Those Who Get STDs Together Stay Together?

I’ve been doing stand up and, naturally, my set leans heavily on sex and feminism. The first couple times I got onstage at open mics, I was compared to Eve Ensler—something I would usually take as a compliment, but somehow felt like an insult when the audience consisted of a bunch of dudes. The MC at one mic commented after my set, “What a nice, romantic story. Very Nicholas Sparks.” He was joking of course. I had just finished telling the crowd about my date with the self-proclaimed “female orgasm expert” with whom I had some of the most mediocre sex of my life in the back of his roommate’s van behind the Urth Cafe. I ended the story with, “Spoiler alert: I didn’t climax. But he sure did. Because, you know, he’s a man.” I guess the MC was implying that, because I think some guys are both bad and arrogant lovers, I’m not a romantic. I guess I come off as cynical. Have I become irreversibly jaded about men?

I had just started seeing someone whom I had known, as casual friends, for a long time. We had sex without a condom, so in my usual post-coital panic attack, I immediately went to get tested. The problem with me is that I’m a hypochondriac but I’m also bad at using condoms, so I get tested a lot. On Saturday afternoon, after returning home from hiking and brunching with a friend, I received in my email inbox the results of some of the previous week’s tests. It said I had tested positive for syphilis. I had been tested since my last unprotected sexual encounter and hadn’t had sex with anyone since this new guy, so I was pretty convinced he was the one who’d given it to me. 

Syphilis sounded to me like some pretty medieval shit, so I started looking up the symptoms online (mistake). What would initially start as sores and a rash on your genitals and the inside of your palms could, down the road, turn into blindness, insanity and death. I discovered that syphilis is rampant and has become a national health crisis due to budget cuts to STD prevention clinics. 

I considered not telling the guy right away, as I knew he was on his way to spend the weekend at a music festival. Part of me didn’t want to ruin his weekend, but the bigger part of me thought that if I had to suffer with this news, then so should he. He was appropriately embarrassed and apologetic when I called to tell him. He contacted the last girl he’d had unprotected sex with only to find out she had also tested positive for syphilis after they’d been together and hadn’t told him. He offered to leave the festival to come be with me, but the clinic was closed for the weekend and there was nothing for us to do but wait, so I told him it was fine, to try to forget about it and enjoy the festival. Meanwhile, I agonized, my imagination spinning so far out of control that I got online and searched, “if I have syphilis, do I have HIV,” which autofilled immediately in the Google search bar, telling me I was not alone in my irrational fear.

Finally, on Monday, we both made appointments to get treated on Wednesday. As I was leaving for my appointment, I received on my doorstep a lovely bouquet of wild flowers from the guy.

At the clinic, they took my blood again and I was called in to see the counselor. She informed me that I was the first ever cisgendered, heterosexual woman to ever test positive at their clinic. "Can I get a medal for that?" I joked. Then I got called in to see the doctor who said that syphilis infections were up 400% in Los Angeles that month. Then he told me that I didn’t have syphilis, it was a false positive. The guy also tested negative, he too didn’t have syphilis. Turned out the girl he'd fucked before me had gotten it from the next dude she'd been with after him. He was enormously relieved and immediately his whole demeanor changed. He felt understandably let off the hook, and wanted to celebrate. I was also relieved, but still felt emotionally hung over from four days of escalating fear and paranoia, and was slightly annoyed at how quickly he was able to bounce back. I was headed to The Comedy Store to see a friend perform, so we went to Saddle Ranch for (gross) burgers, and when he didn’t offer to pay the bill I became irrationally angry and disappointed. I felt emotionally raw and in that moment like I wanted to feel taken care of. It's the oldest story in the book, but I just wanted him to read my mind and know intuitively what I needed. We usually split the bill—which was fine, I’m a modern woman, whatever—but I felt like after this scare he should've at least offered to pay for dinner.

I didn’t like this version of myself. I had been single for five years, I was used to taking care of myself, codependence made me sick, and I didn’t like feeling like I was relying on someone else. My sudden unexplained grumpiness caused him to leave rather than come to the show with me. I texted him afterwards that I was upset that he hadn’t offered to pay after this whole ordeal. He said he thought I should have bought him dinner as he felt I had been really harsh with him over this syphilis scare and then I hadn’t apologized enough when it turned out he hadn’t given it to me after all. Maybe he was right, I didn't know. All I knew was that I hated this kind of lovers’ quarrel; I had successfully avoided it for so long. Was I really going to morph into this needy person when I liked myself so much more as a single woman not reliant on anybody else? On the phone the next morning, in a moment of impulsive frustration, I said that I thought this wasn’t going to work between us. I felt that my heart had hardened—did I even believe in relationships anymore?

