Savage Love

Please Answer Me

Nothing good, PAM. But I can't imagine that your mother's behavior on your 21st birthday did more damage to your psyche than your mother seeing her behavior recounted in a nationally syndicated sex-advice column is going to do to hers. So you're your mother's daughter after all, PAM.

Loads of gay men read your column. This makes you a good person to spread the word about the crazy "flesh-eating" MRSA strain that is running rampant in communities of gay men in Boston and San Francisco. According to the studies reported in the New York Times, gay men in SF are 13 times more likely to have this nasty staph bacteria than the rest of the population in the area. Infection results in gross and horrible problems like abscesses and ulcers (usually on the buttocks and genitalia). The bacteria is resistant to not only first-line antibiotics but also two of the three other medications recommended by the CDC. Maybe you could help inform people and keep them from getting infected with ass-and-genital-flesh-eating bacteria?

Keep It Clean

Not all gay men listen to me—things wouldn't look so grim for us on the STI front if more did—but for what it's worth:

Gay men can easily protect themselves from this new strain of MRSA. According to docs, it's as simple as scrubbing with soap and water after skin-to-skin contact. Gay men should also reduce the number of our sex partners. Here's some good advice we got at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic: "Have more sex with fewer people." That was an effective health strategy back in the day—guys who took it to heart tended to live—and it would be nice to see today's gay men adopt/readopt the more-sex/fewer-people strategy before the infectious shit hits the epidemiological fan. Again.

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