You can probably tell by now that we love trolling Craigslist missed connections. We stopped hoping to find ourselves after about two years, but the habit of looking at the end of the day never really left us. Good thing, because sometimes we come across a gem like this that we just have to share, in full, with you.
I had bedbugs, you had herpes - m4w - 29
I wish I had that converstation [sic] to do over again. We met at Boulevard Tavern and both had a little too much to drink. After talking about bands, we began discussing "deal breakers". It just so happened that this was a day or so after I awoke with what felt like mosquito bites on my arms and shoulders, and I told you that I thought those might be bedbug bits [sic]. You told me that you would never sleep in a bed that had bedbugs or with a man who had ever slept with bedbugs and I, offended, told you that I would never sleep with a woman who had ever had an outbreak of herpes. Then you stalked off, leaving me with my PBR to wonder how an evening that began with such promise could end so badly.
OK, first of all, I got rid of most of my bedding, washed the rest in very hot water, encased the mattresses in vinyl encasements, and brought in an exterminator. He is convinced from the pattern and number of bites that it was a SPIDER that got me, not bedbugs. It's been six days since I last got bit, and if there were bedbugs there, I'd have been bitten every night since. Didn't happen, so maybe it was a spider or a mosquito. No matter, the place has been cleaned and sprayed, so there is less chance of bedbugs here than wherever else you might choose to end up. As far as the herpes crack goes, I don't know if you have it or not, but I use condoms, and you could use valtrex, so why should this stop us? I felt a connection with you, a real one, a surprising one. It isn't often that a man like me, living in SoHo with all those pretentious artist types, managing a mutual fund, gets to meet a girl with your look and sensitivities. I think there is something there between us worth pursuing, and we should not let the false possibility of bedbugs or blisters get between us. Write back. I want a mulligan.
We don't know what it's like to have Herpes, but we imagine it might make the whole first-time-with-a-new-guy thing pretty difficult. However, we do know what it's like to have bedbugs and while there are some factual errors in his statement (just because you have bedbugs doesn't mean they'll bite every night; they can live up to 18 months without "feeding") this dude is trying. Hard. Maybe too hard? Either way, we're starting to think that when it comes to going home with somebody new -- at least in New York -- people are more afraid of bedbugs than STDs.
Also, we had to look up "mulligan."