I Might Have Gonorrhea: My Experience With STDs
By Kenzie Allen
About three hours ago, my grandmother drove me to get checked for gonorrhea and chlamydia at a physician’s office. In fact, as I type this, I still have a band-aid snugly wrapped around the middle finger on my right hand from where I got pricked for blood during the mono test (which, unsurprisingly, came up negative).
Let’s get one thing straight: I did not intend to get tested for STDs today. I got tested for HIV roughly six months ago, and given that my amount of sex-having and penis-leaking are both at a respectable minimum (or, none at all as far as penis leakage is concerned), I didn’t really think that it was a necessity that I got tested anytime soon. I’ve had real sex once since getting tested, and it was with a condom. I’ve had one STD scare since, and the red bumps appearing in between my legs were a result of chaffing during my runs and not because I had herpes.
I hooked up with a guy about a week ago. We met through Grindr, which is normally a bad sign, but I was optimistic about this guy. He was 28 and had a stable and impressive job at a prestigious university. I typically don’t use Grindr, but I’m home for the summer and the only two people that I interact with each day are my grandmother and my aunt. When I’m bored or lonely, allowing creepy men to hit on me can be a welcomed relief.
This guy — we’ll call him Sean — was different. He was smart. Well spoken with a good vocabulary. We skyped each other. We had an impromptu four hour drive around my town. By the time we went on an actual date at my favorite restaurant, I gleefully agreed to go back to his place and spend the night with him. Once he promised me that we wouldn’t have sex and that he wasn’t an axe murderer, I felt like I could trust him.
Sean followed through on his promise. Our hook up involved a little bit of making out, a lot of dry humping, and a smidgeon of oral sex. It truthfully was just a modicum of head: neither one of us could have gone down on the other for more than a total of five minutes. Sean took me to breakfast the next morning, he texted me that night, and we were skyping two days later. We’re still texting today. He seemed like a stand-up guy.
Five days after I hooked up with Sean, my throat started closing up. We’re talking massive tonsils, white bumps. The whole nine yards of strep.
Seven days after I hooked up with Sean, my grandmother took me to a clinic to get tested for strep — a test that came up negative. Mono? Nope. No rashes, no nasal stoppage, no headaches. The only thing that’s off about my health is the fact that the back of my throat has decided to double as an incubator for some kind of bacteria. I realized that I wasn’t being a hypochondriac when my “ah” was echoed by a repulsed “ew” from my doctor as she shone a light down my throat.
My doctor left the room that I was being held in for a brief amount of time, and returned to ask me some “personal questions.” I informed her that yes, I do have oral sex, and that I had had it a week ago. She told me that she expected that I had contracted either chlamydia or gonorrhea in my throat.
I laughed.
With every fresh pair of underwear that I put on, I worry about contracting a new STD. I’m a notorious hypochondriac when it comes to anything bad and bumpy in my nether regions. All of this time I’ve been worried about getting something down under, and I’ve come to find out that I actually have something in my throat.
From all of the material that I have read, I’ve understood that the chances of contracting an STD in your throat are extremely low. First, you have to actually have oral sex with an infected partner, and even then, they have to finish in your mouth. Given that I have never had anyone blow their load in my mouth nor have I (as far as I am aware, at least) ever hooked up with someone with gonorrhea floating around in their system, I never in a million years would have guessed that I had an STD — let alone in my throat!
So here I am, sitting in the middle of a doctor’s office with a swab being jammed down my throat for the second time that day to test and see if I have the clap. I don’t actually find out if I have anything until the results have returned from the lab in a few days, but I’m already being treated for both gonorrhea and chlamydia. When I found my grandmother in the waiting room, I told her in passing that the doctor wants me to pick up some pills. She has deducted that I have tonsillitis, and has already informed one of my aunts about my unfortunate ailment.
If I do have gonorrhea in my throat, it should clear up after I finish taking these few pills. And that’s fantastic. I hate that my body has become a breeding farm for someone’s dick drip. I anxiously look forward to getting my test results back — if they come back positive, then I’m going to force Sean to take me out to dinner at a fancy restaurant to pay me back. I should send him an angry text demanding to know if it burns when he pees, but I want something out of this. I’d rather have Sean buy me a nice steak dinner. When we get our bill back and he has nicely paid for everything, I’ll just casually ask him if it he ever has yellow gook come out of his dick hole. That’s the polite way to go about things.
Ultimately, I’m just as responsible as he is for my potential gonorrhea: sure, he might have oozed unexpectedly into my throat, but I’m also the one who put his penis there in the first place. In one way, I’m kind of lucky. So much of my time has been dedicated to worrying about any possible STDs that I could have, and now that I have contracted one, I’m finding that the consequences really aren’t that dire. For most people, an STD means the end of casual sex; for me, it’s only the beginning.