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Intensive sex partying amongst gay men

in Sydney
a a b
Michael Hurley & Garrett Prestage
a
Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society, La Trobe
University, Melbourne, Australia
b
National Centre in HIV Clinical and Epidemiological Research,
University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
Published online: 22 Jul 2009.

To cite this article: Michael Hurley & Garrett Prestage (2009) Intensive sex partying amongst gay
men in Sydney, Culture, Health & Sexuality: An International Journal for Research, Intervention and
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 Culture, Health & Sexuality
Vol. 11, No. 6, August 2009, 597–610

Intensive sex partying amongst gay men in Sydney

Michael Hurleya* and Garrett Prestagea,b
a
Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia;
b
National Centre in HIV Clinical and Epidemiological Research, University of New South Wales,
Sydney, Australia
(Received 1 July 2008; final version received 5 January 2009)

Intensive sex partying is a framework developed to analyse specific frequent

behaviours amongst a small minority of gay men in Sydney, Australia. The behaviours
included a higher frequency of dance party attendance, more frequent sex, more anal
sex, multiple sex partners, more unprotected anal intercourse with casual partners and
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more frequent drug taking. These occur at a contextual intersection between a sub-
group of sexually adventurous gay men and ‘party boys’. The men appear to be
involved in both high-risk, adventurous sex practices and a specific form of partying
distinguishable from dance partying and ‘clubbing’. Sex partying occurs on multiple
sites (domestic spaces; within dance parties; sex parties; sex-on-premises venues) and
appears to be geared to the maximisation of sexual pleasure. Intensive sex partying
describes this coincidence of factors and locates them in relation to the multiple
pleasures offered by sex partying. It emphasises the importance of ‘intensity’ in order
to understand better the relations between sex, drug use, pleasure, care and risk in some
gay men’s lives.
Keywords: gay men; sex party; pleasure; HIV; risk; Australia

Introduction
We developed the notion of intensive sex partying (ISP) as an analytic framework after
observing common elements in survey data across several Australian studies of gay men.
A sub-set of gay men involved in both adventurous sex practices and in specific forms of
partying appeared to be at high risk of HIV infection and transmission. Participation in
both cultures of sexual adventurism (Kippax et al. 1998; Smith, Worth, and Kippax 2004)
and gay dance parties (Lewis and Ross 1995; Bollen 1996; Southgate and Hopwood 1999;
Ross, Mattison, and Franklin 2003; Race 2003a) had previously been implicated in new
HIV infections, but neither was contextualised in relation to sex partying specifically or to
the ways that ‘partying’ for some gay men intersected with sex play. We suggest that the
notion of ISP enables a clearer understanding of the contexts of this interaction.
In our review of the behavioural data we identified an intersection between gay men
who are sometimes labelled ‘sex pigs’ (those who seek intensive, adventurous, sex
experiences) and ‘party boys’ (those who frequently attend gay community party venues
and events, often also using illicit drugs). Intensive sex partying-associated behaviours
include frequent partying, frequent sex, higher rates of anal sex than amongst gay men
generally, sequential or simultaneous multiple sex partners, specific drug combinations,

*Corresponding author. Email: michael.hurley@latrobe.edu.au

ISSN 1369-1058 print/ISSN 1464-5351 online

q 2009 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/13691050902721853
http://www.informaworld.com
 598 M. Hurley and G. Prestage

a broad sexual repertoire with sexual experimentation and unprotected anal intercourse
with casual partners (UAIC) (Hurley and Prestage 2007; Prestage et al. 2008a). Other gay
men attending dance parties may have also participated in aspects of these intermittently,
but our focus here was on the men who did so frequently and with respect to several of
these factors. This suggested a desire to maximise sexual pleasure. The men involved were
of any HIV serostatus, though were disproportionately HIV-positive. They tended to be
older, and were likely to have higher rates of sexually transmissible infections than other
gay men involved in partying.
Although these men mostly practise safe sex and various forms of risk reduction
(Van de Ven et al. 2002, 2004), men engaging in ISP tend to have increased levels of risk
behaviours (Mao et al. 2006; Rawstorne et al. 2007). Intensive sex partying occurs in
domestic spaces, sex parties and sex-on-premises venues (SOPV) and has direct and indirect
connections with wider dance party cultures (Southgate and Hopwood 1999; Buckland
2002; McInnes, Bollen, and Race 2002; Bollen and McInnes 2004). Intensive sex partying,
therefore, refers to specific contexts and associated sexually adventurous practices.
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The high frequency with which some men engage in ISP-associated behaviours suggests
we need to account for and make sense of the relations between sex, intensity, pleasure and
partying. In this paper, ‘context’ has two interconnected dimensions: behavioural and
socio-cultural (Frankis and Flowers 2005). In Foucauldian terms (1984), these two dimensions
may be linked at a general level through the concept of ‘care of the self’ as a reflexive social
practice that intensifies relations with the self and with others. In Halperin’s (1995) account of
care of the self, subjects cultivate, fashion and style themselves ‘in a calculated encounter’
with others (76–77). Our focus is on the immediate and specific features of the situations in
which the men interact and what they do in the interactions. We see a need for an analytic frame
that not only includes pleasure and risk, but also does not immediately polarise them or
characterise participants’ behaviour as intrinsically pathological or irrational.

