If S.T.D.s Were People, I’d Be China

I know what you are thinking to yourself: “How could you be so disease-ridden?” Well, I’m not even sure when it all started. I have always had a weakness for flesh. At the age of three, I groped my babysitter. By six, I was a fully developed sexual being, self-pleasuring as many a six times a day. At nine, I had my first ménage à trois. The girls were lovely. One was a graduate student at the University of Dayton focusing on Family Planning (the irony of that situation is not lost on me) and the other was a friend of my mother’s who was recently divorced and the beneficiary of a large settlement. She was a handsome woman and I was drawn in by her wiles. She was slightly hunched from osteoporosis, but this did not deter me.

I have a voracious sexual appetite and have been with more than my fair share of women. Don Giovanni? Wilt Chamberlain? Leon Phelps, the Ladies Man? Charlatans. All impressive womanizers but they do not hold a flame to me. My black book is the size of the Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary. My Saturday nights are one sordid rendezvous after another. My life is a tale told by Larry Flynt, full of sex and fellatio, signifying masculinity in its truest form.
The ability to charm women so effortlessly is a gift, but one that comes with a price. You see, if sexually transmitted diseases were people, I would be China.

You name the disease, I have contracted it. I have visited the Mayo Clinic numerous times. They keep a room for me, in the north wing, on a high floor. The window faces north-northwest. On my most recent visit, they conducted exhaustive blood work. I have several S.T.D.s that have not yet been named. They have been so kind as to name one after me: Penile Pierrety.

My dear Gonorrhea—contracted, treated, and cured upwards of 50 times—you have returned at last. Your source, a passionate fling with a woman in the broom closet at the McDonald’s on 91st Street and Columbus Ave. The mop, the broom, and the cleaning fluid helped us perform, and Gonorrhea, you became part of me. Oh, the times we’ve had, Gonorrhea.

Herpes, you’ve never left me. Like the memory of intimate encounters past, you stay with me forever. You joined forces with me after a delicate encounter with a social worker in Cabo San Lucas. The warm breeze of the Pacific Ocean, the gentle caress of a young woman’s touch, the burning sensation when I pee. I have such fond memories, Herpes.

Syphilis, dear friend, I have not seen you for some time. We last met after a chance encounter with a dancer on the cruise ship Carnival. I let you advance to your second stage that time and in my feverish delirium, I envisaged colored horses galloping around my home. And it was good. And so you have returned, syphilis, though not as advanced as you once were. You are now being treated and cured by the good doctors here in Rochester, MN.

Chlamydia, how I have missed you! You have visited me often over the years. Remember when I met that middle-aged hobo woman while riding the boxcars from Baltimore to St. Louie. You hopped onto my genitals and into my bloodstream. You were flushed out of my blood by a kindly medic in Kansas City, only to return two weeks later in a similar incident with a similar looking hobo woman. We’ve had some laughs and then some, Chlamydia.

Bacterial Vaginosis, I’m not even a woman. But somehow, you managed to latch onto my T-cells and cruise along for the ride. Crabs, Genital warts. You were far more frequent visitors but no less loved or appreciated. Familiarity has not bred the symbiosis out of our relationship.

You will all be banished from my corpus once again by the good men and women of the Mayo Clinic. We will, no doubt, meet again.