Ask The Slut: How Come You Don’t Have AIDS?
Filed under: Ask The Slut - January 4, 2008 @ 9:16 am
Dear Slut,
In reading through some of your adventures, it seems you have gotten into quite a bit of trouble/naughtiness in the past. I’m curious: how do you juggle casual behavior with safety (of the STD/sexual paranoia variety)? Condoms only get you so far, especially when dealing with (near) strangers — I’m wondering how this tightrope act of safety vs. fun works for you.
Cootie Police
Dear Cootie,
Your question reminds me of a quote I posted over a year ago by Germaine Greer: “Despite a lifetime of service to the cause of sexual liberation, I have never caught venereal disease, which makes me feel rather like an Arctic explorer who has never had frostbite.â€Â
Check out these fascinating facts:
Number of people (”women!” he clarifies in the background, hmf) my guy has had sex with in his life: 6
Number of times he has had sex in his entire life (pre-TBK), rough estimate: 50
Number of STDs he has had: zero
Number of people (”almost everyone I know!” I clarify obnoxiously) I have had sex with in my life: Hundreds
Number of times I have had sex in my entire life, rough estimate: 1 million
Number of STDs I have had: zero
So what’s the deal? Early on in my sex history, I was an idiot. I had a guy pretend to put on a condom in the dark but didn’t really. I had unprotected sex with random hot guys. I had a boyfriend accuse me of giving him an STD but it turns out he had hemorrhoids. I have often had sex with three dudes in one day (sometimes they were all there in the same room, and sometimes I spaced them out over a 24 hour period and they didn’t know about each other). Verdict? Sheer fucking luck.
But hey, one guy I didn’t sleep with was Darnell “Boss Man” McGee, a player from East St. Louis who slept with over 100 14 year old girls in the span of a year and infected over 30 of them with HIV. Don’t worry, he was shot and killed in 1997, so your 14 year old daughters are safe now. For sure, a big factor is who you are sleeping with (go for the inexperienced geeks!) and what your environment is like (be white middle class!) STDs are more prevalent in lower-income minority neighborhoods.
Being educated also helps, but hey, shit happens. Luckily I wised up later on, and used condoms religiously when I attended orgies or turned tricks with total strangers. I also refused to swallow casual semen (full disclosure: I have never used a dental dam when eating a woman or made a guy wear a condom for a blow job). It’s true - you’re way more likely to get an STD when you are the one being penetrated and that other fellow is depositing bodily fluids in or on your person.
I’m going to get spanked for saying this, especially since I haven’t done my research and checked all the statistics, but do you think that maybe, just MAYBE, the whole STD thing is exaggerated at least a little by conservative/religious people in an effort to scare folks and encourage monogamy, our society darling?
I mean, I’ve been involved in the swinger community in at least three states and have been a member of a local polyamory group, and I have never heard of a case of the clap making its rounds. Have any of you swingin’ or poly people witnessed any disease outbreaks? And I really do think that some of the incurable STDs are made into something bigger and badder than they really are - for sure you don’t want HIV or Hepatitis C, but warts and herpes?
TONS of people carry the HPV virus - if you’ve slept with four people you more than likely carry it (I’m sure I do, though I’ve never seen an outbreak) and herpes is similar - most people only have one or two outbreaks and are not as plagued with it as the drug companies want you to believe. They don’t tell you this, but if you have herpes and you take drugs to prevent outbreaks, you can only take them for about a year, and once you stop, the virus gets pissed and will hit you harder.
* I’m talking out of my disease-free ass here, people, so if I’m wrong about something or you have had an STD or two, please comment and set me straight.
Yep condoms are not all-protecting. And like a lot of people, I hate ‘em. Condoms were the worst part about swinging (OK, maybe sleeping with some of the caveman dudes in order to get to their hot wives was the worst part), so it’s nice to be settled down and not need the sausage shrink wrap. But hey, maybe if they were cookie flavored…
Next week: Special guest appearance with “Ask The Monk!”
January 4th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
Actually I know a couple of people with herpes and at least one of them has been on medication to prevent outbreaks for the past 20 years or so.
January 4th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
OMG! I read this at work and laughed…
January 5th, 2008 at 10:57 am
Only 50??? How the hell did that happen??? TBeauK?
January 5th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
What can I say Floyd? I’m a late bloomer
TBK is kindly helping me to make up for lost time!
January 5th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
What? No talk of being old-fashioned and only dating women with the intention of marrying them, and finally finding the perfect virgin bride and marrying her fully expecting to live happily ever after, but then she gets cancer and so your 12 years of marriage are happy and fulfilling but not porn-worthy?
Yep, he’s making up for it all right. He married a virgin but is now with a whore. Whores are hardier stock - clearly I’m impervious to disease and illness.
January 5th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
You’d better be “hardier.” I don’t plan on burying you for another 50-60 years.
January 6th, 2008 at 9:39 am
Bit of a late bloomer myself actually. Luckily I’ve dated more than my fair share of whores. Now if I could just find one that doesn’t annoy me outside the bedroom.
Speaking of burying…I think I wanna have sex in a coffin. It just seems incredibly hot.
January 6th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Hi there -
You are correct that most people with herpes have minor symptoms, and its not the awful horrifying infection that most think it is. In fact, 1 in 4 people have genital herpes type 2, and 90% don’t know they have it because their symptoms are so mild they wouldn’t ever think herpes, and about 20% are truly asymptomatic, meaning they don’t have any symptoms at all.
