Living With Herpes For A Month

Blackball Bill12 years ago

It was just like any other morning. I woke up hungover after a long night of barhopping, stumbled to the toilet in a daze, steadied myself on the wall with one arm, and unleashed a thick, multi-streamed waterfall of toxins into the porcelain bowl. Around twenty seconds in, I decided to stop splattering the seat and take aim, so I reached down and grabbed hold of my flesh hose. That’s when I felt something that would turn my whole world upside down.

My brain took a few seconds to process the information it was receiving before sounding the alarm. It was a solitary red bump, a little smaller than a dime in diameter, located squarely in the middle of my shaft.

You fucking idiot. You finally got a fucking STD. Fuck you.

I stood in shock with my dick in my quivering hand, staring down at the mystery bump as I raced through a list of possible excuses for its appearance.

That one time when I was little an ant bit the tip of my dick while I was swimming at my grandparents’ house. This is probably just an ant bite. Right? It’s just a fucking bug bite. That’s all.

Ignoring it and convincing myself it would go away was easy at first, because I lived above one of the most popular bars in our college town. I proceeded to walk downstairs every night and drink myself retarded, praying that alcohol would cure me. Every morning when I woke up the first thing I would do was check the status of my manhood, but it never got better. In fact, day-by-day, the bump grew, until finally my worst nightmare became a reality. It was spreading.

Before long my entire sack was covered in little red bumps, and to make matters worse, they itched like fucking hell. It got to the point where I had to drink heavily just to fall asleep. On top of all that, I had just acquired a new female friend who I definitely did not want gripping my dick in its blemished state. When she spent the night we’d make out for a few minutes until I could tell things were getting heated, and then, to avoid her discovering the monster I had become, I would roll over and pass out.

After a full week of blacking out to avoid the inevitable, I finally decided to call my parents. I was tearing up like a little bitch as I explained to my dad that I had ruined my life by letting some unknown skank infect my penis.

“It’s really fucking bad, Dad. It looks like I stuck my dick in an anthill. It itches, and it’s getting worse.”

“Why don’t you go to the student health center?” he asked, like it wasn’t a big deal.

“Because they falsely diagnose people with AIDS. They’re hacks that couldn’t cut it as real doctors. You don’t understand, Dad. This is really, really fucking bad.”

“Well, then come home and see your doctor here,” he said. “Letting it go untreated, regardless of how much of a pussy you are, is not the right course of action.”

I considered just partying until I died of alcohol poisoning, and going out on top without anyone but the coroner and my parents knowing that I was a mutated freak of sexual irresponsibility, but instead I called my general practitioner and scheduled an appointment. The phone conversation with the nurse, who I assume was a smoking hot 10, was incredibly awkward.

“What’s the reason for your visit?”

“I have itchy red bumps all over my balls and dick, errr—genital area.”

“You disgust me, man whore.” I know that’s what she wanted to say.

The following weekend, after six more days of constantly worsening conditions, I told my roommate I was going to visit my family and made the two-and-a-half hour drive home. I took a full Xanax before walking into my doctor’s office, explained the situation to him, and dropped my shorts.

“Well that’s herpes,” he said without hesitation.

My stomach didn’t even churn. I had already accepted my fate. My life was over, and I would never ride the magical train to pound town ever again.

“Let’s do a swab test to make sure,” said the doctor, “but I want you to take a cycle of Valtrex anyway, especially because the test regularly comes back negative when, in fact, the patient does have herpes.”

He rubbed a Q-tip all over my dick and sent me on my way with a prescription for Valtrex.

I didn’t even stop to see my parents. I drove straight back to school and walked right back into the bar. Another week passed as I drunkenly researched how to date with herpes, even checking out online dating sites for people suffering from my condition. One night I scrolled through old Facebook pictures of myself, longing for the life of nonstop sex without consequence that I used to know. I took down my huge Valtrex pill every day, but after a week the disease hadn’t faded at all. It was still getting worse. Then one day, the call from my doctor came.

“Your test results came back negative, but as I said, they regularly do. We need to treat this like you’ve got herpes, because I’m almost certain that you do.”

Mentally, I was approaching the fucking edge. Fleeting suicidal thoughts spiraled through my mind late at night as I chain smoked cigarettes and tried to decide how to tell the girl, who was now regularly spending the night and probably wondering if I was gay, that I was damaged goods.

I had to let it out. I had to tell someone. After a whiskey-fueled conversation with one of my best friends, where he sat in shock as I explained that I had the herp and was going to die, he insisted I call each of the less-than-respectable females I had recently hooked up with. I made three phone calls, explaining in each one that I probably had something, while being as vague as possible and telling them to go get tested. Their reactions varied from extreme anger to shock and denial.

A full month after my sexual 9/11, I finally decided to visit the student health center for something to help me sleep, as I could no longer go on boozing nonstop and slipping further into depression. The doctor, who, I shit you not, had a lazy fucking eye, asked if he could examine my obliterated groin area. I obliged, robbed of all dignity. He took one look at my junk with his good eye through a giant doctor’s magnifying glass, stepped back, and said, “That’s the worst case of untreated scabies I’ve ever seen.”

“Yeah, I know herp—wait what?”

“Scabies.”

“What the fuck is scabies? Am I going to lose my dick, doctor?”

He brought over a medical book with dozens of pictures of penises and scrotums that looked just like mine.

“See, it’s scabies,” he said. “They’re little bugs that lay eggs in the dark, moist crevasses of your body, spread if untreated, and continue to reproduce. I’m going to prescribe you the insecticide cream that kills them off within a few days.”

I hugged my lazy-eyed savior and sprinted to my car, clutching my prescription with a joy in my heart that has yet to be replicated by any event in my life. It will probably take me laying eyes on my firstborn son’s untarnished testicles to recreate the sheer bliss that flowed through my veins as I sped to the frat house, ignoring the speed limit and running stop signs with my head hanging out the window. I continued drinking every night in celebration, shamefully explained everything to the new female friend four days later when the evil fucking bugs finally died off, and drunkenly told every person I saw “I don’t have herpes!” Most of them just nodded and walked away.

In the end, it turned out I got the torturous skin infection from stomping around in mud at a rainy music festival. That’s what I get for rubbing shoulders with hippies. I seriously considered suing my doctor back home for malpractice, due to the fact that I was suicidal for a full fucking month before getting proper treatment from a student health center “doctor” with a lazy fucking eye, but in the end I just decided to move on with my life. Two years have passed, but not a day goes by that I don’t thank God for giving me back my dick and balls.

Stay safe out there. Or don’t, whatever. There’s always PositiveSingles.com.