Never fear! Crabs man is here!

You know, when I was in highschool, everybody was terrified of AIDS. I mean, it’s almost hard to explain, because the entire end of the 80’s ramped up this fear of this disease (brought about by the shadow-cabal of the queers and the drug users no less) and then in the 90’s, right around the time when my dick was taking off its robe and getting ready to enter the ring, BOOM! Massive fear of sex rampantly distorted the entire social environment. Now, to be fair, AIDS is a terrible disease. I’m not in any way trying to belittle that. In fact, I have a very close family member who passed away in the 80’s (way before it was cool to die from AIDS too. There’s probably a really tasteless hipster joke that could be inserted here) and I was, like everyone, terrified of the disease, and that’s not weird. I mean, fuck. It kills people. That’s about the worst result that can come out of a night of wanton boning.

So yeah, I get why people were afraid, I guess I kind of don’t get why people aren’t afraid anymore. I mean, I know AIDS isn’t like having a black guy in the same bathroom as you (something that used to be terrifying but now is for the most part fine). I know people still don’t want any AIDS, but when I was a kid, I was so terrified of sex that it was all I could do to beat off feverishly and jump through any possible hoops available, no matter how high or awkward to desperately attempt to have sex with anyone who was possibly dumb enough to have sex with me. BUT that was followed by weeks and months of chronic terror. And it wasn’t just AIDS. I was worried about herpes and drippy dick and the warts and syphilis and the whole deal. I don’t really hear too much about that stuff anymore. Why is that?

Well, the obvious answer is that I’m married and I haven’t been out there dipping my wang around any dirty pools for a while and the whole thing becomes irrelevant pretty quick when that happens. Also, I don’t go to health class and I don’t have the kinds of friends who come up and say things like “I think I may have gotten crabs from that skanky waitress from the other night (ha! What kind of disease is crabs anyway? It’s like the Aquaman of STD’s. “Okay, I know a lot of the good ideas are already out there, but check THIS out: some bugs in your pubes! What do you think?” “Um, so what does it do?” “That’s the best part! It ITCHES! And it’s gross!” “um, okay…uh, how do you clear it up? Can’t you just shave your bush?” “well, um…probably. But you may need to buy a special shampoo! Huh? Huh? ” “uh, okay, I guess it works. Put it in the back by the Aquaman comics and the Matisyahu albums”)” which is good, because I don’t want friends telling me about their gross sores and pussy drainage. It’s not cool. The other thing, however, is I think there’s a new attitude about STD’s that just didn’t exist when I was a kid.

Thanks to scare tactics and misleading statistics and the wonderful adaptability of mankind (coupled with the new global transparency of the hyper-modern age [thank you interwebs!]) people now realize (a weird word, because so much of this stuff is, like I said, misleading) that everyone is infected with something or other, so it’s really not that big of a deal. This is, at the big top of the scale most obvious with the way that AIDS is no longer considered to be a death sentence (which is GREAT on a lot of levels, in terms of a reduction in the stigmatizing of victims and of course because uh…deadly disease=bad 100% of the time [and puh-lease don’t talk to me about doomsday population control clearcutting, space making diseases that save the earth by killing people either, I don’t want to hear it, dorks] and to a lesser, but vastly more accessible degree, all the statistics about HPV and herpes (over 50% and in lots of demographics up to 80% infected, often with strains that leave no symptoms!) have sort of made people feel a little less like a good old fashioned social disease is the end of the world than they used to. I mean, fuck, if there’s a disease with no symptoms and about 80% of my demographic has it, isn’t it, it’s a little bit like it’s more of a disease to NOT have it, right? Yeah, so uh…whatever.

The whole thing has convinced any teen or young person that’s sexually active that they’re infected with SOMETHING for sure, and you know what? If that’s the case, fuck it. That means anyone who’s gonna fuck me back is also infected with something and at this point it becomes like a reverse game of Gin Rummy where it’s just a matter of hedging your bets and determining who’s giving the worse disease to who.

I remember overhearing someone at a bar saying something to the effect of ‘yeah, she wanted to fuck without a rubber…but I figured she was more likely to get something from me than the other way around, so I just went for it” which is a HIGHLY fucked up thing to A) do and B) talk about C) in earshot of strangers but I kind of understand the mentality. There’s no way out. Everyone’s infected with SOMETHING and this dick isn’t gonna suck itself, so uh…let’s get out there and try to live a little. Hey, that’s what you get for implementing a fearmongering approach to sex education in this country. What’s the point of taking responsibility if no one else is? Why throw your garbage in the bin when you’re already standing in the dump, and so forth.

I dunno. I should state unequivocally that safe sex is very important and having STD’s is no joke AND that HPV while often symptomless can lead to cervical cancer and is nothing to fuck with and all that, but I’m curious…y’all ever get gonorrhea or anything? In the porn star blogs I read they talk about getting that shit all the time. I don’t know of anyone that I know ever getting that, but it seems pretty rampant.

Also, herpes? I know some herpers I think, but they seem pretty happy, at least most of the time. And I’ve got kids. And it COULD be argued that kids are a pretty permanent STD.
I do have a friend who got crabs. He apparently went into his local pharmacy at 2am and bought a mountain dew and crabs shampoo. The cashier was a dude that he knew. Heh.

Whatever. There’s a big storm a comin. Batten down your hatches, folks!