Its not true that you can only take the meds for a year. Valtrex only has data for a year, because its newer than the others. Many people have been on acyclovir or famvir for years, and its quite safe for those who are otherwise healthy (ie, no kidney or liver problems, etc.)
Herpes testing isn’t usually included when you get tested for other stds, either, even when you ask to be tested for “everything.” To find out if you have either hsv1 or 2, ask your doc for a type specific IgG blood test. It can take up to about 4 months to develop antibodies, so if you are newly infected, it might not show up on a test. (Syphilis might not be included in these tests, either, and its on the rise again, so you might ask your doc about that, too.)
There was a study done a few years back, and they called it the “Not in my practice” study. Many docs were saying that none of their patients had herpes, so they randomly tested people in several different practices across the country (mostly white middle to upper middle class), and found that 1 in 4 tested positive for hsv2. 90% of these people had no idea that they had herpes.
About 30% of new genital herpes infections are type 1, the result of someone with oral herpes performing oral sex on someone. (Up to 80% of the population will test positive for this, although only about 20-40% will ever get a cold sore, and you can still be infectious even without a cold sore.)
Your consistent use of condoms is great, but condoms only reduce the risk of transmitting herpes by about half. You are also right that you probably have had the HPV virus (up to 80% will in their lifetimes), and condoms reduce the risk of transmitting HPV by about 70%.
Also, no one calls these infections “veneral diseases” anymore, and haven’t for about 15 or 20 years. They are now sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) or infections (STIs).
I am all for consenting adults being able to enjoy their sexuality, and more power to you for enjoying yours. I just think you aren’t truly informed. For more info on STDs, you can check out http://www.ashastd.org. Its loaded with great info on all STDs. Unfortunately, STDs haven’t been “hyped”, and they are indeed that common.
I hope this helps clarify things.
January 6th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
Twice a year, practically twice, I freak out, have the whole gamut of tests run. Twice a year I freak out. Not because of the statistics, or the warnings, or my promiscuity. Twice a year I get so weird only a plethora of tests can make me feel better. I have them swab parts of me some lovers have only dreamed of even touching. “Better catch that”, I say, “just in case”.
Never had an STD, and I never plan to. Some guys i insist wear a condom, others I forbid to.
Am I just lucky? How do I coach my 10-year-old daughter as such?
January 6th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
Robin Williams has herpes and if that’s what herpes does to a person….then I wish I had herpes too.
January 9th, 2008 at 7:59 am
Whoopi Goldberg had three abortion. They have both hosted the Oscars, right?
Anyway, Steph I know what you mean. I can’t imagine my daughter being sexually active one day, but then, she’s 7.
I will definitely tell her to have sex when she is ready for it, not because of some guy pressuring her or because all her friends are doing it. I wonder if there will be new diseases around in (hopefully) ten years. I doubt any will be cured. Speaking of, when was the last time we had a disease cured, what with all the technological advances we’ve made the past 20 years? Was it smallpox? Polio? How about curing Alzheimer’s, autism, Parkinson’s, MS and cancer? OK I’m rambling.
January 11th, 2008 at 8:29 pm
Smallpox and Polio were never really cured. Enough of the population was vaccinated against them to (thankfully) reduce their occurrences to negligible numbers. The best anyone can ever hope for is to prevent exposure to a disease or prevent an outbreak of it (through vaccinations). And as long as the government allows money to be allocated for disease prevention and education it works pretty well! Speaking of dumbass governments, unwanted teen pregnancies AND STD’s are on the rise in the US (I’m just SAYIN’).
August 16th, 2008 at 11:15 am
Before you proclaim that you are “disease free,” you MUST request a type specific herpes blood test. Believe it or not, this is NOT included in panel STD testing, you must specifically request it. And you can’t just say “test me for everything,” you have to say “give me a blood test for herpes.” Have you ever actually done that? At least 25% of American women have genital herpes. What makes you assume you are not one of them? Just because you don’t have sores or symptoms does not mean you don’t have type 2 herpes - most who have it never develop noticeable symtoms. I’m tired of people saying they don’t have any STDs when they haven’t even been tested for herpes. But I guess since even doctors won’t offer up this information, it’s hard to say who is at fault here.
Also, do you ever get cold sores, or even just tested positive for type 1 herpes? If so, then you are capable of giving someone an STD.
You know what I certainly didn’t plan on happening? When the one guy I have been intimate with in over a year gave me oral sex, his common cold sore virus was transmitted to me in the form of type 1 genital herpes. Even though he did not have a cold sore at the time. I’ve only ever had the 1 initial outbreak since it happened. I am negative for type 2, the more traditional and typically more recurrent kind of genital herpes. Neither are the the end of the world. Just wanted to let you know, the risk is not just in sexual fluids, or intercourse, or in being “slutty.”
Lastly, there might be a reason you haven’t heard about STDs spreading among swinger groups. Stigma, shame, alienation, embarrassment. They are not exactly going to shout it from the rooftops. And since only one out of 10 with herpes will even have symptoms (and lots of other STDs go unrecognized), they keep spreading whether you know it or not. Condoms don’t fully protect, so you must truly acknowledge and accept that risk, not deny it.
I just feel like there is lots of “don’t ask, don’t tell, hell, don’t even bother to really get educated on it” …until it happens to you.