Action: A Book About Sex (14 page)

Neither my partner nor I anticipated any future-altering results (outside the more figurative one of a renewed and strengthened bond of trust shared by hopeful young lovers… nauseating, I
know). Still, I can never help thinking,
What if?
in waiting rooms. It doesn’t matter if I couldn’t even manage to convincingly invent a symptom with the entire medical internet as my research assistant. Prior to a test, part of me upholds a worrisome conviction of some latent sickness patiently filing its nails in my bloodstream.

In the waiting room, and not for the first time, my cohort and I talked about what might happen if one of us had an STI.

“Will you still want to jump my bones if I somehow have whooping crotch?” I asked.

“What? Do you mean herpes? Whatever you’re talking about: Yeah, as long as you keep track of your outbreaks and we always use condoms. And you don’t have anything, but if you do, it would take way more to keep me off of you.”

Improbably, I was teetering on the brink of foreplay in the sterile offices of a sexual-malady depot, but I managed to keep it together for decorum’s sake.

“Oh!
Ahem. [crosses legs tightly in self-discipline]
S-same. Even if you have an STI that I’m not into adopting as my very own, I’ll find other ways to make you come, and you could still give me incredible head, like usual.”

STIS, BY THE BY

Having no personal experience with STIs, I have no advice about their care and keeping. It’s not my job to tell you that stuff. (Well, hold on. Let me pretend I took the Hippocratic oath just this once—“I swear on the game Hungry Hungry Hippos or whatever, thanks for letting me be a doctor now.”) What doctors don’t always have an opinion about, and on which I certainly do: How to tell someone you want to bone that you have a sexual health condition, and how to receive that news respectfully.

I know a fleet of people with herpes or other STIs—and some of them are among my most sexually conservative friends and loved ones, because having a communicable bodily medical
condition can stem from arbitrary bad luck. How they break the news to partners is usually adapted to each person, but the wide commonality seems to be this: When you’re disclosing what you have, do it prior to your first bone-a-thon, and do it with levity.

You can approach your medical status in a roundabout way by relaying an anecdote about a time an alarmist person in your life misunderstood the implications of your STI and saying, “I know this is the first you’re hearing about this, by the way, and we can talk about it whenever you want.” Or you can be direct and frank, like the person who paused and told me he had HPV when we were kissing all up on each other. As long as you say SOMETHING, you are doing the right thing. Go with whatever feels most natural and comfortable.

The person on the receiving end might not know much about your condition, and will likely have questions for you about it. Answer them, maintaining the cheery “This aspect of my medical history doesn’t spell grim doom for my entire sexual future and is just a part of my life!” tone that you will keep in place throughout this conversation. They have the right to do whatever they feel is best for them—and it’s not a commentary on your sexual fitness either way. I’m inclined to feel that if someone chooses not to find a compromising position (in all ways) that avoids contact with the affected areas, they should be, if anyone, the ones in this encounter worried about being judged. But, again, everyone has the right to call the shots about their own bodies. If you’re ever asked, in this way, to be your own anatomical referee: Don’t be the horse’s ass who bug outs when someone gives you medical news. Be calm and empathetic. (As ever.)

CAUTIONARY MEASURES

It’s not stodgy or prim to defend/remove your fine ass from sexual goings-on if your emotional or bodily safety is ever at stake. This advice goes for all people, of all genders, about all people, of all
genders. I know plenty of hulking straight dudes who have been taken advantage of by women, gay girls who have been preyed on by gay girls, and have heard stories firsthand about assault that took place between so many other permutations of identities out there. This is a concern for all people, not just women and non-binary people. (But it’s particularly relevant to women and non-binary people, whom are not as legally well-protected or granted as much credibility as straight cis dudes.) Acknowledging this does not make you a pearls-clutching alarmist. I really and truly believe that most of the people you “get to know” over the course of a well-executed sexual career will be cool to you. It’s
still
better to be thoroughly reassured that you’re keeping your wits about you all the way through (especially if you’re a woman, queer, and/or trans). If you do, you can go about your mission(ary position) with even more confidence and ease.

There have been times when I didn’t know how to functionally advocate for myself, but even if I had: Situations in which I have been hurt tend to arrange themselves in a sequence that looks preventable only in hindsight. I have no idea what I could have changed about them, but am certain that any sexual disrespect I’ve taken is not mine to feel guilty about.

At twenty-one, I was eager about the prospect of having sex with a few people during a five-day tropical vacation, but I didn’t expect what I thought was a coup on the first night out: My sister Laura and I met twin brothers—fraternal, but the degree to which they were gorgeous was identical—at the bar off the casino. As they bought drinks and led us to the dance floor, Laura leaned over to me and whispered, “We’ve gotta keep an eye on these Suit Brothers,” as if that weren’t a priori OBVIO from the minute they Armani-Exchanged across our line of vision.

One was named Rafa and the other Juanpablo, a name spit as one fused word from the mouth of a sharper-featured, suaver iteration of his bro. JP landed a few sly compliments as we spoke—“You know? You look like you have a spotlight on you even though it is dark in here. Would you like to light up the beach
with me?” (This is obviously too schmaltzified for life, but like I said: godlike face.) Since I was already wearing my bikini in the club because I believe in dressing for success in all moments, I accepted the invitation.

We strolled not to the shore—since hair, as we know, is not actually effulgent, it seemed risky to meander down to a blackened beach in another country with a strange Suit Brother, even for this unflappable wearer of bathing suits in the club. I suggested we opt for one of the well-lit pools on the resort grounds, which was shallow and featured an inlaid mosaic of stars. I boned him right there on that subaqueous cosmos. This might sound pretty Harlequin-novel, thus far in my story: a spontaneous encounter with a rakish, continental stranger in a luxury pool in a different country with mad stars both under my butt and above my head! It sure felt novelistic: I was so romantically self-possessed and free!

