be advised

had an odd conversation yesterday with a man who said 'i think you know that i like you.' always nice to hear that affirmation. but he also asked me when i was last tested for HIV, and i told him, but isn't that an odd thing to ask someone you have gone out with only one time and that time was chaste? maybe it's not, maybe i've just only ever been in situations where really people don't bring it up, before or after, in spite of all the public service announcements to talk with partners and be open about sexual history. maybe all my partners have been more reserved or disease free and assume the same. maybe that is what i have done too. so, seemed to me a bit presumptuous about what he expects on a future second meeting. plus he tried to convince me of the merits of condomlessness for both parties and when i said that the line of conversation was making me feel uncomfortable, he said something like 'we're just talking like grown ups,' which had the effect of making me feel infantalized and emotionally stunted.

he also asked me if i am a lesbian. one other time someone asked me that too, it was a guy i can't even recall -- oh wait, i do, an around the way guy from little italy who i didn't want to sleep with even though we were fooling around. this was years ago. and i didn't want to because i found his apartment so depressing, the whole scene. we came into it and the tv was on -- left on by him, and he had a futon which he slept on but it was in upright/couch position, and there were crumbs all in it and there is another tawdry detail having to do with the same bottle of oil that he used for cooking and handjobs.

in a way it's funny, though, the level of egotism that operates in the mind that articulates the lesbian question; the man never thinks you might not want to sleep with him because you have ambivalent feelings about him or maybe ambivalent feelings about yourself or maybe you are actually interested in someone, a man, altogether different; it can only be because you're a dyke.

so, is it a sign of immaturity or prude-ish-ness if you don't want to talk about the merits of condom-free intercourse on the telephone with someone about whom you have doubts in any case? no matter the answer, to me it seems rather early for that lobbying effort and also, frankly, it's kind of bullshit -- here's a consideration other than an std: unwanted pregancy.

then i thought, what if we do go out again and again and again and i grow to like him and we ultimately start telling each other private thoughts and histories and this blog comes up. am i basically deciding against someone when i write about them here? is it okay not to tell a partner everything? and if not, then, when they find out about it, if they do, will they be offended? i might be if i were in his shoes. might is too weak a word. i feel that i would be. this thing makes me feel very cruel and i don't want to be that.