The odyssey of dating with herpes
Posted on Friday, July 20th, 2007 at 8:17 AMNot all men run. Far from it. Out of the five men I’ve told I had herpes only one has run. And when I bumped into him months afterwards, me on the arm of a more open minded man, he blushed to the tip of his ears out of pure embarrassment. I thought it was supposed to be the other way. I honestly felt very sorry for him.
Not all men run. Far from it. Here are a few takes. A few snap shots in time.
I have never had the luxury of dating someone with herpes except the man who gave it to me. Here’s how it went….
Oh Lord, what have I ever done in life to deserve that? One week, exactly one week after I’d moved in with him. This burning and blistering and I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t pee for the pain. Oh it’s a reaction to the new panties which I’d bought to mark the occasion I’d thought. But the doctor didn’t agree.
“I’ll have a sample sent out for testing. But I am pretty much convinced that it is herpes.” One week later the results come in. It is herpes. I remember seeing that in my human biology course somewhere next to gonorrhoea and syphilis. It was one of the curable ones wasn’t it? You take a course of antibiotics and then it goes away. The doctor shook his head. I went home with lots of information, topical cream which I almost didn’t buy out of sheer embarrassment and still the doctor wants to know whether I wanted to join the database and help track the increasing number of cases on the island. All I am thinking is that somewhere out there my name is on a herpes file and that I will live with this thing forever. I tell Shaka.
“Thank God we’ve already decided to get married,” he says. He holds me. “Why didn’t you tell me before.”
“I wasn’t sure.”
“And you’ve been carrying this all by yourself for one week. I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t know.”
This is how it went. That was all there was to herpes for me. After I’d told Shaka he immediately took the responsibility for it, because this was my first outbreak (the worst of the worst – lesions from the top to the bottom and the stench!) and it came within one week of sleeping with him. He got himself tested and he was positive. Positive all along and he didn’t know. Well all I can say is that I can never forget the day while lying on his bed after sex and watching him have a shower I saw him take his penis in hand look at it quizzically and then look over at me. I remember distinctly thinking he perhaps thinks I’ve passed him something. The opposite was the case. But then he dumps me and …. I am left to battle this thing on my own.
