HSV-1

Anonymous

In this Boston University dorm, a boy I hardly know and I  are a mess of limbs and lips, and unfamiliarity. He fumbles for a bra clasp that isn’t there, and I nearly smack my head into his bookshelf. We claw at clothing and tumble in a direction I didn’t expect but am okay with regardless. 

He reaches onto the night stand and grabs a small little square. He leans back in to kiss me again, and as I kiss back I wonder how horrible it would be to just let it happen.

“Wait,” I pull back, still playing with the idea of staying silent. “Before this goes any further, I have to tell you something.”

Here is some of what I know about the herpes simplex virus so far:

1. There are two forms of the virus: HSV 1 and HSV 2

a. SUBNOTE: Both HSV 1 and HSV 2 can present as either oral or genital herpes.

2. Roughly, 1:3 American adults have oral herpes and 1:6 have genital herpes.

a. That means about 16 people in every movie theater have genital herpes… a lot, right?

3. The herpes simplex virus is incurable.

4. Cold sores are herpes

a. That means if you get cold sores, and if you’ve ever had a cold sore… Congrats! You have an STI!

The average STI panel does not test for genital herpes. Somehow, someone proved that telling a person they have herpes doesn’t change their sexual habits. People who want to fuck do it with or without a diagnosis. 

After spending three full minutes giving a thorough oral presentation about the viral cultures in between my legs, the boy from BU decides he wants to screw me anyways. They usually decide they want to screw me anyways. 

You’re not having an outbreak right now?”

“No, I haven’t had one since my senior year of highschool”

“And you can’t give it to me unless you’re having an outbreak”

“Well, no. But the odds of transmission are much lower.”

“Okay.” 

“I can go home. I get if you don’t want to–”

“Nah, we can still have sex.” 

When I told my ex boyfriend I had herpes just hours after my diagnosis, he cried in my bathroom. I had to yank his hands free from the counter while he tried to tell me how sorry he was between sobs. He didn’t have much to apologize for. Blood in syringes and piss in cups later he had transmitted it to me orally. He’d never even had a cold sore. The odds of oral transmission without an outbreak are incredibly low. I called it a freak accident. 

I’ll bet that's what a lot of people say when they get an STI. 

Not to get too woke, but we really should try to say STI and not STD. It’s scientifically accurate to call these things infections and truthfully, disease is a nasty word. It sticks underneath your fingernails and leaves you scrubbing skin raw in the shower. 

“If I ever got Herpes, I’d kill myself.”

My roommate has a friend over and they’re talking about STIs, for some reason. She is not speaking to me, but her words reach across the room and slap me in the face. My roommate, of course, had no idea about my diagnosis (she still doesn’t). How could I tell her after her constant ramblings that STDs are her worst nightmare?

She didn’t mean it, but her statement sounded a lot like, “If I were you, I’d kill myself.” 

When I tell someone new about my HSV, I quickly jump to the stats. I always seem to think that if I tell people how common it is, they’ll look at me with a little less shock, a little less judgment. By adulthood, one in six people have genital herpes. It’s more common than ___ or ___.

I haven’t had an outbreak since my very first one in May of 2021. I know that it’s mostly just luck, and at this point, the odds are that I’ll never have an outbreak again. Still, there's a bottle of antivirals under my bed accompanied by several doses of gabapentin. Every once and a while, when digging for a band aid, or Advil, that small orange bottle falls onto the floor. Then I’m reminded that even in the moments I’m forgetting about it, I’ve got an incurable virus sleeping soundly at the bottom of my spine.

No one is in any rush to cure the herpes simplex virus. It doesn’t cause any long term health problems. With proper care it’s hardly ever passed on during childbirth. Outbreaks can be managed with antiviral treatments. By all means the physical infection is something easy to live with.  It’s the stigma that wears us down. It’s the jokes people make, the comments they say, the way the word “herpes” sends a chill down people's spines. That’s what eats away at you in the moments where you think too hard about your infection. 

I’m tired of telling every boy I sleep with about an infection that hasn’t made itself known in almost two years. I’m tired of being told I’m dirty in tik tok comment threads. I’m tired of calling myself a whore. But, mostly, I’m tired of people pretending they’ve been any better than me. You all are not saints when it comes to safe sex. I am exhausted with people pretending like they use a condom every single time, or like they make each of their partners gift them a scroll of their latest STI panel. Bullshit. No one does that. 

I got unlucky. That sucks. But that's really all there is to it. 

Believe it or not, I don’t spend every waking moment concerned about my herpes. I don’t really think about my genitals any more than the average person. Strangely enough, I don’t have that much sex, and I do use protection, and I am actually hygienic. Frankly,  I don’t spend much time at all drenching myself in the shame everyone thinks comes with an STI. I spend my time writing, watching tv, listening to music, crying, laughing, living a normal fucking life. The same life everyone else does, with or without a cloud of judgment floating over them. 

I know it’s a crazy, ridiculous, out of this world idea, but to me, herpes is not that big of a deal.