Methods
The behavioural data we reviewed were primarily derived from the Gay Periodic Surveys
undertaken regularly in six Australian cities (Zablotska et al. 2008) and two large
Australian cohort studies, based in Sydney: the Health in Men study of HIV-negative gay
men (Prestage et al. 2005) and the Positive Health study of HIV-positive gay men
(Rawstorne et al. 2005). Our review and further analysis of the findings from these studies
was iterative.
We positioned the published findings from these studies in relation to other relevant
research. We conducted a selective, critical literature search on the following themes:
HIV, risk, sexual behaviour and gay men; sexual adventurism; pleasure and its
maximisation; partying; and recreational drug use and associated management practices.
Behavioural, epidemiological, ethnographic, sociological, theoretical and cultural
research were considered in relation to the sexual practices and sexual cultures of gay
men, providing an interdisciplinary analytic framework that allowed us to contextualise
the previously identified behavioural interconnections implicated in ISP. We postulate
how and why ISP may produce increased risk of HIV transmission and infection.

Rationale
Unprotected anal intercourse with casual partners is the primary behavioural risk factor for
HIV seroconversion among gay men (Jin et al. 2007). Nonetheless, several other,
 Culture, Health & Sexuality 599

apparently interrelated, risk factors have also been strongly associated with both UAIC
and with HIV seroconversion. These include having a high number of sexual partners,
group sex, participation in highly sexually active ‘scenes’, including SOPVs and ‘circuit
parties’ and the use of illicit drugs (Kippax et al. 1998; Binson et al. 2001; Mattison et al.
2001; Halkitis and Parsons 2002; Green 2003; Mettey et al. 2003; Crosby and Mettey
2004; Grov et al. 2007; Halkitis and Green 2007; Jin et al. 2007; Prestage et al. 2008a).
Australian data suggest that a disproportionate number of HIV infections occur
amongst the relatively small number of men who more frequently, as distinct from
occasionally, engage in UAIC (Volk et al. 2006; Jin et al. 2007). More frequent UAIC is
associated with more frequent partying, higher levels of drug use and higher levels of
sexual activity (Crawford et al. 2006; Mao et al. 2006; Jin et al. 2007; Prestage et al.
2007a; Rawstorne et al. 2007). These associations distinguish a sub-set of men who, like
other men, attend dance parties and other gay party events, but, unlike other men, engage
in ISP-associated practices with much greater frequency. HIV-risk behaviours among gay
men may be relatively common in general and individually, but relatively few gay men
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routinely engage in each such behaviour, and fewer still regularly engage in several of
these behaviours simultaneously.
The greater likelihood of these men having multiple concurrent sexual partners could
potentially account for a disproportionate number of recent infections (Morris and
Kretzschmar 1997; Morris 2001). Also, when considered together, the associated sexual
and drug-using behaviours can be seen to describe some aspects of a particular form
of ‘partying’. While these are aspects also found in the context of ‘circuit parties’
(Colfax et al. 2001; Mansergh et al. 2001; Halkitis and Green 2007), they are not limited to
that specific context. It is both the frequency and the engagement in a range of these
behaviours that is most strongly associated with HIV risk and, therefore, of particular
interest to us. The concept of ISP describes this coincidence of factors and locates them in
relation to the multiple pleasures offered by partying. It emphasises the importance of
‘intensity’ in the co-incidence of various aspects of ‘sexual adventurism’. It does this in
order to understand better the place of risk in relation to pleasure in some gay men’s lives.
Intensive sex partying amongst gay men often occurs in contexts where the prevalence
of HIV is much higher than in either the population overall or amongst gay men generally.
Sydney has 10– 20% HIV prevalence among gay men in some inner city postcodes
(Maddedu et al. 2006). In specific contexts of ISP, HIV prevalence can be much higher
(Prestage et al., 2009), which, for non HIV-positive participants who occasionally or more
frequently practice UAIC, can mean significantly elevated risk of HIV infection over time.
In recent years, there have been increases in Australian rates of new infection nationally,
although the rate in Sydney appears to have stabilised, as well as a slow increase in the
median age of those newly infected to 38 years (Guy et al. 2008).
Though the sub-set of men involved in ISP probably practice some form of ‘safe sex’
most of the time (Van de Ven et al. 2002, 477; Crawford et al. 2006, 328; Rawstorne et al.
2007, 520), they are likely to do so less rigorously than gay men generally. While some
men who engage in ISP-associated practices may have uneven levels of understanding
(Rosengarten, Race, and Kippax 2000), many also appear to make calculations about HIV
viral load in HIV-positive participants and the relative risk attached to ‘topping’ and
‘bottoming’ (‘strategic positioning’) and withdrawal (Van de Ven et al. 2002). They are
not simply ignorant of what constitutes safe sex or ‘complacent’ about it. Many of these
men are attached to communities with sustained histories of engagement with the HIV
epidemic and use their medical knowledge to reduce the likelihood of infection and
transmission (Race 2001): ‘individuals affected by HIV/AIDS actively and often
 600 M. Hurley and G. Prestage

