No, I don't mean HIV. This summer I got the first sexually transmitted-disease of my life. I first noticed it after getting back from my week in Denmark. My tactic for dealing with jetlag while making the most of a short stay 9 hours away from my normal time zone was to force myself to stay up non-stop through the flight and then some. Going over I was up for forty hours straight until collapsing in a heap at 10pm Denmark time. Coming back I did the same trick, staying up for thirty-five straight hours. The next morning, I was toweling myself off after a shower and noticed a bunch of little pimples in my crotch. Uh oh, that's new.
I'm usually pretty conservative when it comes to sleeping with people. I've only had sex with twelve people in my life, and am typically diligent about condom use and avoiding hooking up with random strangers. The few one-nighters that have escalated all the way to sex have almost always been with someone that I knew in some capacity or another. I've never gone out and met someone totally new at a bar and then brought them home for a hump and an awkward breakfast. So rightly or wrongly, I've always felt a subconscious barrier between me and STD's. Like listening to my married friends talk about mortgages and interest rates, they just weren't something that seemed demographically applicable to me.
Whoops.
After consulting with the doctor I learned that I had something called molloscum contagiosum, an innocuous skin infection that doesn't have any major complications and usually heals itself if left untreated. Treatment isn't necessary but I got to go to the dermatologist anyway to get a dose of punctures, scrapes, and cauterizing. Walking out of the doctor's office I felt both relieved and ashamed. I had subconsciously shifted demographic pools. I'm in the ho category now. Every questionnaire I fill out for the rest of my life will have to have the man-ho box checked with a big red X.
The next queasy task at hand was calling the two people I had to inform of my trollop-itis. If ever there is a moment to put your tail between your legs it's calling someone you've hooked up with a month or two after the fact and telling them you've got an STD. I felt three inches tall, with thimble-sized lungs incapable of holding in enough air, trying to explain what this daunting Latinate malaise was. Imagine answering your phone on a Thursday morning at work and being told that you could have something in the "contagiosum" family. How are you even supposed to broach the subject? Hey there, I know we haven't spoken in five or six weeks but I think you gave me crotch pimples maybe. And if not, then I might have given them to you. See you around.
After the queasiness wore off, the whole thing started to seem absurd. A fair majority of my friends have had an STD in some capacity or another. Warts, herpes, gonorrhea, even HIV. Before, I had listened to them recount all the reckless stories of how they came to expose themselves to these lurid little stocking stuffers with prurient glee. I realize it's entirely perverse, but I felt I had achieved a new kind of closeness with them. It felt like I had lettered in STD's and I could jockishly strut around the hallways high-five'ing my pals on game day. This was all the more entertaining because, of all the STD's to catch, it seemed like I had gotten off with only the lightest of metaphysical reprieves.
A couple of months later, my STD was dwindling but not entirely eradicated which led me to get my T-cells tested. Of course my T-Cells were low and this was the genesis of my recent HIV scare (molloscum can be a common indicator of HIV infection, and coupled with a low T-Cell count it's a very strong indicator, hence my mortification).
It's strange to imagine all the life-altering potential in sex. From pregnancy to death, there's an amazing spectrum of major changes that can come out of it. There's the great absurdity in it, the huge chasm between what it feels like inside and what is actually going on outside.
I always wonder what some of my most intense sexual experiences would look like on tape. They would be ridiculously comic, like some gangly documentary on the mating habits of spider monkeys. It's mind-boggling to reconcile the mechanics of hip thrusting and bodily fluid exchange with the genuine intimacies at the heart of lovemaking. It's like a really bad joke in which our bodies are always the punchlines. That's why I find it so disconcerting to see all those hyper-real images of sex and seduction everywhere. It's like advertising DSL service with lots of soft focus pictures of fiber optic cables; as if the vessel had anything to do with the experience contained within.
It's easy to become hypnotized with sexuality. It feels great, and we're surrounded on all sides by pressures that encourage us to go out and hump one another like some surrogate form of retail therapy. And then there's the hormonal urgency of nature. If there is a god, I imagine it watching us conduct our sexual lives is its version of watching clips on YouTube. I can see god opening the link and watching with peels of laughter the clip where I get molloscum in some drunk and delusional state of ecstasy.
lol.
Previous Posts:
Sex Machine: There's a Possibility You've Been Infected With HIV
Love Machine: Let's Make Babies
Date Machine: Rate My Pick-Up Lines
Sex Machine: My Kingdom for a Boner
Date Machine: Don't Make Poopy in the Office
Hooksexup Confessions: Fat and Skinny, Ugly, Pretty
Crying In Public: Some Corner in Brooklyn
Dating the Web: Don't Google Fisting and Why Women Apologize So Much
Date Machine: The Woman in the Coffee Shop and The Woman at the Bus Stop
Love Machine: Your Mom Will Do
Date Machine: Scary Movies or I Peed My Pants
Date Machine: Rate My Ethics
Love Machine: Let's Just Be Friends
Love Machine: Must Be Willing to Lie About Where We Met
Sex Machine: Why Women Are Great In Bed
Sex Machine: Why Women Suck in Bed
Date Night: All By Myself on a Saturday Night
Sex Machine: Spank My Ass
Love Machine: Infidelity or How Long Can You Go Without Cheating?
Date Night: The 45-Minute Walkout
Date Night Redux: H's Version of Our Night Out
Celebrity Confession: Who is Lauren Cohan and Why is She Hitting on Me?
Sex Machine: My First Muff Dive
Crying in Public: Remember the Cheerleaders
Sex Machine: Masturbating Upside Down
Date Night: Two Women in One Night
Hooksexup Confessions: Rate My Penis Size
Crying In Public: The Sichuan Night Train
Love machine: How I Date On The Internet
Sex Machine: Rate My Blowjobs
Crying in Public: My Cubicle