It's Not You, It's My Vagina

An anonymous submission to Boshemia, writing candidly on living with HSV2 and enjoying a happy, millennial sex life. You go girl.

It is a freezing, blustery, Saturday night. It is so cold in fact that my eyelashes have frosted. The sun has began to set and the awful green Mazda pulls up. Inside of that car is my handsome date. He has a perfect nose. This is good because if he kisses me later, it could fuck up the three hours of contouring if his shnoz was equivalent to Horton’s. No one is as hot as I feel. I have on black leggings that hug perfectly at my thighs, red lips because I pretend to rock them and a flowy top that shows off the right amount of cleavage. The date goes great. He’s gentle, warm, and makes me laugh. He even paid for the Big Macs before I could whip out my debit card. “I got this, beautiful.” Wow! Chivalry isn’t dead after all!

We get in the car and drive around. Laughing, talking, eating our weight in fries, listening to awful foreign folk music. We park next to this tree with a view of the sea. The feeling is as natural as hearing that Lindsay Lohan got another DUI.

So then he kisses me. I like it. His breath tastes of Thousand Is- whoops... I mean Secret Big Mac Sauce, and his lips are soft. I feel his hands start to slip up my bosum. Woah, buddy. I like where this is going. (WRITER’S NOTE: WHOEVER SAID YOU CAN’T FUCK ON A FIRST DATE IS OBVIOUSLY JEALOUS YOU ARE GETTING LAID) I let him do his thing. Now the hands are going on the inside of my bra as we are kissing. I climb on top of him in the driver’s seat. I can feel his hard-on pressed against my thigh. Homegirl is going to be very satisfied here shortly. I feel his hands start to slide into my leggings and slap his hand away.

‘Do I really want to have sex on a first date?’ I think. He starts kissing on my neck right in that “spot” that makes me like Niagra Falls. ‘Yeah, yeah I do.’ He goes back for the elastic of my leggings. I pull back from him and stare into his eyes. They’re the color of the sea.

“Wait, is this not okay?” He says.

“Let us have a chat,” I say pulling away eyeing his gorgeous nose wishing he was face down on me like yesterday.

Remember in 8th grade when you had the sex talk? I was really lucky. My 8th grade health teacher told us, “I’m not going to tell you to not have sex. You are going to. I know half of you are making out in the hallways already. But, if you do it, wear a goddamn condom.” He then showed us all those pictures of what the clap and crabs look like. I thought, “I am going to stay a virgin until I am married.”

Then the kid next to me was looking up pictures of Blue Waffles with the other dudes. “Nope. I lied. Going to be a nun.” That was me. I swore I would be a virgin until the day I got married. Yeah… no. That lasted until my sophomore year of high school. I immediately fell in love with intimacy.

I’m 22 years old. I have a very normal life. I graduated, am 33k in debt, and have a love/hate relationship with being an adult. I wake up around 7am, even when I want to sleep in, and immediately make my coffee. When I hop in the shower, I do my usual routine of avoiding washing my hair and shaving. I get out and rub organic aloe vera on my vagina. Afterwards, I go and take my Acyclovir and drink my first 1 out of 8 glasses of water for the day. If you’re catching on, I have a lovely virus living in my body called HSV2. It’s s Herpes Simplex Virus 2 or as society calls it, herpes. I am just another 1 out of 5 who carries the virus that lays primarily dormant in my body. I was just oh so lucky enough to get it after having an encounter with a gentleman who thought it is okay if he fucked me while I was blacked out. That’s right. I didn’t get it from sleeping around contrary to popular belief.

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That’s important to say to people now. Isn’t that sad? “I didn’t get it from sleeping around.” There is the awful stigma for carrying HSV2 that people think I contracted something from having sex. What’s even more difficult than that is living in a generation where the only thing people want to do is sleep around. Is this a generalization? Absolutely. I’m not afraid to say it, either. We 90’s babies have lost our urge to settle down and have decided to fuck whomever we please. Now you would think that we would have brains. Wear condoms, ‘No means no,’ etc. However, we don’t. We are in the words of Snoop, “Young, wild, and free.” Our generation is like a giant Woodstock festival. Everyone are eskimo brothers and sisters which I can’t tell is a better way of getting a job than Linkedin or not. What sucks though is while everyone else gets to blow whomever they want, I don’t get that luxury. I could but then there’s the possibility I could go to jail or be sued if the partner contracts it from me. You read that right. I could go to jail if I do not tell a partner that I have genital herpes. They have a choice to press charges. Did you know in most countries you don’t need to tell a partner you have an STD unless it is HIV? That is terrifying.

Now, on that note, let’s have a little science lesson. I’ll explain this how I would to a five year old. “Well, you see, it is in a long, long, hibernation. When the bear wakes up and is angry, he just eats a little and goes back to sleep.” That’s the best way I can explain it since people think that if you carry an STD you’re a fucking mutant.

Just because I have genital herpes, does not mean that anything my vagina touches immediately becomes a cluster fuck. I use public restrooms. I go to swimming pools with friends and family. I have a lot of sex. I love sex. I am one of the most sexual people I know. Condom or no condom, up to partner discretion. Believe it or not, I get laid. But you know what I do? I tell my partner, where our story continues.

“I have genital herpes, there’s nothing I can do about it. You need to know this. I really would love to have sex with you, yes even in this car, but I have to legally tell you.”

“You do?” he says wide eyed at me.

“Yeah.” I say, almost breathless.

“Is it active?”

“Nah. Not now. It’s my body, like there’s like a small percentage of you contracting it right now, but it’s still there so there’s a chance. I’m really sorry.”

He kisses me on the neck and then on my lips.

“Oh! Well shit. I have a condom hold on let me grab my wallet.”

I glow.

I feel good.

I feel honest.

And ya girl gots to have some banging sex.

You read that right. I am lucky enough (or just have a nice enough ass) where that has always been my case. I have yet to have a partner say, “No.” I think it is my ass. It’s really nice. I work hard to get that badonky donk.

I live a normal life.

I get laid.

I am not a statistic.

I will never be.