accurately evaluate and consume the products of medical knowledge in ways that may
have an effect on sexual practice’ (Race 2003a, 270).

Intensity, risk and pleasure

The coincidence of ISP-associated practices is strongly suggestive of a desire to maximise
pleasure. Pleasure and a sense of ‘well-being’ are socially constituted (Southgate and
Hopwood 1999; Monaghan 2001; Race 2005). We know that pleasure is one motivation
for gay men’s participation in partying, drug use and sex (Mattison, Mattison, and Franklin
2001; Ross et al. 2003). The maximisation of pleasure generally, as well as amongst
sexually adventurous gay men, is described in the literatures with reference to peak
experience (Solowij, Hall, and Lee 1992), limit-experience (Jay 1995; Holmes, O’Byrne,
and Gastaldo 2006) and, in various ways, to disinhibition (Smith et al. 2004; Worth and
Rawstorne 2005; Aguinaldo and Myers 2008).
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Pleasure, risk and pathology

Some HIV social researchers have criticised the pathologising of gay male sex and
risk-reduction strategies (Worth and Rawstorne 2005; Flowers and Langdridge 2007).
Other critiques identify similar pathologising tendencies in accounts of illicit drug use
(Holt and Treloar 2008; Race 2008). There is a further parallel critique of the ways
pleasure has been neglected, negated or poorly understood in health research more
generally (Coveney and Bunton 2003).
Australian HIV social research has found consistently that sexual practices and drug use
amongst gay men can only be understood as social practices linked to the wider norms of gay
cultures (Kippax et al. 1993; Lewis and Ross 1995; Dowsett 1996; Worth and Rawstorne
2005). An attention to the contexts of sexual practice allows for forms of analysis absent in
what Patton (1996) referred to as ‘psychological deficit’ models where ‘what was once
viewed as a healthy desire for sex is reinterpreted as a pathological desire for dangerous sex’
(127). Worth and Rawstorne (2005) suggested that deficit accounts ‘portray gay men as at-
risk individuals lacking in self-determination, agency, and control’ (485). Deficit models
devalue the findings that most gay men practice safe sex most of the time (Van de Ven et al.
2002; Crawford et al. 2006; Rawstorne et al. 2007), as well as findings that gay men engage
in considered ways to minimise risk (Kippax and Race 2003; Van de Ven et al. 2004).
Interventions based on deficit models may ignore the possibility that risk taking generally
can produce or intensify pleasure (Lupton 1999) and how some interventions might have the
unintended effect of romanticising unsafe sex as transgressive (Crossley 2002; Race 2007).
As an analytic framework, ISP accounts for what Lyng (2004) referred to, in a different
context, as the ‘intensely seductive character of the experience itself’ (5). From the point
of view of participants in ISP, however, the experience is not defined primarily by the risk
of HIV infection or transmission, though they know that these are possible. Indeed risk
taking may not be primary in the motivation for sexual activity that includes unsafe sex –
as distinct from being implicated in it (Semple, Patterson, and Grant 2002). Often the link
between sex and risk is overshadowed by a simplistic public health imperative that
assumes HIV infection is as calamitous now as it was between 1982 and 1996. It does so
without sufficient regard for the better clinical outcomes consequent on newer treatments,
their effects on viral load and how factors such as these are taken into account in the sexual
practices of some gay men. It provokes increasing tensions between gay men involved in
ISP and public health (Valenzuela 2008).
 Culture, Health & Sexuality 601