Getting an STD with someone is traumatizing, and it can bring out the worst in people. Sometimes this makes a relationship stronger, and sometimes it tears you apart. Although it turned out we didn't have syphilis after all, I think the whole ordeal made us realize we didn't like each other that much in a crisis. Perhaps he saw it coming. When we first found out we didn’t actually have syphilis, he jokingly asked if I was disappointed that now I didn’t have a legitimate reason to break up with him. I laughed and rolled my eyes, saying that no, I was happy to not have it. But I did wonder what made him ask that—was he reading something into my behavior that even I wasn’t aware of? Was I really trying to sabotage this? Why? Was I protecting myself? From what? What I liked most about this guy was the lack of games, his openness about the fact that he liked me, that I never felt like I had to play it cool. He always texted back, he appreciated my jokes, and—perhaps most importantly—he wasn’t afraid of my angry feminism or my history of sluttery—both things I talked about with abandon on our very first date. Perhaps more than any guy I’ve dated since my ex, he seemed completely undeterred by my brashness. I didn’t have to pretend to be demure around him, I could say things like, “are you having a stroke?” when he couldn’t remember something I said, and he didn’t get offended. Throughout the syphilis scare, I realized I wasn’t just worried about my own health, I was also worried about his—and that felt like something new.

Just before I reconnected with this guy, I'd said to a couple friends in all seriousness that maybe I was just going to be single forever, and that was okay. I liked myself single, I had forged a whole identity around being an unattached woman. I didn’t know what me in a relationship looked like anymore. And I was scared of how being “coupled” might change me for the worse. I didn’t ever want to be in a codependent situation again, it was important to me that I maintained my autonomy. Was that even possible in a relationship? I didn’t know. A lot of the women I admired were single. Was that a coincidence or was there a reason? Was there something in me that wasn’t meant to be inextricably linked to another person? And was this view somehow limiting me from experiencing something potentially great? Could a relationship ever be something that actually fed me emotionally and creatively rather than distracting me from my life and my purpose? I decided that, for a relationship to be worth it, I'd have to like being with this person better than being by myself. Because being by myself was actually pretty good. 

High School Lover

I conduct myself like a grown ass woman should, in most areas of my life. I haven’t asked my parents for money in over a year, I live in a nice house, I’ve got my own health insurance. Pretty adult-like I’d say. Except in my “love life” apparently I’m still in high school. Literally. I’m sleeping with a guy I had a crush on in high school. Although I consider myself a grown ass woman, apparently I’m still attracted to the same boys I was attracted to as a teenage girl.

The last time I saw High School Guy was seven years ago when I was visiting my best friend Sadie at her college in Rhode Island and we spent one night in Boston where, on a rebound from a recent breakup with my first boyfriend, I ditched her and went home with him. That night, he became the second guy I’d ever slept with, after my four year relationship that took me from high school to college finally ended. Now, seven years later, Sadie and I are home for the holidays and I run into him again, this time at the local bar that serves as an unofficial reunion spot for our high school.

The circumstances are oddly reminiscent of that first night in Boston. Again, I’m with Sadie and we’re both single and aggressively on the prowl. High School Guy shows up and we’re immediately drawn to one another and basically don’t leave each other’s side for the rest of the night. We get drunk and go outside to make out in the cold. He tells me to come back to his place. I feel like I shouldn’t ditch Sadie. I tell her we’ll be back in “five minutes,” which is an unintentional lie. Neither of us has condoms, so he has to pick some up at 7 Eleven. In Boston seven years ago we took a cab to his apartment. In Northern California seven years later, it’s an Uber back to his parents’ house. I seem to remember that seven years ago we were better about using the condoms. This time, he says he wants to come inside me and I let him (I know). Both times, he wants to have sex three times in a row, I come once, and very early the next morning he takes me to meet Sadie and we’re both exhausted and she’s vaguely angry about my ditching her.

