#truvada

This campy, steamy raucous celebration of bare adult content is liberatory and as fun as it is hot. The film was nominated for 3 Gay VN awards and 10 Grabbys, under the direction of the prolific GayVN hall of fame inductee and founder of Lucas Entertainment, Michael Lucas (XBIZ Awards: GLBT Director of the Year [with Tony DiMarco], multi-time GayVN award winner, Grabby Best Newcomer – Director winner, known for Fire Island Cruising and La Dolce Vita). The story is a retelling of the events of Dracula, specifically, the story focuses on the portion of Dracula's story where Jonathan Harker stays with Count Dracula in his castle in the Carpathian Mountains. This movie is a good time and is a celebration of a new era for gay adult film and gay culture more generally.

In a similar fashion, Jonathan Harder (James Castle, who won best actor at the GayVN awards for this film; Ass Fucking Alpha Males, Bare to the Bone 1 and 2), an English attorney, arrives at Count Barebackula's Castle Bare in the land of Truvadia. When Barebackula (Damon Heart, Grabby winner; Spain in the Ass, The Rental Property) opens the door, with dark eyeliner and eyeshadow, the seduction of Jonathan Harder begins.

While showing his guest around the house, the sounds of moans can be heard through a door. Harder seems concerned or surprised. Barebackula explains that Harder is hearing "The music of my house." Barebackula opens the door to reveal two similarly dark-eyed men going at it, undisturbed by the opening of the door, played by Dylan James (who won a Grabby for his work in the next scene; The Perfect Gift, Top Management) and Alex Kof (Daddy's Home, Hot to Sub). The two are uninhibited in their lust for each other, and Barebackula and Harder watch from the doorway. Harder seems bewildered, but slowly starts to rub himself, and Barebackula smirks and walks away, leaving Harder to enjoy the scene in front of him privately. As the two wrap up their fun, Harder makes himself scarce, still hoping to not be caught.

This leaves an opening for Dylan James to slip in and find Barebackula enjoying the smell of Harder's underwear from his luggage. Barebackula beckons James and says he hopes he has some more to share for him. Dylan James, eager to please his master, happily provides. Harder, evidently looking for his luggage again, finds the master of the house bottoming for his servant, and Harder finds himself rubbing himself more earnestly this time. Barebackula looks at one point, unclear whether it is to Dylan James or to Jonathan Harder, "I want your cum." The two are sexually free and dynamic with one another, with their desires and exploring each other's bodies.

Harder then is provided his room, where he will stay for the duration of his visit with the count, who provides two servants to amuse Harder, having seen how much Harder enjoyed seeing the two scenes prior. Here Barebackula also gives a speech to Harder and explains that in his castle, the men inside enjoy bareback sex, and Harder looks timid and admits that he's never had bareback sex. Barebackula's servants, Alex Kof and Mario Domenech (Men in the City 1 & 2, The Meat Rack) join Harder in bed, and his reservations turn into uninhibited lust as the three go at it, the two servants coaxing the desire out of Harder.

The narration tells us after that Harder stays for weeks and starts to rival Barebackula's servants in his sexual appetites. Barebackula's seduction is almost complete. Harder approaches Barebackula and asks to be converted to being like Barebackula. He explains that he has to feed on the load that Harder gives him. So the two of them start to make that entirely possible. Harder does not need to bring down his walls of repression for this scene, but eagerly supplies Barebackula with what he wants, and as he tastes, Harder's eyes turn dark like the other servants, so that he can live forever in Castle Bare in the mountains of Truvadia, and continue to delight in its revelries.

This movie is the seduction of Jonathan Harder from a sexually repressed British attorney into a sexually liberated 'monster' that leaves his society life behind to pursue his own pleasure. It's a celebration of the advent of PrEP, which came on the market in 2012, and was only out for four years when this film was made. Barebackula, set in the fictional Truvadia (thinly veiled reference to the first mainstream PrEP available, Truvada), is equally a seduction and celebration of its viewer, who watches the first two scenes just as Jonathan Harder does—the figure of the voyeur is no longer featured after Jonathan gives into his own desires and breaks out of his own repression. Harder is the late adopter of PrEP, who has lived in the shadow of the AIDS Crisis for the past thirty years, who is curious, but unsure; he's the well-adjusted, middle-class gay man, that the just-like-everyone-else gay rights movement of the 2000s sought to produce, but has desires that don't fit the station that he's found himself in.

No puedo olvidar mi estatus.

The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved a new drug, Descovy, for prevention of infection with H.I.V., only the second drug approved for this purpose.

The first, Truvada, has become a mainstay of government efforts to turn back the H.I.V. epidemic. But the F.D.A.’s approval of Descovy explicitly excludes “individuals who have receptive vaginal sex,” which may include cisgender women and many transgender men, and does not outline a plan for making the drug available to them.

The drug’s maker, Gilead Sciences, tested it only “in men and transgender women,” the F.D.A. noted. Some activists and scientists said the approval sets a dangerous precedent by allowing companies to dodge the expensive trials needed to test medicines in cisgender women and other groups at risk of H.I.V. infection.

Such an exclusion “should be unacceptable in these days and times,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, chief of infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital.

It’s important to test the drug specifically in cisgender women and some transgender men, she added, because Descovy may work differently in the vagina than in rectal tissues.