Intensive sex partying provides a way of systematically incorporating pleasure and its
relationship to specific forms of sex, drug use and risk taking into a contextual analysis that
also registers practices of safety and care (Race 2008).

Partying, dancing and sex partying

Much of the partying engaged in by gay men is related to clubbing, dance partying and
attending hallmark events (Lewis and Ross 1995; Hurley 2001; Buckland 2002). Many
participants in these experience what might be described as a ‘tribal’ sense of affirmation
and collective belonging (Bardella 2002; Slavin 2004a; 2004c; Westhaver 2005, 2006).
Public dance parties occur in parallel with various forms of partying in existing
commercial social venues (bars, clubs, SOPVs). There are differences, however, between
dance party attendance and ISP, even though they may on occasion occur in the same
spaces at the same time.
While ISP is characterised by the frequency of specific behaviours, it is not a discrete
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social phenomenon. The boundaries between forms of partying and their settings are fluid
and permeable. Sex partying can occur within dance parties, including circuit parties, and
at sex on premises venues, without them being defined by it. Even so, there are also
specific sex party events that are much more likely to be sites of ISP. They may be
organised in advance or emerge in ad hoc ways (Prestage et al. 2008a). Sex parties
organised in advance include both public and privately subscribed events, publicised
through advertising or email lists or list serves. Parties organised in ad hoc ways can be
arranged on the Internet, often involve only small groups of men and are more likely to
occur in private homes. Participants in public and private events are often, but not always,
the same.
Intensive sex partying has some elements of a sub-culture, including practices seen in
other sexual contexts (group sex, drug use, adventurous sex). Researchers have noted the
limits of notions of ‘sub-culture’ that tie it too strongly to fixed personnel or spaces, while
retaining a usage at ease with ‘more or less permeable boundaries and loose affiliations
between people, places, and sexual practices’ (Smith, Worth, and Kippax 2004, 8; see also
Slavin 2004a). Other evidence suggests the development of sexual repertoires and
practical sexual literacies in these contexts (McInnes and Bollen 2000; McInnes et al.
2001; McInnes, Bollen, and Race 2002). Intensive sex partying also shares features found
elsewhere in gay life: traditions of casual sex that create ‘a culture of sexual recreation and
exploration’ (Dowsett 1996, 70); links between sociability and drug use (Slavin 2004a,
2004b, 2004c; Green and Halkitis 2006); non-monogamous, sexually open relationships
(Vadasz and Lipp 1990) and sexual socialising between men of different HIV status
(Race 2001; Adam 2005; Parsons et al. 2005).

Partying, sex and risk

Though many gay men participate in wider party cultures, their participation is often
occasional. Further, while many, if not most, gay men visit a SOPVs at some time, far
more would never visit them at all, as distinct from frequently doing so, and this same
pattern also applies to engaging in group sex and the use of illicit drugs (Prestage et al.
2000; Fogarty et al. 2006; Prestage et al. 2007a). So, while many gay men may engage in
ISP occasionally, relatively few would do so regularly or for extended periods. For the
most part, most gay men probably live far more mundane lives than might be suggested
by the literature of risk. They are more likely to seek sex partners in bars or on the
 602 M. Hurley and G. Prestage

Internet and to mostly have sex with one man at a time and without using drugs (Imrie
and Frankland 2007). Again, ISP emphasises the importance of ‘intensity’ in the co-
incidence of various aspects of ‘sexual adventurism’ in order to understand the place of
risk among gay men.
Research into sex partying has been closely associated with the sexual practices of
HIV-positive gay men (Parsons and Halkitis 2002; Clatts, Goldsamt, and Yi 2005), the risk
of HIV infection for HIV-negative men and discussions of sero-sorting and barebacking,
often in Internet settings (Dowsett et al. 2008). Research into risk in these contexts only
sometimes pays attention to pleasure (Halkitis and Parsons 2002; Semple, Patterson, and
Grant 2002, 2003) and context (Westhaver 2006; Halkitis and Green 2007).
The sociabilities embedded in sexual practices (Dowsett 1996) are often ignored. Instead
they are reported as individual behaviours without regard for how ‘living bodies are
incorporated into social relations’ (Kippax et al. 1993, 46). Other researchers query the
ways ‘risky behaviour’ tends to be simplistically analysed as exemplary of complacency,
irrationality and a failure of individual responsibility (Davis 2002, 2008; Adam 2005;
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Westhaver 2005).

