2003: The Year of the STDs
October 27, 2005 << previous article 3 next >>
The year 2003 has been called a lot of things by a lot of people: The Year of the Sideways Baseball Hat, The Year of the 1991 Ford Taurus, and The Year of the Stuffed Crust Pizza. But for me, 2003 will always be remembered as The Year of the Sexually Transmitted Disease. Hopefully these entries from my journal will shed some light on this tumultuous time in my life.
Everybody, meet Gonorrhea.
Catch them in your own town
flirting with local businessmen
So a couple nights ago my buddy Derek and I are at Julio's Taco Emporium for lunch and he bets me I can't drink four gallons of his saliva in an hour. Needless to say, 36 minutes later I have a gut full of spit and he's paying for my triple-fried burrito. This was no big deal at the time, but today I hear from Derek's brother that he just found out Derek has Syphilis. So now I'm looking through all my notes from 6th grade health class trying to find out how many gallons of spit you need to ingest to get an STD, but it seems all I ever did in that class was draw pictures of what I wanted to eat for dinner that night. I sure don't remember liking shepherds' pie that much.
April 22
Damn, maybe my ex-girlfriend was right; maybe I am too much of cheapskate. Why didn't I go to the store and buy a new hypodermic needle instead of stealing one from a junkie's corpse? While I'm at it, what made me decide I needed to do heroin in the first place? Oh yeah, that's right- Will and Grace was a rerun. It was the episode where Will spends all the money for Christmas presents on a life-size Michael J. Fox cardboard cut out. That episode was terrible. Damn it Jimmy, there are more important things than Will and Grace to worry about right now, mom is going to be totally pissed if I have Gonorrhea.
Unfortunately, not every
awareness poster has clever
graffitis to drive home the point.
Okay Jimmy, just relax. Your liver has been sore plenty of times in the past and it always went away on its own. Just because you and the boys got a little rambunctious last night and you all ended up paying some hookers for blood transfusions does not mean you have hepatitis. Just settle down and make yourself some mozzarella sticks, everything is going to be fine.
November 4
I don't know what the hell is wrong with me, I had made it five months without any kind of STD scare and I had to go and ruin it. So I'm at the park today and I overhear some guy telling his friend that he just found out he has genital herpes. I don't know what came over me but I just stood up and yelled at him "If you have genital herpes so bad why don't you come over here and pound me in the ass!?". Next thing I know I'm bent over a park bench with some complete stranger giving me a jolly good rogering. It was insane; families and their dogs were all staring at us, judging us. I'm quivering with excitement just writing about it.
December 6 As I'm writing this I am in a small, rundown motel out in the middle of nowhere. It has taken me a while to calm down enough to write, I just don't know what has become of me. Four days ago I was in my Biology lab and we were studying various diseases under a microscope. My group was examining a slide with Chlamydia on it when suddenly that familiar feeling took over. I tried to stop myself, but I couldn't help but pick up the slide and lick it clean. One of the other students saw it and asked me what the hell I was doing. I freaked out, I didn't know what to do. Without thinking I threw a Bunsen burner on the ground, causing a rapidly spreading fire. I jumped out the window and ran. The screams are still echoing in my head. I want to get help, I want to go home, but I'm afraid it is too late for all that. And who knows how long it will be until the hunger returns...
Jimmy Atwell is a writer for TheDailyComics.com