How one doctor’s appointment felt like a life sentence for one writer.
I never appreciated sex as much as when I stopped having it.
And while I can say I stopped voluntarily, I don’t want to fool you into thinking it was the kind of voluntary that comes from some deepseated search for truth and light and a monastic existence.
No. I stopped because of the STD.
It wasn’t the first STD I had. The first one had been a momentary blip on my panic radar.
Something my dermatologist eased my fears about by saying, listen if you have to get one, this is the one to get. It’s easily curable.
The second one however, was entirely different.
I have always loved doctors’ temperate nature, their calm demeanor makes scary things feel less so. However, doctors are not therapists and when things aren’t easily curable the words of doctors feel like bandaids that don’t stay on, not even for a second.
Like those of my physician: It’s viral, but it’s pretty common. Most of the population has it. In fact most of the people who have it never even know about it. You’ll always carry the virus but your body clears out the physical signs in about one to two years.
It only helped partially rationalize it for me. Unfortunately even though most of the population had it, only 1% of the population got the physical manifestation of it that I got.
It was not the 1% I was looking to be a part of.
◊♦◊
Most of the time we don’t know who has STDs. The closequarters “who is sleeping with who” rumors of college mostly stop once you graduate. The large majority of us keep our baggage checked secretly away. We use STDs as slander against people we don’t like or have been wronged by. People with STDs are punchlines of jokes. People with STDs aren’t people we know or care about. They certainly aren’t ourselves.
I was devastated.
I became frustrated at how varied and incredibly inconsistent the research was. The more I read the more conflicting statistics I saw. I got angry at science for not knowing more. I realized how little we actually know about how our bodies work, why viruses happen, who they happen to, and in what frequency.
I went through months of sexual self-seclusion. My therapist encouraged me sex was not off the table but I was ashamed and embarrassed. Avoiding it altogether was easiest. While I had been forced to accept my new reality, I certainly would not make more efforts to confront it.
One of the beautiful things about being in my 20s was the idea that anything could happen at anytime.
Honestly, I was probably never going to date a supermodel, join the milehigh club, or end up the focus of a threesome…
But those thing could have happened.
Suddenly none of those things would have been possible without a conversation I didn’t want to have.
◊♦◊
I got angry at myself. I thought about every girl I’d ever slept with. I wanted to assign blame.
I didn’t think I had defined myself entirely by my sexual stature, but I was shocked to realize how wrong I was. I didn’t recognize this person I had become. I felt tainted and subsequently castrated.
Things I loved doing made less sense if they wouldn’t end in sex.
I stopped drinking as much. I stopped being the last to leave parties.
I realized how much the possibility of female interaction determined my social plans.
I left bars early realizing that the only thing I really wanted was a good night’s sleep. I couldn’t bare holding on to this by myself anymore. Slowly I started telling people, a few close friends mainly. All of them were sympathetic. Nobody made me feel as cast out as I had made myself feel. And it felt good to share. I felt more accepted.
Most of my friends dismissed it as just something that happens to us which part of me appreciated.
But part of me was still angry; sure you say that but you aren’t the one dealing with it. You aren’t the one avoiding sex.
◊♦◊
Somehow I met a girl who happened to be accepting enough not to care. She was a colleague and after drunkenly making out on two separate occasions I decided to tell her.
It happened late one night over google chat. Not quite the face to face courage I would have hoped for myself, but it was all the courage I could muster.
After I had told her everything her response came instantly.
Thank you for telling me.
There’s not much to say.
It doesn’t change the fact that I am still wildly attracted to you.
It was overwhelming. Her openness and maturity baffled me.
I realized I might not have been as supportive had the tables been turned, and that depressed me. I felt disgusted in myself.
Not only was I casting myself aside, I was also finding out I was not as open as I thought I was. Not as secure in myself. The list went on.
It just so happened this girl also happened to be just young enough to have been vaccinated against what I had… against me. Something I was born too late to benefit from.
And so we dated.