Drug use and intensive sex partying

In the context of ISP, the frequencies with which specific drugs, and combinations of
drugs, are used are often different to those seen in wider dance partying. Race (2003b)
notes how the emergence of crystal (methamphetamine), special-K (ketamine) and GHB
(gamma hydroxy butyrate) affected ‘the interactive dynamics of partying’ because of ‘the
radical volatility of subjective experience in the context of drug consumption’. That
volatility includes the possibility of increased bodily sensation and the sharing of its
physical and social affects, as well as the possibility of misadventure. Slavin (2004c)
quotes one of his informants who linked crystal and sex:
It turns people into pigs. It makes you really, really horny. When you take crystal you can just
go on having sex for ages, like days if you want. As long as you have more crystal you’ll be
awake and horny. (274)
The effects of these drugs have been contrasted with the generally more ‘warm and fuzzy’
sociabilities associated with ecstasy (Ireland et al. 1999; Guss 2000). Certain drugs are
characterized as ‘harder’ and much more urgent in their effects (Slavin 2004b). The drugs
also pose specific management challenges (Lewis and Ross 1995; Mansergh et al. 2001;
Southgate and Hopwood 2001; Slavin 2004c; Dowsett, Keys, and Wain 2005; Ellard
2007).
While sex partying tends to be described primarily by reference to drug use and to
associations between ‘crystal’ and HIV risk (Halkitis, Parsons, and Stirratt 2001; Colfax
and Guzman 2006; Shoptaw and Reback 2007), the connections between drug use and
HIV infection amongst gay men are not necessarily directly causal (Prestage et al. 2005,
2007a, 2007b).

Intensivity and sex partying

In the context of ISP, production of increased sensation and affect is delicately balanced
with more regulatory versions of care of the self and others. The result can be behavioural
and affective intensity. It is the combination of these factors that is constitutive, not any one
factor. Sydney data are consistent with Ross, Mattison and Franklin’s (2003, 1174) findings
that amongst gay circuit party patrons there were ‘two significant moderately correlated
 Culture, Health & Sexuality 603

dimensions: a social and celebratory one to be with friends and dance, and a sensation-
seeking one, to have sex and drugs’, and that social reasons for attendance far outweighed
sensation-seeking reasons. They further found that ‘unsafe sex was significantly associated
with the sensation-seeking dimension but not the social dimension’. Other research includes
affect and sociality within corporeality and its enactment (McInnes, Bollen, and Race 2002;
Hurley 2003; Race 2003a, 2003b, 2005; Slavin 2004a).

