MAL / Renaissance Festival = same thing
To me the Mid-Atlantic Leather weekend has become something like the Renaissance Festival they put on out in Crownsville, Maryland every year - the events and venues don't really change that much from year to year, and you see the same people in the same costumes every year as well. In other words, your broiled turkey leg will still be there next year if you skip it this year.
Herb has some accurate insight on the attendees. The Sunday night Reaction dance is at the 9:30 Club this year, so I'll be able to stagger home that night. Rumour has it that Joe.My.God will be in town too.
The weekend promises a hypersexualized vibe in the air. But after years of observation I suspect there is no increase in the number of people getting laid above the mean. That is because even if a guy spots you in the lobby of the host hotel and thinks you're hot , there's always the chance that the next best thing could come around the corner at any minute. So the guys hold out, but usually end up frustrated by the end of the weekend.
My oldest brother gave me a call last night. He is somewhat of an exo-hypochondriac. That is, every time he gets high and happens to hear the latest news about the latest plague to hit the gay community, he has to call me up and warn me about it. By that time the news of whatever plague has been in the gay papers for over a year.
There's been a lot of news about the various strains of antibiotic-resistant staph that gay men can get so easily from the saunas, sex clubs or gyms. I've never gotten it. My question is, if I have open wounds exposed to everyone and everything on a dirty, muddy, dusty rugby pitch during warm, humid weather for most of the year, how come none of us have ever gotten staph? Is the dirt so laden with such a diversity of bacteria that staph-resistant strains cannot flourish? That's my question of the day. Answer: rugby teams are indeed succeptible to antibiotic-resistant staph infections.
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I Hope this link will help you with your questions regarding Staph.
http://www.textbookofbacteriology.net/staph.html
in a nutshell, the Staph bacteria, lives on the skin and mucus areas of the body. Most humans are carriers. Like most bacteria it needs a certain tempurature and moisture content to survive. Some bacteria that thrive in or on a human host can not survive in a different enviroment like the dirt your running around in during a Rugby match.
My 90something Grandma (the mean one, not the dead one) has staph right now.
So exactly how many times a day am I going to have to shower to get all these cooties off of me? All these news reports of staph, bubonic and pneumonic plague, avian flu . . . I'm going to end up like Howard Hughes locked in a Las Vegas hotel room with kleenex boxes for house slippers.
MAL / Renaissance Festival = same thing
Jimbo that summarizes it perfectly! You said in your title what took me several paragraphs to attempt to express!
MAL and Renaissance Festivals are NOT the same thing. The Renaissance Festival doesn't have the desperate "it's three a.m., maybe I can hook up in the hotel lobby" scene, as far as I know.
And at MAL I always saw lots of middle of the road leather boys with too much time to plan outfits before brunch, whereas at the last Ren Fair I went to we met a fabulous transgendered person from Michigan's upper peninsula who was selling bustiers.
There appear to be a variety of factors that influence staph or MRSA infections. Some people remain colonized for years and never develop an infection. Some people get the strain once (even in the same household) and die from it. Anything that breaks down the skin barrier or increases close contact (bug bites, eczema, hot and sweaty wrestling or otherwise) increases the chance of transmission. But it's still unclear why some people get boils and some don't, and how our immunity functions to fight it. Once you get it, it IS very hard to eradicate. One theory for the recent increase in infections is that one of our new childhood vaccines for strep infections (pneumococcus) has displaced one of staph's normal competitors. Plus there's all that continued overuse of antibiotics.
I'm terrified of this whole MRSA thing. I haven't left my apartment in four days.
Is that TJ? He sure is a cutie pie.
MRSA, schmrsa. Be smart, wash hands ALL the time, don't take chances.