badinfluencegirl

you know how things come up in circles?

like you’re talking about something with one person and then it comes up with that person and that other person and someone totally unconnected and there it is on that blog and…

yeah so that’s been happening lately about this one particular topic that’s been bugging me for a while and i’ve decided to talk about it.

i, in case you don’t know, have herpes.

it was given to me by someone who i choose to believe was unaware and i had been celibate for a few months when it was diagnosed so i’ve never really had any idea who i got it from. i had been relatively kosher with my condom use to that point and had not had a particularly large amount of sex. in fact i would say that i was still in the five partner range and that i really could not have told you who i got it from.

they surmise that it was my second outbreak you see. the first one could have been anytime before that… so yeah. no idea.

anyway i got herpes. a while later i found that i had warts which caused my friend jen to comment that i had the least amount of sex to the hugest amount of bad luck of anyone she’d ever known, and she was right.

so i have now had two (still have one of them) sexually transmitted diseases of unknown origin. if i didn’t know better i would be convinced that i’m a slut. well okay i have tried to be a slut but it didn’t take.

my current lover has had none. lucky fuck. [although an ex had a single type-one (oral) herpes outbreak (on her genitals) early in their relationship.]

he has also had partners more recently than i and entered into our sexual relationship untested. there wasn’t any point testing him for hiv because it hadn’t been three months and really, everything else is curable or i have it already.

not to mention that we use condoms.

but still, i wanted him to get those tests. i wanted him to go to the doctor and get a needle and pee in a jar or whatever men have to do and i wanted his doctor to say ‘no worries mate, you’re clean.’

and he kept promising to do it.

and then not doing it. and i got madder and madder about it and i kept talking about it and finally things came to a head and i told him that i was incredibly upset and that i didn’t feel safe and that i didn’t want to yell but yelling was becoming necessary and that if he hadn’t gotten tested in a very short while i was going to have to stop sleeping with him.

something that i said got his attention (before the mention of no sex by the way) and he started to understand how upset i was and he then decided to deal with it. and he has since been to the doctor (and by since i mean the closest following business day.)

and this brought a lot of stuff surging to the fore in both of our minds.

he admitted that he had been stalling because he didn’t want to go bareback even if i had my period because he was afraid to get me pregnant. i admitted that i was starting to wonder what dread disease or whatever he was hiding from me.

i have to be extra paranoid about std’s you see, herpes exacerbates the risk factors because it creates sores that you can be unaware of. haven’t had such sores myself i think but hey, who can say.

he has to be extra paranoid about kids because i want one. in fact i plan to have at least one pretty soon… have a sperm donor lined up and childcare help to boot. was basically planning to start trying in the spring and then i met him. he’s never been with someone who would have actually had the kid… who wasn’t prepared not to have it.

what’s more interesting to me is the way something (getting an std test) turned into a symbol of something else. a way of protesting a thing that you didn’t even quite realize you weren’t ready for. or a way of projecting past bad luck.

i mean i was almost convinced that he had something dread because he wouldn’t do it. and there i was getting more and more worked up and scared because well, sex play is not safe. even with condoms it just isn’t.

mouths touch, teeth clash, fingernails catch, skin pinches, mucus membranes touch, bodily fluids mix. it’s messy and it isn’t safe or tidy or clean even if you use rubbers.

what’s even neater here is how we actually didn’t lie to each other about it. we talked about what was actually bugging us and then he dealt with the lack of testing problem and we’ve agreed not to shag bareback even if i have my period.

problem solved. well except that i’m a little less horny right now. i think it’s holiday and lack of sleep related but i’m sure the back of my brain std itch isn’t helping.

it bugs me that people in situations like these decide that lying about it is the better way. that maybe making up some spurious excuse or pretending it isn’t a problem or saying you’ll deal and then not or even trying to make it someone else’s problem instead is better than telling the truth.

it bugs me that people consider this a better answer than telling the truth. information is power. knowledge is prevention. honesty is how we keep each other safe.

i wonder sometimes who gave me herpes. i wonder who it was and if he knows now or knew then… and i wonder if he decided not to mention it.

decided that it just didn’t matter. who cares right? i was only a good time girl after all. i wonder i really do.

i choose to believe that they didn’t know.