Intensive sex partying

Intensive sex partying is characterised by practices that maximise the potential for intense
bodily pleasure. It is not primarily characterised by participants stumbling through or into
it as a scene, though that may happen. It involves a cultural pedagogy of knowledge
transfer and improvisation (learning on the spot) (Bollen and McInnes 2004). Participation
often involves choreographed practices directed at both the maximisation of pleasure and
care of the self and others related to drug use, infection control and the quality of sexual
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interaction. Kippax et al. (1998) and Smith, Worth and Kippax (2004), among others, have
criticised ‘individualist sexual psychological explanations of adventurous sexual practice’
that tended to pathologise the sexual practices involved. They also linked drug use to the
maximisation of sexual pleasure, producing an ongoing tension between what they refer to
as ‘disinhibition’ and ‘self-regulation’.
Intensive sex partying reconceptualises disinhibition, however, as the ‘maximisation
of pleasure’ and self-regulation as ‘care of the self’ (Foucault 1984). We shift the concept
from specific links with drug use to the relations between sexual practice, drug use,
pleasure and care. In the context of ISP, while drugs may be used more frequently, this use
only involves a minority of the men at any given time and appears to occur in specific
contexts intended to produce maximum sexual intensity. This rearticulation allows us to
make sense of the orchestration of the different elements identified in various sex partying
contexts (Solowij, Hall, and Lee 1992; Guss 2000; Slavin 2004a, 2004b; Westhaver 2005,
2006; Carrington 2007).
Accounting for sex as a social practice allows an understanding of how pleasure,
sensation seeking and risk are contextualised in ISP. Certain specific partying contexts are
constituted by a particular ars erotica – procedures for the production of maximum
pleasure (Foucault 1980, 70– 71). In contexts partly constituted by the potential for HIV
transmission or HIV infection, how risk is understood plays out differently according to
the HIV status of the participants – what they believe about the HIV sero-status of their
partners, degrees of social recognition of partners and what they do together.
Recreational drug use in this context is exemplary of what O’Malley and Mugford
(1991) referred to as ‘an intelligible form of the normatively sanctioned search for the
extraordinary’ (57). For them, it is a search that values inter alia exploration, intensity,
excitement, self-expression, hedonism and imagination. Managing drug use in a context of
ISP can be understood initially as an aspect of pleasure maximization, rather than
immediately characterised as ‘harm minimisation’. The research literatures suggest that
‘management’ has at least two temporal dimensions: ‘longer-term’ and ‘immediate’.
‘Longer-term’ includes the preparation for participation in the event and the practices
involved post event in care of the self, as well as the extended single event and
reoccurrence of the events over time. ‘Immediate’ refers to the moment-by-moment
negotiation of order and the kinds of momentum created in sexually adventurous contexts
(Bollen and McInnes 2004). There are, however, challenges posed by the management of
drug use in these contexts in order to avoid HIV transmission or infection.
 604 M. Hurley and G. Prestage

The tension between the maximisation of pleasure and care of the self and others
(Smith, Worth, and Kippax 2004) has a structuring effect over time on sex partying as an
event, irrespective of whether it is primary in participants’ consciousness at any given
moment. Tension is also present as a constitutive element in the practices associated with
the specific sexual socialities involved. The tension is experienced in shifting rhythms
(‘waves of excitement’) for the individuals involved and intensified by drug taking for
sexual purposes. The drug use is part of the social setting and an element in the
ongoingness of the tension. Our focus of attention is on the productivity of the drug use
and its effects – what it enables – not the drug use per se, though that cannot be ignored.
The tension between maximising pleasure and care of the self and others holds for non-
drug users in the same space, though the production of pleasure by non-drug using
participants may involve different procedures.
The tension is present across a single, extended period of sex partying (the ‘event’), as
well as in the frequent repetition of such events. Managing, if not exploiting, the tension in
a single event may itself be a deliberate strategy in the maximisation of pleasure by
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participants. The risk here, as participants see it, is that the production of peak experience
will be compromised by bad management of the sex or the drugs, or both. So the tension
needs to be understood structurally, relationally and experientially.

Pleasure, care of the self and care for others

Techniques for care of the self and others can be compromised in contexts of ISP. Because
the risk of HIV transmission or infection is subjectively normalised (Aguinaldo and Myers
2008), it is minimised by being made an ongoing element to be accounted for in pleasure
management and harm minimisation. Participants may underestimate the likelihood of the
tension polarising and resolving over time through reversion to one of the poles – the
maximisation of pleasure. Maximisation of pleasure is what is desired but, over time, it can
become a contributory factor to risk exposure.
For HIV-negative men, this increases the need to be vigilant when it is hardest to do so,
in part because in ISP they can also experience a sense of social connection and the
possibility of belonging (Westerhaver 2005; Carrington 2007). For some men, there is a
‘loss of the self’ experienced in intensified sexual pleasure (Westhaver 2005, 355) that
may be accompanied by intensified ‘social recognition amongst the participants’
(Westhaver 2005, 358). Other men, perhaps especially the non-drug users in these
contexts, associate loss of the self with a loss of control (Smith, Worth, and Kippax 2004).

