nor I had thought ahead and that simply meant going to bed horny. No glove, no love, we would say.

Now, virtually every sexual encounter includes the discussion as to whether unprotected sex is negotiable. A couple of times it was a deal-breaker, since my date only does it "raw" and I refuse that. I went out last summer with a much younger guy (25: age inappropriate but sweet, funny and such a looker). He is bright, sophisticated, talented. And he has NEVER had sex with a condom. He called it the "kink" of the AIDS generation. He also feels HIV infection is inevitable and treatable. And, I think he is far more typical of his generation than anomaly.

So, what happened? Did we lose the battle so many of us waged so fiercely? All of these young guys contracting HIV now, will their infections be treatable against a virus with an astounding track record for learning how to defy medication? Will we face, twenty or ten or fewer years from now, a new wave of despair and loss and death like in the eighties and early nineties?

And how can I tell a vibrant, hormone-infused young buck that he doesn't get to have sex the way we did in the olden days? It all breaks my heart.