Then he punched me in the face.

The stars multiplied again from the impact. Before they dissipated, I had already hauled off and clocked him right back, and the velocity at which my fist connected with his geometric jaw surprised me, but not as much as it did him. Uncertain of what came next in this diversion from the story line, we froze.

“Why did you hit me like that? You didn’t even ask!” he sputtered, running a chlorine-wet hand over his chin. “Funny—I know exactly the feeling, dude,” I said flatly.

JP looked mortified as I continued: “Did you really think that was going to fly? You have to make sure it’s okay with someone before you do that, fuckface, no matter how spontaneous and rough things seem.” He apologized. I didn’t.

Should something like this ever happen to you: If you feel endangered, or like what you’re physically comfortable with has been dismissed in favor of the other person’s pleasure,
get out of that situation
. If you told that person no, in any capacity, about something that they did anyway, you can report them to whatever authorities you can: police; security if you’re in a place that has it; a league of friends-and-family street vigilantes.

Some of us don’t feel that they can report sexual assault, and I understand that. The fucked-up thing about reporting sexual assault, violence, or rape is that, in some cases, those responsible for upholding the law will not help you, even if you report what happened “perfectly,” which is a fallacy that means “within a certain time frame, and under certain conditions.” If you can report without feeling dysfunctionally worse, persecuted, and/or scared, it’s still worth doing: If nothing else, it most likely puts the grime-hole who hurt you on official record as having this complaint against them, which will make it less difficult to nail this person if it should ever happen again, to you or someone else.

You are not obligated to traumatize yourself in order to “do the right thing” and alert the authorities if someone has done you harm. If you feel you’ll be put at risk, or even just unsettled, if others know what happened, or if you’re worried that, as is bitterly the case for many victims of sexual assault, your assailant’s denial or even social reputation might be the one people are inclined to side with over your real account of what went down: You have the right to remain silent. And I’m sorry, and hope you can confide in someone who loves you, plus a good therapist, if you feel that would be helpful.

Someone doesn’t have to hit you in order to make you feel unsafe or otherwise freaked out about sex, of course, and that lack of violence doesn’t correspond to a lack of validity in terms of your gross feelings about what’s happening. I was not made by dominant physical force to have non-consensual sex, the two times that’s happened. (I have been pretty lucky, which is an amazing thing to say about being raped twice. “It was only twice! Gee, that’s almost as good as winning the lottery that many times!”)

Once, someone I trusted took advantage of me in my own home when I was supremely trashed. His best friend, my boyfriend, was asleep in our bed one room away. The other time, as a teenage person, I was berated into doing something I didn’t want to. I “acquiesced” to that boyfriend’s physical advances because I was stoned and found it cumbersome to keep repeating “no” and
moving his hand off of, then out of, the fly of my jeans. I didn’t consider it “real” rape because he wasn’t aggressively forceful with me. No bruises? I must have wanted it after all, even though I verbally reprised over and over that I didn’t. Everyone owes it to themselves to trust their feelings and decisions far more than that.

How can you tell if some malcontent’s intentions for you are dangerous or don’t account for you as an equal person? Well, sometimes you can’t. There’s no use, or logic, in beating yourself up in those cases: YEAH, YOU ARE HORRIBLE AND IN THE WRONG FOR NOT GUESSING THAT SOMETHING THAT IS USUALLY EXCITING AND WONDERFUL WAS GOING TO BE USED TO HURT YOU BY A CRETINOUS SPIT GLOB. Something to bellow from deep where I know it in the soles of my feet to the tiny split ends Alfalfa-ing off the top of my head right now: You are never accountable for another person’s abuse of your trust. If something happens to you, the shame of that should only shackle the person who chose it.

While staying super-aware of what’s going on might help reduce the risk of your being hurt, no amount of self-defense and -awareness is infallible. Protecting yourself doesn’t extend only to deciding not to skip merrily down dark alleyways at 3 a.m. while high. (If you did decide to do that, you STILL wouldn’t deserve to be hurt.) Sexual assault and rape, the majority of the time, are the work of someone the victim knows or is even close with. Recall how only one of those three times I was violated did I not know the person to be “a really good guy” or “my actual high school sweetheart of many years.”

Still: Even if I sound like a super-herb, it’s so important to try your best to look out for yourself even if the situations at hand (or junk) aren’t palpably dangerous. This has meant that after returning from my island getaway, I behave like I’m being paid to be my own armed guard.

Please do not do what I did and blithely remain fixed on the arm of anyone trying to lead you to an isolated, indeterminate place, even if it’s ostensibly a public one, for
at least
your first few encounters.
Of course that dude didn’t want to have an oh-so-sensuous shoreside sand-everywhere tropical lover’s tryst! If he had been considering my position at all in the slightest, he would have thought,
Man, it would be really predatory-seeming of me to ask her to a big, anonymous beach after dark when she’s far from home and doesn’t know me from Adam! Let me figure out someplace she’ll feel safer.
I mean, I was able to come up with a less nebulous sexual landscape (or so I thought, but at least I had chosen it) in an instant after rejecting his first spot; plus, we were both with our siblings, whom we could have easily given the number of the room we were going to and told, “I’ll check in by X time, and if I don’t, come up.” (This is exactly what Laura did with Suit Bro. #2, and she was fine.)