Conclusion
HIV-prevention for participants in ISP must continue to involve ongoing condom
promotion, in situ availability of condoms and support for frequent and rapid HIV and STI
testing. We also need more research into how these men incorporate their knowledge of
HIV infection, transmission and viral load into risk-reduction practices (sero-sorting,
strategic positioning). Programmes and interventions should offer ways to support the
intention among participants not to transmit or become infected. This is particularly salient
for men who practice UAIC with partners of unknown sero-status, suggesting a need for
more and better health promotion on how to ensure knowledge of one’s own and partners’
HIV sero-status. Nonetheless, most HIV-prevention work of this kind assumes a relative
lack of knowledge (of casual partners and of the relative risk of infection). Such
assumptions may not be warranted and, even when they are correct, many ISP participants
 Culture, Health & Sexuality 605

believe they are sufficiently well-informed to enable them to make these decisions
themselves. HIV-prevention efforts need to better respond to the relative knowledge of
these men and provide resources for them to use their knowledge more effectively to
minimise their own levels of risk.
The challenge posed by ISP is that well-informed participants do not keep to their own
‘rules’. Some HIV-negative men actively take a receptive role in UAI with partners they
cannot be certain are also HIV-negative and sometimes do so with partners they know to
be HIV-positive, increasing the likelihood of seroconversion. This means some HIV-
positive men take the insertive position with some partners they do not know to be
seroconcordant, while some HIV-negative men seroconvert but fail to test frequently
enough to avoid putting other HIV-negative sex partners at risk. Prevalence, incidence and
the production of pleasure combine with the tensions internal to ISP events to reduce the
reliability of risk reduction over time.
Most ISP participants would prefer to avoid infection or transmission of HIV, although
its relative importance may vary considerably for each individual, but a ‘condom use every
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time’ approach is unlikely to resonate with them in specific circumstances where they
believe the risk is relatively low and the potential for pleasure is great. A risk-reduction
approach is more likely to be relevant to ISP participants, but is unlikely to suit most
public health agendas.

Acknowledgements
The National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research and the Australian Research
Centre in Sex Health and Society receive funding from the Commonwealth Department of Health
and Ageing. The views expressed are those of the authors alone.

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Résumé
Nous avons pris la «partie de sexe intense» pour cadre analytique de comportements spécifiques et
fréquents parmi une petite minorité d’hommes gays à Sydney, en Australie. Ces comportements
comprenaient une fréquentation plus importante des dance parties, des rapports sexuels plus
fréquents, des rapports anaux plus fréquents, le multipartenariat sexuel, un taux plus important de
rapports sexuels anaux non protégés avec des partenaires occasionnels et une consommation plus
fréquente de drogues. Ils se produisent tous à un croisement contextuel entre un sous groupe
d’hommes gays sexuellement aventureux et des «party boys». Les hommes semblent avoir à la fois
des pratiques sexuelles aventureuses à risque élevé, et une forme spécifique de divertissement,
pouvant se distinguer de la dance party et du «clubbing». La partie de sexe intense se déroule en des
lieux divers (domiciles; dance parties; parties de sexe; établissements pour rencontres sexuelles) et
semble avoir pour objectif final la maximisation du plaisir sexuel. Elle refléte cette convergence de
facteurs et les situe par rapport aux nombreux plaisirs offerts par les parties de sexe. Elle met l’accent
sur l’importance de «l’intensité» afin de mieux expliquer les rapports entre le sexe, l’usage de
drogues, le plaisir, les soins et les prises de risques, dans la vie de certains hommes gays.

Resumen
Las fiestas sexuales intensas son una estructura desarrollada para analizar comportamientos
frecuentes especı́ficos entre una pequeña minorı́a de homosexuales de Sydney, Australia. Estas
conductas incluyeron una alta frecuencia de asistencia a fiestas de baile, relaciones sexuales más
frecuentes, más sexo anal, varias parejas sexuales, más relaciones anales sin protección con parejas
 610 M. Hurley and G. Prestage

casuales y el consumo más frecuente de estupefacientes. Estas conductas ocurren en una intersección
contextual entre un subgrupo de hombres sexualmente atrevidos y ‘chicos de compañı́a’. Parece que
los hombres participan en relaciones sexuales atrevidas y de alto riesgo en un tipo de fiestas muy
diferentes a las fiestas de baile y de los clubes. Las fiestas sexuales ocurren en lugares diversos
(espacios domésticos, en fiestas de baile, fiestas sexuales, locales donde se practica el sexo) y parece
ser concebido para maximizar el placer sexual. Esta estructura de fiestas sexuales intensas se
caracteriza por esta coincidencia de factores con relación a los diversos placeres que se ofrecen en
tales fiestas. Recalcamos la importancia de la ‘intensidad’ a fin de poder entender mejor las
relaciones entre sexo, uso de estupefacientes, placer, cuidado y riesgo en las vidas de algunos
hombres homosexuales.
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