Big Whup

Photo of Michelle Cortez by Michelle Cortez

Oops, you got a little too drunk last night and you did it without a condom. It’s the end of the world, right? Now you’re pregnant with AIDS and you’re going to have festering sores on your body forever. Maybe you should go to the doctor now and start crying about what a stupid, disgusting slut you are. Or maybe you should just chill the fuck out because: Even if you got some (which you didn’t), STDs are no big deal. That’s right, outside of AIDS, pregnancy, and severe genital herpes, STDs are a laugh. Allow us to break it down for you.

AIDS
If you’re middle-class, straight, not a junkie, and, let’s say, “nonurban,” you are not going to get AIDS. We always get in shit for saying that, but it’s true. When you pretend it’s not a gay/junkie disease all you’re doing is diverting funding to rich college kids who don’t need it. So it’s actually bad for gays NOT to call it a gay disease. Gays are really prone to it, and though they hate making HIV-people feel unloved, they should probably steer clear of loving them. If you are going steady (i.e., living) with a guy that has HIV you’re going to get it, no matter how careful you are, sorry. As they say about getting caught between the moon and New York City, “I know it’s crazy, but it’s true.”

BABIES
These are large growths that swell up in the womb for months and months and then get expelled through the vagina. They hurt like hell and totally fuck up your body, but once they come out they are a joy. If you’re not ready for one then have the guy pull his fucking dick out. You don’t need a condom and you don’t need the pill. All you need is a penchant for being ejaculated upon. Some people say they got pregnant even though he used a condom (lie) or even though he pulled out (wrong), but true pulling out means you have to beat it for, like, 15 seconds.

HERPES
This one’s simple: Don’t fuck anyone with sores on their genitalia, not even with a condom. Most of the time, the sores are down around the bottom so a condom isn’t going to do shit. Oh, you fucked someone with sores and now your area hurts? OK, relax, that means you have herpes, but it’s not such a big deal. Everyone has herpes. Back in the 70s you had oral herpes (which you have if you’ve ever had so much as a canker) and genital herpes (the horrible one that made you part of a “community”). Today, “herpes simplex A” and “herpes simplex B” don’t mean shit. You get people with oral herpes (simplex A) that have painful sores on their genitalia twice a month (wasn’t that only simplex B?). You see, everyone is so into eating pussy and sucking cock these days that there is no longer any difference between “oral” and “genital.” Today it makes more sense to say H1 or H2 or, um, H10. You have H1 if you have a genital outbreak and never see it again, and you have H10 if you get outbreaks, like, six times a year.

It’s totally contingent on your immune system. Doctors don’t know shit. The only way you know which kind of H you have is by how many outbreaks you have. Fuck the blood tests. And no matter how bad your outbreaks are now, they are going to be half as bad next year and half as bad the year after that. If you had six this year, you’ll have three the next, and 1.5 the next, and 0.75 the next, and so on. That’s not so bad, is it? Also, it’s only contagious when you have sores, so if you don’t, you don’t have to tell anyone (sure, doctors talk about “asymptomatic carriers,” but doctors are all idiots who have no idea what they’re talking about). Unlike with AIDS, plenty of people marry people with H10 herpes and never, ever get it. People with sores don’t want to fuck anyways—they’re in pain. Besides, they say it’s incurable and blah blah blah, but they said that about venereal warts back in the early 90s, and now all you have to do is take some over-the-counter pills for warts and they’re gone.

VENEREAL WARTS
Oooh, I’m so scared. You have a contagious zit that’s as big as a grain of sand. Big fucking whup. They’re easy to remove. You can blast them off with liquid nitrogen or you can have a laser beam zap them off, or you can take a bunch of pills until they fall off. We suggest the nitrogen. True, the stuff is a million degrees below zero and it hurts like hell, but we are talking about a grain of sand here, not your hand. The pain lasts for less than a second and then, bang, it’s gone. They may come back once or twice, but ask anyone that’s had them before. They will tell you they had two outbreaks and then their immune system got on top of it and they were never seen again. And that was ten years ago! Now they’re even less permanent.

Of course, doctors say they last forever and they can give you cancer and blah blah blah. The only time STDs will give you cancer or affect your baby is when you’re some hillbilly who lets them go untreated for years at a time. You know that anus you saw online that had so many venereal warts it was totally swollen shut? That guy was homeless, you asshole. You should have seen his feet. If you have an STD, there are two things to know. One, DO NOT LOOK IT UP ONLINE. The Internet is rife with misinformation and worst-case scenarios. All it’s going to do is freak you the fuck out. Two, have it taken care of right away. Chlamydia and gonorrhea are really bad for your ovaries if you never do anything about them. If you treat any of these things right away they are about as serious as a hangnail.