High School Guy and I establish that we’ve both lived on the east side of Los Angeles for the past seven years. We make a plan to meet up when we’re back in the city. And we do. I hit him up the weekend after New Year’s and suggest we see a movie. He suggests watching something at his place—I’m fine with this, I’m still exhausted from New Year’s. He texts me that if I haven’t had dinner we could “make something together.” I think this sounds very sweet and date-like. But I've already eaten. I show up and parking is a nightmare in his neighborhood. It’s raining and he doesn’t have a parking pass so I have to circle the block, bypassing the restricted parking signs that are everywhere. When I finally get to his place, he opens the door wearing sweats and his eyes are incredibly bloodshot. He tells me he just smoked and is “very stoned.” I don’t have a big problem with this, I know he’s a stoner and we’ve smoked together before. But I find myself surprised as always by these guys who invite a girl over and then make no effort at all to even like put on some real pants. As a girl preparing for a sex date, of course I showered, shaved, put on sexy underwear, artfully chose an outfit the right amount relaxed and suggestive. 

He’s apparently so stoned he’s not able to function at all, so I go get glasses out of the cupboard for the wine I brought.

“So, how were you planning on making dinner,” I joke. He’s sunken into the couch.

I start to peruse the options on Netflix. We settle on Kingpin, which I’ve never seen and he loves. We both love Woody Harrelson, and when I tell him that Woody is like my number one celebrity crush, he seems surprised and encouraged. I get the sense that he likes Woody because he relates to him: stoner, “bad boy” with a good heart, unconventionally attractive but with that charismatic sex appeal. In general, I start to get the sense that High School Guy doesn’t have very high self-esteem. Like he knows he’s stuck in the past but unable to escape it. It seems most of his friends are still guys from high school and I don’t know how that works seeing as most of them don’t live in LA. One of them is his roommate. His room is also a bit of a time capsule, filled with Superman and Spiderman posters, a lava lamp, a Playboy Bunny throw pillow on his bed. Walking in there with the intention of having sex, I suddenly feel like we’re back in high school again, except without all that giddy nervousness.

He is a very intimate, sensitive lover. He doesn’t want to take me from behind or come on my ass. He constantly wants to be face to face, he buries his head in my neck, he thrusts slowly and gently, he wants to come inside me again. As I prod him about the last time he got tested, he reveals that he’s only been with four people in the past seven years. He says he doesn’t like having sex with people he doesn’t know. He doesn’t ask me for my number. Gone is the callous, indignant “bad boy” I thought I knew in high school. As his face hovers inches from mine, I experience the familiar realization that sometimes it’s in the most intimate moments with someone that you suddenly recognize you don’t really know them at all. Again, he wants to have sex three times and I come once. The orgasm is very satisfying, as it tends to be with him, probably because he likes to thrust slowly and sensually rather than the ever-familiar jackrabbit pounding.

The next morning, he shares with me that he didn’t get to walk at our high school graduation because he failed math his senior year. This obviously had a big impact on his psyche, and I feel badly for him. We talk a lot about the guys we knew in high school—most of whom are still his best friends. We talk shit about them and I wonder if he even still likes these guys, or if he’s just settled into the fact that these are his “friends for life.” He tells me about several instances in high school where he and another kid both did something bad (like drag-racing in the middle of the day on one of the residential 30 mile per hour streets of our home town) and only he got in trouble for it. It seems this is a theme for him—getting himself into shit and then feeling like the consequences of his actions are unfair. I listen and nod, understanding but also not really. I wonder, as I often do after sex with the guys I tend to have sex with, what I’m doing here. What brought me back to the bed of this person I slept with seven years ago? Has my taste in men really not evolved at all in the past seven years?

The next week I go get tested, and I spend another week paranoid that I have HIV and/or a baby growing inside me. My period is a day late which sends me into a tailspin of fear and paranoia. I’m on the pill, but I remember after having sex with High School Guy over the holidays, I had been a little late with my first pill of the new cycle, which is a bad one to miss. I finally get my period and breathe a sigh of relief. I think maybe it’s time to be more of a grown up in my sex life. To stop “playing Russian roulette with my vagina,” to paraphrase Jenny Slate’s knocked up character in Obvious Child. I’m tired of going to get tested every time I don’t enforce condom use with a partner. I’m tired of the fear of getting those results. When I was younger, I was so nonchalant about unprotected sex, but now every time I do it my imagination runs wild and that fleeting enjoyment of sex without a condom is simply not worth the stress that follows.

I might see High School Guy again. I don’t know. But I think I’m ready to attract something different. I’m ready to attract a grown ass man. Someone who enforces his own condom usage because he doesn’t want to get a girl pregnant when she has the sole responsibility of choosing to keep it or not, and therefore the power to change the course of his life forever. Someone who is not so flippant with his life decisions. So I don’t have to be the only one making the responsible choice and then feeling bad about myself when I alone fail to do that. I think a grown ass man would be good for me. I think I’m finally ready to graduate.