on Sharing, Maybe Even Too Much
This story has since been featured in Chicagoist.
Our third or fourth time in bed together she bit her lip and said she had a confession to make. I tensed up and cupped my nuts protectively to prepare for possible bombshells: crabs, herpes, warts, a psychotic pastor father, a nameless rash. But it was none of that. Instead she said, “I’m not really single. I have a boyfriend.”
A boyfriend! Was I angry? Hell no. I felt like I had won the Barely Legal sweepstakes. I pinched myself, then her, and wondered what I’d done to deserve such good fortune.
I was 21 years old and not looking for anything even remotely serious. i didn’t even know the boyfriend, so, you know, fuck that guy. This was hardly a scandal in my book.
Still, the thought of possibly having some disease ravaging my genitals lingered in my mind long after I left her apartment. For weeks I obsessed with the idea that I very well could have had something. I laid awake on most nights thinking about it. I made the sign of the cross before pissing every morning. I simply had to find out.
I awkwardly walk into the testing center, trying to cover as much of my face with my baseball cap as possible. After filling out my forms, I briefly speak with a nurse. She hands me a sample container, a small bottle of water, directs me into a room, and tells me how much specimen they need. She points at the line marker on the cup and tells me, “You can go over the line if you have to.” She locks the door on her way out.
Now, there are a few things you should know before I continue with the story. Some basic thoughts going on in my 21-year old tiny Homer Simpson brain while sitting alone in this room.
1.) I was eager to find out if my life was ruined, and wanted this experience over and my results back as quickly as possible.
2.) I had not studied for a single college exam that year, let alone Google how one properly takes an STD test. I thought it was all common sense.
3.) At the end of every sexual encounter I had in my life, I was usually wiping semen off of something.
I look at the cup, down at my junk, back at the cup, unzip my pants, and get to work.
Now, if you were to look at the building from outside at this moment, you would see a perfect grid of glass and steel divided off into square rooms, and in each of those rooms would be somebody standing up and confident, perhaps even sitting still, urinating into a small plastic cup, properly taking an STD test. Except in one little square in the grid where a 21 year-old Mexican kid was furiously masturbating into a cup, looking up at the ceiling and silently saying, “Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.” And asking nobody in sight silent, mimed questions like, “What am I doing here? What the fuck am I going to do if this thing comes back positive? What was I thinking?”
I breathe a sigh of relief. I’m finished. I pull my pants up from around my ankles, zip the zipper, then notice that I have only filled about 10% to the marked line on the sample cup. I drop my pants and get back to work. I’m in this room for probably 25-30 minutes. It took like 4 sessions for me to get half of the cup filled, nowhere near the marked line. I give up. I cannot continue. I am simply out of semen. I crack the bottle of water open and chug. Boy, am I parched.
It takes a lot for me to get embarrassed. I’ve had people walk in on me taking a dump; I’ve been barged in on while with a girl; I’ve waved back at people who were waving at someone else; I’ve struck out at improv classes. I have even handed a registered nurse a sample cup of my own semen when she expected urine. I was still not embarrassed. I completely went on the offensive.
“Why are you freaking out? Well you didn’t you properly explain what I was supposed to do! This is your fault, not mine! Can you run the test with this, or do I still need to piss in a cup? Oh, ok. Ok, got it. Then may I please get a new cup, this one is ruined.”