While It May Appear That I Have Herpes, I Swear It’s Just A Tennis Injury

A Broad a semester7 years ago

Well, the worst has finally happened. Everyone around me thinks I have herpes.

Some things in life are too hard to believe. Like when Tommy lost his virginity during spring break to the girl that “goes to a different school” or that this thing on my lip is a self-inflicted tennis injury and not a newly acquired incurable disease.

The story is pretty simple — I agreed to play tennis with a group of people because I’m an athletic dynamo, and I struck my own lip with the racket. How did I manage that? I didn’t whiff, I can’t whiff, I’m a god damn super athlete. I actually swung too hard, straight through the ball, and Isaac Newton’s absurd laws caused me to keep spinning and eventually wrap the racket back into my own face. It seems that I’ve finally proven to be too strong for my own good, and the consequences have been dire.

I am no med student, but somewhere down the line someone should have taught me that you can bruise your lip. I don’t mean that I bruised the area around my mouth, or that I split my lip open. I mean exactly what I said, my upper lip has a purple bruise on it. Nothing appeared immediately but I awoke the next morning to find this bruise and crack running through it.

My initial hope was that no one would make a big deal about it. But apparently all those years of keeping the money my dad gave me to put into the church offering tray have finally caught up with me. Everywhere I go I see the stares. I notice people noticing me. Their eyes shoot straight to my lip and the whispers follow me around, haunting my every move. I can’t even walk into the dining hall without feeling like a leper.

But like a naïve little boy I brought up the issue to my “friends.” I confessed my fears to them, expecting their response to be something along the lines of a paranoia diagnosis. No such luck. They thought it was absolutely hilarious. And now they’re telling everyone that I have herpes. THAT’S NOT A GREAT REPUTATION TO HAVE. This gossip has burned through my campus like a wildfire through the arid terrain of California.

To say that this is a massive problem is the understatement of my life. I remember when we found out that Jamie K had chlamydia freshmen year and to this day people still say, “Jamie K has chlamydia.” That shit is so fucking curable yet that reputation has stuck with her for years. It looks like I have a lifelong disease, and no one wants to believe my tennis tale. It probably doesn’t help that I’ve never been seen playing tennis before or since the incident.

I’ll be the one to say it. I’ll be the hero Gotham needs right now. Looking like you have herpes is worse than actually having herpes. I didn’t initially feel justified staying hidden because I don’t have an actual ailment, so people got to see it. I didn’t acquire this from sex, so no, it wasn’t worth it. Which means I didn’t get it from a girl so I’m not the victim in all of this. Plus, like, if you actually have herpes then, whatever, you’re gross. Don’t drag me into your camp.

Maybe this column should serve as my official retirement from date functions, because those are off the table now. Maybe I’ll get a Juul because no one is going to want to use mine ever. But as soon as this thing goes away I’ll be back on the campaign trail, giving speeches and convincing the common man that I’m just like them. Herpes free.This is an athletic injury, much like a linebacker blowing out his ACL. Seriously though, guys, I don’t have herpes.

I do have HPV, though. We all have HPV..