Hello Carly,
Many thanks for your thoughtful reply.
My apologies, I noticed I posted the wrong link in my prior post but wasn’t sure how to correct it afterwards. Here’s the actual link to the study I mentioned:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6404546/
I feel lousy about my experience because with retrospect I came to it with a false sense of security and it was studded with red herrings. I considered the aforementioned source credible as he has strong credentials and extensive experience, plus what he said was backed up by the study I’ve linked above so I thought I was on sound footing. In other words, I fear my good faith was misplaced and I wouldn’t have engaged in the encounter if I’d suspected there was any STI risk.
As for my mistakes, well, hindsight is a wonderful thing but they were manifold. The hand sanitizer I asked the other guy to use was labelled as killing viruses, but if I’d looked closer I might have seen the asterisk excluding nonenveloped ones (such as HPV). Sodium Lauryl Sulfate, a common surfactant found in soap, ostensibly kills HPV as well as the other skin-contact germs, so if I’d used that instead I would probably feel a bit better about it all. High-risk (carcinogenic) HPV is also known as mucosal HPV, so I figured if there was no contact with mucous membranes, directly or indirectly, I could not be exposed to high-risk HPV. As it turns out this was also mistaken as high-risk HPV can infect regular skin, including the penile shaft.
If I’d engaged in this encounter with someone as inexperienced as myself, that would have been another failsafe, since their risk of carrying HPV would have been near-zero. Besides that gay men have higher rates of STIs than other demographics on average, the stranger immediately propositioned me on the app, no questions asked, and seemed a bit careless about his health in general. He declined a mask when I offered one (for Covid) and had next-to-no personal hygiene items in his shower room. He wasn’t a bad fellow so far as I could tell, but he was slovenly. After I’d touched him for around a minute, I only had access to water to clean my hands so I doused them with sanitizer afterwards for good measure. Since he tried to make out with me near the start, I remembered that he breathed on my face and it condensed inside my mask, so I rubbed hand sanitizer inside my nose in case he had Covid (it seemed a bright idea at the time). Unfortunately the nose is a mucous membrane so if I had some residual HPV on my fingers, I could have infected my nose. In-all it was quite a catalogue of mistakes.
I feel cheated since the rules of safe play as I saw them changed after-the-fact. I’m also sad because as a complete virgin, STIs weren’t a worry of mine before, but I seem to have unwittingly jeopardized that. I’m particularly afraid of HPV because it’s nigh-undetectable in men, can incubate for decades, and it’s potentially deadly. I am regretful