All Clear

My name is Alexander Cheves. My nickname is Beastly. I write about sex.

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Greetings Mr. Sexy Beast! I really enjoy reading your articles & looking through your posts. You are adorable! Sorry about your recent health issues, hope you are on your way to a complete recovery and will be able to enjoy working out/playing soon. I have a question that has to do with the topic of dealing with not being able to enjoy sexual/kinky/piggy/fetish activities and events. How can one focus on avoiding intimate contact w/ other humans and not go 🦇💩crazy? My boyfriend & I aren’t on the same page when it comes to playing with others during these times. We both are vaccinated and so are our immediate families. I am open to playing with other vaccinated people or someone who had COVID recently, he’s not. He’s not comfortable yet and I feel that he’s also worried about the greater good of society (he’s in the medical field). However it doesn’t make it any easier on me, I think I’ve watched all the porn by now. Are there any coping mechanisms that you utilize? Any strategies? TY!

Hi pig,

No, I have no coping mechanisms or strategies. I’m fucking.

This is a contentious topic that I’m surprised hasn’t made it to this blog yet. To my understanding, if a person is fully vaccinated, it doesn’t matter who they play with, because they’re as protected from Covid-19 as a person can be. Once vaccinated, I can’t imagine what difference it makes to only play with people who are already vaccinated or had COVID recently. The word is still out on whether a person can carry Covid-19 once vaccinated — reports, and the scientists reporting them, have been indecisive. If a person can still carry Covid-19 post-vaccine, the topic gets stickier and the idea of “social responsibility” more pronounced, because one could potentially pass Covid-19 to someone unvaccinated. But a vaccinated person is unlikely to get very sick — at least for however long the vaccines are effective (some scientists say we’ll need boosters and re-vaccinations every twelve months, like the flu vaccine).

We likely won’t get definitive answers on whether vaccinated people can carry and transmit Covid-19 for some time. But even with this uncertainty, I know what I’m doing, so I can hardly tell you to do anything different. I’m fully vaccinated and have gone back, as much as I can, to my regular sex life. If you were single, I would tell you to do the same thing. Fuck to your heart’s content.

Some hardliners might roast me for this, but I promised to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth on this blog. And the truth is that despite all the finger-pointing from people on the left — the political side to which I generally affiliate — at anti-mask Republicans and nutcase anti-vaxxers, I and my queer social circles have not been stringent. It’s easy to deride hicks in Southern states for cutting holes in their masks because they can’t breathe comfortably. It’s harder to admit that I’m not too different from them — I was one of the gays fucking and socially gathering (albeit only at small gatherings) before the more robust phases of vaccine rollout. Now that I’m vaccinated, I just feel a bit better about going out.

There’s a case to be made that my behavior is not for the greater good of society, especially if vaccinated people can still be carriers, but there’s also a case to be made that it is. As a sex worker, I’ve seen firsthand the dangers of going for prolonged periods without intimacy — some of the men who hired me during the pandemic were not in good places. I can hardly offer tips on being diligent because I haven’t been. The only thing I can really comment on is this rift between you and your boyfriend, which should be treated as a sexual disagreement like any other.

Like all other sexual disagreements that come up in a relationship, you don’t have many options, particularly if he’s not willing to budge. I’ll assume he’s not. You can either a) continue as you’re doing now and tough it out or b) break up. That latter option might seem extreme, but there will be many breakups this year from situations exactly like yours.

If you love him and want to stay with him — if you love him more than the sex you’re missing — then keep jacking off to porn, having naked video calls, buying as many dildos and sex toys as you can, and bearing down a bit longer. But since you’re struggling, it’s fair — and, I think, necessary — to ask him for an approximate timeframe or some kind of marker you can point to as an endpoint on your self-imposed dry spell, particularly since vaccinated people around you are starting to play again. As a healthcare worker, he’s in some position to give you that answer. He could decide on an idealized daily case count as a sign that you’re both free to play again. You need to know if he expects you to refrain from sex for another six months — or longer — so that you can make an informed decision and weigh your love for him against your own needs.

This is the pandemic version of a classic relationship issue: one partner wants outside sex and the other doesn’t. Even in normal circumstances, neither partner is wrong, but the solution is still the same: stay together if possible, break up if not.

I mean no disrespect to him or to the millions of healthcare workers who’ve had an agonizing year. But his ethical conundrums and fearful feelings are his own and your desires to sleep around again are yours — and you’re free to decide if one will direct the other. I will not drag the pulpit language of morality into the discourse on sex and need — the world does that enough already. You’re not morally bankrupt for needing or seeking sex — quite the contrary, you have responsibly refrained until you were vaccinated, which is more than I can say for most gay men I know. You deserve a timeframe from him because you deserve the ability to choose what you can bear.

Faithfulness is always the heavier burden.

Love, Beastly