I used to live in SF, and it is not uncommon for a gay man to never know the name of one (or even most) of his sex partners.
I worked with one gay guy told me point-blank that he frequented car rest-stops, which are liked as pick-up places specifically because they provide an atmosphere of anonymity.
He also told me several times about being threatened with arrest at train stations, but the rest-stop story was so spooky I didn’t ask him for details about any of his later confrontations.
At the Folsom Street fair in SF, it is common for one man to fellate or even pee upon another man —WITH the police present.
I was in medical practice in 1981 when the first reports of “gay men’s disease” appeared in the CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).
The reports had detailed sexual histories of gay men who had developed a rare form of cancer called Kaposi’s Sarcoma. These histories recounted how these turd burglars would frequent “bath houses” in NYC, Frisco, and LA where they would have anonymous anal and oral sex with up to 60 “partners” each visit.
Most of them had extensive histories of other communicable diseases including hepatitis, genital herpes, gonorrhea, syphillis, etc. In other words, the creme-de-la-creme of “gay” society.
Is it any wonder then that their immune systems were toast and they contracted “gay men’s disease”?
It wasn’t too long before the human immunodeficiency virus was awarded civil rights by the CDC and no more sexual histories were reported. This violated every tenet of established public health procedures but it was just way too politically inconvenient to continue reporting stories that would gag a maggot.
Look at the bright side - AIDS is a debilitating disease and the people who die of it are essentially skeletons by the time they assume room temperature. No obesity there.
Isn’t political correctness grand?