Months would go by where I’d think I was in the clear, but every time I had to go back to the dermatologist for treatment I’d do it shaky voiced and ashamed.My girlfriend would comfort me. My doctor would play down the severity of it.
The sequence repeated itself over and over again.
I missed my ignorance. Desperately. I cried. I pitied myself. I got angry. So angry.
I called into question rock stars and celebrities. Surely they must have it too right? How could they not have? The odds must have made it so.
Why me?
The anger was always there.
◊♦◊
It has been almost 3 years now and a lot has changed.
I have had several new dermatologists, several new doctors and my girlfriend and I recently broke up.
But I still get mad. That much hasn’t changed.
I still get frustrated. I still isolate myself.
I try to look at it as some greater plan to protect me against some other horrible decision.
Like there is some greater plan for me.
But I’m not sure I believe any of it.
I do understand that having something does not make you that thing. But I understand it the same way I understand gravity, theoretically.
It feels impossible to deal with the idea that I carry this thing. Through nobody’s fault but my own I have felt like an outcast, a reject, an embarrassment, and most frighteningly but also hyperbolically, a weapon.
I’ll note that even as I write this, whenever I think about it, I feel bad for myself long enough for gratitude to eventually seep in. I’m not dying. I don’t have cancer. I am as healthy as I’ve ever been. All that’s changed is I am no longer allowed to be reckless with my body. But maybe what I want, what we all want, is not to be reckless but the always available opportunity to be reckless, the option, the possibility.
I know at some point, if I ever want to have sex again, I will have to have the conversation with a woman again. Maybe more than once if I’m lucky. It terrifies me. It preembarrasses me. I am afraid of being made fun of, of somebody freaking out, of having to be publicly, instantaneously embarrassed and ashamed in front of another person. In real life.
I wonder if I could handle that.
I meet women and think to myself, how would she react if I told her? Flirting, while exciting, quickly seems pointless. It causes my already existent anxiety to heat my body like a solar flare.
◊♦◊
When I was 25 I took a personal essay writing class. One week, a semihipster seeming girl who I might call a flibbertigibbet took a deep breath before announcing her piece:
So this is the Herpes story.
My mouth hung open. I had never heard such honesty from a stranger before. I remember wondering about her lifestyle and how she got it, what mistakes she had made. I remember when my turn came to give her feedback all I could say was how brave it was of her to write that.
Looking back, I feel more compassion for that girl than I possibly could have the day I heard her essay. I realize as I age that the greatest delusion we all suffer on a daily basis is that of control.
But I certainly don’t feel brave. I feel tired.
Tired of the endless inner monologue of panic and rationalization, of fear and embarrassment and the oppressive constant awareness of my situation.
Yes, we have input, we may even have influence, but there are so many more things that are beyond our control than we could possibly fathom. And on days when I’m feeling embarrassed, on days when I feel angry, and on days when I feel sad, I take comfort in that. That this could happen to anybody. That nobody really has any control. That the only way to prevent this would have been to live less of my life.
And that gives me solace even in something I haven’t come to fully understand or accept.
Even if perhaps, I never will.
Photo: Roxanna Salceda/Flickr
Thanks for writing this. More people need to know, especially high school and college kids who don’t wear condoms.
– Honestly, I was probably never going to date a supermodel, join the milehigh club, or end up the focus of a threesome… But those thing could have happened. – American men, so shallow and juvenile. Why they admit to it all the time but then right after that will still fake and lie that they don’t think women have more value (for sex, relationship, for being human, whatever) when they have the top, standard beauty is something I just don’t get. And yes, it could have happened that a couple of two guys called you to a threesome. Or… Read more »
Well done 🙂 A lovely, insightful story.
I would say you’re just as brave as she is…you’re telling your story…and by telling your story, you’re probably giving someone else the courage to tell theirs….I also don’t think we ever really accept the outcome of our mistakes…we have “I should have known better” playing in constant loop in our heads….but like you said – maybe this was supposed to happen to keep you from something worse…now you DO know better, so naturally you do better….