there in silence while I full on cackled.
The sounds of my laughter bounced around the sterile white room of the clinic. The paper I was sitting on crunched and the doctor, with his glasses low on his nose, stared at me.
“Are you okay?” he asked me. I’m sure he thought I was insane. That the sexually transmitted infection had reached my brain and was making me mad.
“Yeah, I’m okay,” I said calming myself down. “It’s just funny.”
“How so?” he asked and I started giggling again.
“Because I am the biggest prude you’ll probably ever meet. I don’t have sex for this exact reason! Because I am so terrified of something like this happening. And last month I was home alone and feeling a certain way, if you know what I mean,” I started to choke on my words. “And so I texted my ex-boyfriend. I picked him up in the middle of the night and we had sex in the back seat of my car in the middle of a Taco Bell parking lot.”
It felt good to get it out but now I was crying. Hysterically crying while this old doctor stared at me probably terrified of the mess that was unfolding in front of him.
“And he gave me fucking gonorrhea. I mean how random is that? The boy I was happily in love with and who broke my heart has gonorrhea and he gave it to me! I don’t know whose karma this is, his or mine, but it’s funny and sad and...” I had more to say but I was crying too hard to get it out.
“Right,” the doctor interjected. “Well, the treatment is really very easy. A nurse will be in soon to administer the shot to you and you’ll have ten days worth of antibiotics. And really, I hope you get past,” he moved his hand in a circle gesturing at all of me, "whatever all of this is.” And then he left.
A few days later and my symptoms were almost completely gone. I laid in bed on my day off, still unsure of how to tell David about it. Should I call him? Was a “Hey, you gave me gonorrhea” text good enough? Was it proper etiquette? I wasn’t sure what to do in this situation that I never thought I’d find myself in.
What if he knew and had already been to a doctor and wasn’t planning on telling me? Or what if he thought it was me that gave it to him?
Most likely, he didn’t know he had it at all. I knew very little about sexually transmitted infections, but what I do remember from that terribly awkward day of sexual education in middle school is that different people may have different symptoms, or maybe none at all.
My biggest fear was that he would tell me I must’ve gotten it somewhere else; that I probably was the one that gave it to him even though we both know that’s not true. Even he would know that whether he wanted to believe it or not. I am too emotional for random hook-ups with random strangers, and he knows it.
I sent him a text: Think you could stop by my apartment today?
He responded: I have to work in a few hours, but I’m free now.
And within ten minutes I was buzzing him into the apartment complex. Not enough time to decide exactly how to tell him, but I guessed I would have to play it by ear.
A knock on the door. A flail in my chest. How could I possibly tell him this? I opened the door and David embraced me. He slammed the door behind him, spun us both around, shoved me back up against it, and started to kiss me.
It felt good to be wanted like this by him again. I pulled his jacket off of him and his shirt next and my hands roamed his whole body before I remembered this isn’t why I invited him over today. This was actually the worst thing that could happen.
“David, we ca-“ I tried to get out but he interrupted my words with more kisses. He moved to my neck and I said, “David we can’t be doing this.”
“Why not?” he said into my neck. “Why are we doing this to ourselves? I miss you. I want to be with you.” He tugged at my shirt and I let him pull it off of me.
He was saying everything I wanted to hear. Everything I wanted to say. Why were we doing this? Why were we torturing ourselves by being apart.
“David, we just can’t do this right now,” I said as firmly as I could muster, even though he was on the sensitive spot where my neck merged with my chest at my collar bone.
“It sure seems like you’re enjoying yourself,” he said as he moved down further.
“I have gonorrhea,” I let out like a hiccup, and he stopped with his face frozen at my belt line.
Slowly, he got up from his knees so we were face to face.
“How long have you known?” He asked.
“A few days,” I said. “I got tested and treated and I’ll be okay by the end of the week.”
I saw his eyes doing the math in his head. From the time when we were still together to when we broke up. From when he slept with someone else and contracted the infection to the night when he passed it on to me.
“I knew I had it,” he said as he left me and went and sat down on the couch. His face in his hands.
“You knew?” I said. Any sympathy I had was gone, and honestly, I think I could have punched him in the dick for it.
“Yes, I knew but I thought it would be gone by the time I was with you again. I was tested and got the shot and that was at least ten days before we slept together. Anything less and I never would have considered it.”
The ticking of the clock on my living room wall seemed louder than normal. The only noise to put a break between my emotions and his. But honestly, I had no idea what I felt. Somewhere stuck between anger and understanding. I sat down next to him on the couch and put my arm around him.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I know you wouldn’t do anything to purposely hurt me.” He pulled his face from his hands and leaned into me, and I added, “But also, we both need to get our shit together.”
He nodded into my chest. We sat there cuddled on the couch, our arms and legs tangled. I tried to think of the last time I felt this good with David. And was there something wrong if it was a sexually transmitted infection that brought us back together?
“Did you really think I called you for a quickie?” I asked remembering how fast he jumped me when coming through the front door. David sat up and looked at me nervously. “It’s okay if that’s what you thought, but where does that leave us?”
He looked around the newly green room. “You painted,” he said, avoiding the question, which of course was an answer in itself.
“Yeah, it’s been a weird couple of months.”
“What was wrong with the blue?”
“It felt too sad. I was sad, and the room felt sad. And green felt,” I stopped to think of the right word. “I don’t know. Fresh? Like the beginning and not the end of something."
The room not only had a new color but was also rearranged and messier than normal. Sheets of work papers scattered heavily across the desk, a candle burnt passed its expiration, unfolded blankets on the floor around the couch.
“I’m sorry I gave you gonorrhea,”
