A Bad Idea I'm About to Do (25 page)

A few short months later,
Crossballs
wrapped. I didn't have another job lined up and debated whether to stay or to head home to the Northeast. On the one hand, there was Los Angeles, a place I had just begun scratching the surface of, a place that had afforded a necessary reboot of my personality, but one that also, I sensed, was overall too gilded and superficial for my liking.

On the other hand, there were New Jersey and New York. Places I had deep connections to and very fond memories of, but places that I had some long-standing and still painful negative associations with.

Early in the summer of 2004, I made up my mind and drove cross-country back home. I owed the East Coast another shot. I'd never known it while I was happy. I'd never experienced it with
No worries
.

“I
thought you had my back!” I shouted into Allison's face as we stood next to an Italian sausage stand. “It's my mistake for making such a stupid assumption.”

“Will you calm down?” she pleaded. “I didn't realize this was a whole-day thing!”

“I didn't realize,” I said, “I was dating someone who cared so little about me.”

B
eing angry with someone you love is terrible. But converting the passion of that anger into sexual acts is a euphoric experience that I can't recommend enough. Makeup sex is absolutely the best sex you can have.

A few Labor Day weekends ago, my girlfriend Allison and I went to the Jersey Shore. The Shore's perfect for us; Allison loves the beach and I love deep-fried Oreos. And both of us love
looking at mulleted weirdos in airbrushed tank tops who get drunk in the afternoon.

We relaxed, swam, and shared as terrific a meal as one can find on a boardwalk. We rode through a cheesy haunted house and laughed when a fat man smoking a cigarette jumped out from the darkness.

Although we had been dating only a few months, I realized that we were experiencing our first perfect day together, and as we walked among the lights and sounds and games, I began to suspect I really loved the girl.

Then Allison's phone rang.

“Hey, Clair,” she said, turning her back to me. “Maybe eight or nine? No, put me on the list,” she said. Allison placed her hand over the receiver. “What time do you think we're getting back tonight?” she asked.

“I don't know,” I said. Then, I walked away. She caught up to me in front of a store that sold T-shirts with phrases about Italian people on them. My fists were balled.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Why did you ask what time we're getting back?” I snapped at her.

“There's a party,” she said. “I thought maybe we could get back in time for it.”

“I can't believe this fucking bullshit,” I said. Anger, my old friend, had returned.

I felt stupid, ashamed I had spent the past few hours thinking this was “our first perfect day” while, in the meantime, Allison obviously couldn't wait to leave and was already planning her night out without me. I took it to mean that all of my cheesy romantic thoughts weren't being reciprocated, and being a boneheaded male unable to handle emotions I reverted to what was most familiar to me: I began to yell and curse.

“This is a big misunderstanding,” she said. “I'm not trying to be mean.”

“There's no misunderstanding,” I said. “I'll just drive you home so you can hang out with the people you'd
rather
be with!”

“I want to be with
you
,” Allison answered.

“You have a funny way of showing it,” I snapped.

Our fight continued all the way back to the car and it didn't stop there. We yelled at each other on the Garden State Parkway, continued the yelling as we merged onto the New Jersey Turnpike, and waiting to get through the Holland Tunnel we killed some time with more yelling. Though we were far from the first people to scream in frustration while sitting in Tunnel traffic, I can guarantee we were some of the most committed. We kept at it as we pulled up in front of Allison's dorm. And then for good measure we yelled for another hour in my car, blocking traffic on Fourteenth Street.

“I didn't mean to insult you!” Allison said for the fiftieth time that night.

“Well, I'm having a tough time figuring that out,” I continued. “Because when all you can think about is getting away from me, I find it pretty insulting.”

“Chris, I'm sorry,” Allison said. “I love you and I didn't mean to hurt you.”

“I love you too,” I said. “If I didn't, there's no way I could possibly get this mad.”

And then, suddenly, after so many hours of arguing, it was gone. Exhausted, we finally began to calm down and really listen to each other.

“Do you want to come back to my place?” I asked.

“Yes,” Allison said. “Yes, I do.”

I've never driven through Manhattan that fast, nor have I weaved my way through the traffic on the Queensboro Bridge as
skillfully. We were back at my apartment in no time flat, and when we got there we attacked each other.

I won't be crass. Suffice it to say that all that dark, brooding aggression fell by the bedside. And at one point a pineapple-flavored Marino's Italian Ice was involved. That part was cool.

T
he next morning I woke up first and for a moment watched Allison as she slept. Sunlight was streaming through the blinds and hitting her face. Allison is a petite girl, but when she's in a bed by herself, she spreads all of her limbs out to take up the entire mattress. It's adorable. I realized that I had been a moron the day before at the Shore. I had been hurt, but my reaction to that pain had led to a horrible day that risked our relationship. It was inexcusable. The amount of jealousy I felt at being snubbed for Allison's friends was nothing compared to the hurt I created in response.

Allison rolled over and mumbled. I smiled. It was a perfect start to the morning.