CHLAMYDIA
ChlaSNOOZia, they ought to call it. You know what you take for this? Five pills in a row, right at the doctor’s desk, and you’re cured. Simple as that. There’s no real symptoms for it. If a woman lets it go untreated for a whole year she may feel an ache in her ovaries, but who the fuck doesn’t go for a checkup for over a year? The only symptoms for guys are angry calls from ex-girlfriends. If you even suspect you MAY have it, here’s a trick: Tell the doctor that you slept with a virgin and (s)he has it now and that means the only possible way this person could have gotten it was from you. Gentlemen, you no longer have to have a thick wooden Q-Tip rammed down your urethra (ouch), and ladies, you no longer have to sit in that giant birthing chair like you’re a piece of cattle. Besides, if you lie, you get the pills right then and there and you don’t have to wait for any tests to come back. Double besides, there are no side effects from taking the pills, so why not? Shit, get the ones for gonorrhea while you’re at it.

GONORRHEA
This is the same as chlamydia but there’s a fluorescent yellowy green pus that comes out of your unit. Gross? Yes. Serious? Ha! Dude, you can get gonorrhea from fucking a pile of mud. It’s an infection in your area. Come to think of it, that’s what all these things are. They are simply infections in your area. If you fuck a girl who is menstruating and you fall asleep with impacted blood down your urethra you will wake up with gonorrhea. She doesn’t have it, she didn’t give it to you, but you have it from fucking her. If you stick the arm of your glasses down your urethra as a party joke, you will get gonorrhea or chlamydia or maybe even a UTI. They are all the same thing: infections in your area.

UTI
Ask a doctor who’s had a few beers, “OK, let’s cut the shit here. What is the difference between a urinary tract infection, chlamydia, and gonorrhea?” You know what he’ll say? “I have no fucking idea.” The difference is academic. The treatment for all three is basically the same thing. A huge dose of antibiotics and some crossed fingers. That’s why you shouldn’t work yourself into a tizzy over these things. What’s a cold? It’s a virus that you get from someone else. Is it avoidable? No. Is there a cure? No. Same with STDs. Even herpes. Everyone’s had a canker or a cold sore, right? That’s herpes. Like a flu, there is no cure. Sometimes you get it bad, sometimes you don’t get it at all. Where’s the stigma? There is none. At worst, STDs are something to laugh about, like crabs. They’re funny.

CRABS
Sorry, but crabs are a lark. If you see someone really hot and they tell you they have crabs, go for it. You can cure those things in, like, an hour. You don’t even have to shave. Just go get the over-the-counter shampoo from the pharmacy and they’re gone. Kazaam. Of course, scabies and other serious parasites are way more of a bummer because you have to delouse the house, but you only get those if you fuck crusty punks, and does anyone honestly fuck those people? We didn’t think so. Most of them have way worse diseases, anyway, like syphilis or hep C.

SYPHILIS
No, that isn’t athlete’s foot you’re itching on your ankle. That’s called syphilis. What are you doing with syphilis, anyway? What is this, 1910? Could you be more promiscuous, please? You must be a fag. OK, all you have to do is show it to a doctor and he writes you out a prescription and it’s gone in a matter of days. Like crabs and gonorrhea, syphilis is one of those things that sounds really bad but isn’t shit. People used to go crazy from it, yeah, but that was hundreds of years ago, you boob, back in scurvy times. It’s not fatal like hep C or something.

HEPATITIS C
Why are you even asking about that? You didn’t get vaccinated for that yet? It’s free. You go in and get one shot now, then another shot a few days later, then a third shot about six months later. Then you’re IMMUNE to hep C. You can share needles with crusties and lick homeless people’s asses all day long if you want. It’s been solved. BTW, lads, if you want to expedite your time at the clinic make sure you talk in the faggiest voice possible. They will shoot you to the front of the line and treat you like a king. They also make you watch a bunch of movies about some other hep you get from eating shit, but all you have to do is say “I’m a top” and get the fuck out of there.

Anyway, that’s all we can think of right now. We’re sure there’s more, but we’re also sure they are no big deal. We all get colds. We all get fevers. We all get sick. Sometimes, like with the chicken pox, our immune system figures it out and we never see it again. Sometimes, like with a bad flu, we get them again—big whup. Abstinence may help your odds of not getting STDs, but getting sick is part of life. Besides, do you have any idea how detrimental abstinence is? Not only does it hurt you mentally by making you feel inhuman and separate from the world, but physically, abstinence can lead to a myriad of serious health problems. Even geriatrics are encouraged to beat off at least once a day. Men have to clean out their pipes and take out their aggression and women need to get reamed a lot or they turn into crazy birds with no sense of time. It’s a medical fact. So stop worrying about STDs and step into the fray. You’re probably not going to get one, and even if you do, they are no big deal.