A perfect start that immediately came to an end when I went into the bathroom and peed. That's when I sensed a strange, pulsating feeling emanate from the tip of my penis. It wasn't a burning sensation, and it didn't quite hurt. It felt like someone had applied just a slight pressure between finger and thumb on the head of my dick. The initial shock was like driving a car you're familiar with and realizing that something is wrong with the transmission—the car was still running, but something was
off
.

I looked down and was horrified to see six red bumps forming a ring around my urethra. I sprinted back into my room and collided with my desk chair. Allison shot out of bed.

“We've got a problem,” I said. I motioned wildly toward my penis.

The beginning of my morning had been idyllic. Allison's was off to a much rockier start. She leaned in close to examine the ring of raised red blotches on my junk.

“What the hell is that?” she said, eyes wide with fear.

“I don't fucking know,” I said.

“Was that there when we—”

I interrupted her.

“Fuck no it wasn't there,” I said. “There's no way I wouldn't have felt it. It feels like my dick is trapped underneath a dictionary.”

I grabbed the camera case hanging from the doorknob of my closet.

“I'm going to take pictures of the bumps,” I told her.

“Why the fuck would you do that?” she shouted at me.

“What if they go away? I need to show a doctor,” I said.

I didn't know what else to do. I had never been in this situation before. The only thing remotely close was the time my first girlfriend had a pregnancy scare after the second time we had sex. But I'd since discovered that everyone's first girlfriend has a pregnancy scare after the second time they have sex. This was something else entirely. There was only one thing I knew for sure—I had to see a doctor.

“What do we do?” Allison asked. “You don't have health insurance.”

It was true, I didn't. A proper doctor's visit would have emptied my savings account.

“I'll have to go to a health clinic,” I said.

I knew many friends who had returned from clinics with war stories. Based on their accounts, I could only assume I was about to enter some sort of medical purgatory, with all the impersonal
interactions of a hospital and none of the modern-day equipment. Worse yet, it was Labor Day. There wasn't a single clinic open in the five boroughs of New York City. I would have to wait an entire day before I could find out why there were six red bumps on my penis.

In the meantime, naturally, my next step was to get on the computer and self-diagnose on WebMD.

“Do you think it's that?” Allison asked as we sat in front of my computer.

“It looks like it,” I said. “But this hasn't existed since they found antibiotics.”

“Oh man,” Allison said, “I hope you didn't bring back some medieval shit.”

When I was done hyperventilating I researched different health clinics around the city. I found a city-run program in Corona, just a few neighborhoods away from me in Queens. It was open the next day and it was free. It was also dedicated specifically to STDs. In the grip of fear, I believed it was the perfect place for me and my six red bumps.

In hindsight, I realize this was a huge mistake. If you ever have any problem of any sort, let alone a medical problem, let alone a medical problem involving your penis, Corona, in Queens, is not where you should go to solve it. Nothing against the neighborhood of Corona. It's just that when I think of topnotch medical care in New York, I think of Mt. Sinai and New York Presbyterian University hospitals. When I think of Corona, I think of great Mexican food and good deals on storage space.

There's also the matter of getting what you pay for. When certain things are free it's cause for rejoicing. Free Internet access, for example, makes me shout from the rooftops. I also absolutely make it a point to grab a free Slurpee from 7-Eleven every July 11th, and the first time Burger King ran its “Free Fri-day” promotion,
I spent a night driving from Burger King to Burger King, claiming more than my share of deep-fried potatoes.

Sexually based medical care, on the other hand, probably shouldn't be placed in the same category as potatoes, slush, or wireless Internet.

It's easy to see all of this now. Unfortunately, one of the sad side effects of finding six red bumps on your dong is severely clouded judgment. Hence within forty-eight hours of discovering those bumps, I found myself sitting in the waiting room of a makeshift doctor's office in Corona.

The clinic was located in a former government building. At some point the board of education or neighborhood zoning committee had apparently found better digs and left the place to the wilds, until someone set up medical offices inside. I stood in the lobby, surrounded by desks and upside-down chairs. A handwritten sign pointed me toward STD testing.

I walked down a musty hall and pushed open a door. Around thirty-five people quietly sat in beat-up folding chairs. Thirty-one of them were native Spanish speakers. There was one other white guy, rubbing his knees and swaying in a way that can only be mastered after years of heroin abuse. There was also one cool-ass black guy who was there with two girls, both fawning over him.

You brought two girls to an STD clinic?
I thought to myself.
That's the most baller thing I've ever seen.

And then there was me, the wide-eyed kid in the Old Navy polo shirt. I scrambled to figure out how to say the words “six red bumps” in Spanish.

Six rouge tetons?
I thought to myself.
No, that's French. And I think I would be telling the nurse that I have six red breasts.

I sat in the waiting room for two hours. I hadn't brought a book, but luckily the clinic was screening the movie
Jumanji
. This normally wouldn't be a film in my wheelhouse. But it was
the Spanish-language version, and there were no subtitles, so really I didn't have to watch it so much as I had the opportunity to watch 1995-level special effects unfold as characters shouted in a language I didn't understand. I received a series of text messages from Allison, but as far as distractions go they were more heartbreaking then entertaining.