About this time three years ago, I lay on my back, listlessly staring up at the stained and dingy ceiling of the Coleman basement. Both of my roommates had long since drifted off into calm and rejuvenating slumber, leaving me awake and alone in that moonlit dungeon I'd begun to call home. I couldn't sleep, you see, because my mind was alive and raging in dire abandon?recalling dark and sweaty encounters in Chilean discotecas, frivolous lawn romps at graduation parties, steamy hot tub indulgences, and nostalgic tributes to auld lang syne in the back seats of cars. I couldn't sleep because I'd never been tested for sexually transmitted infections.
Never been tested? How could that be, you might ask. Well, let me step back here for just a moment. Despite a certain wealth of sexual experiences prior to entering my first year of college, at the time of my matriculation at Bowdoin I had yet to experience heterosexual penetrative intercourse. Being the na?ve young thing that I was, I had no idea that virgins needed to be tested for sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Luckily, my first-year roommates were two young ladies who had done quite a bit more "first-hand research," shall we say, on the subject; both advised me to get tested as soon as possible despite the fact that I'd never done "it." I had engaged in a whole lot of other "its," which actually were equally risky in terms of contracting an STI. What would I have done, had it not been for my two rather sullied roommates? If not for their cultivated array of sexual experience, I would have continued to wander through life under the blissful assumption that I was entirely clean and clear down there.
Unfortunately, I waited three years after that fateful conversation to get a free screening for STIs at Dudley Coe. Although the test results suggest that I may rest easy in confidence that I have not contracted a lifelong or potentially life-threatening STI, I must admit that my delay in scheduling an appointment for a screening was not only irresponsible to my own health, but to the health of every single person I've come into sexual contact with for the past three years. In other words, I'm lucky. Despite the fact that I was a virgin coming into college, and the fact that any heterosexual penetrative intercourse I've engaged in has been protected, I definitely cannot say the same about my oral encounters. And, I'm willing to bet, a lot of you can't either.
At this point, you're probably thinking, "we've heard the condom talk a million times," or "dental dams are just so awkward" (that is, if you've ever seen a dental dam, which I hadn't until a few months ago when a young man handed me a safe sex package at an underground queer club in Amsterdam). The thing is, safe sex is more than kind of a big deal. Safe sex has more than just leather bound books and an apartment that smells of rich mahogany. It has integrity, honesty, and respect for you and your partner(s). So, if you want to be the "Anchorman" of safe sex (or if you just want to be a healthy and decent human being), getting tested is an important first step. Being aware of what you do or do not have lurking about and scheming in your blood and sexual fluids allows you to protect yourself from contaminating your sex machine with something nasty, and it offers you the opportunity to prevent the spread of whatever undesirable little microbes may be breeding inside of you.
Now, I understand that there are a couple of reasons why someone would not want to get tested. For me, it began with the na?ve assumption that heterosexual virginity made me ineligible to contract or be tested for STIs. Three years ago, I came to know that this is certainly not the case; regardless of your virginity status, if you have ever engaged in unprotected sexual contact you should definitely be tested. Why, then, did I wait so long to be tested if I've known for three years that I should? To this question, I must answer that I have been the victim of fear and denial?two very insidious and, frankly, dangerous character traits when it comes to the subject of testing. By allowing fear and denial to dictate my actions, I put myself and others in danger, and that's not something I'm proud of. Getting tested regularly is the responsibility of anyone who chooses to be sexually active, regardless of what acts they are engaging in or what protection they are using.
As someone who failed to uphold this responsibility for a period of over three years, I want to make clear that I feel incredibly lucky that my test results came back negative. There is no rhyme or reason to this; it all happens by chance and we all know that abstinence is the only way to ensure complete freedom from STIs. In my case, abstinence is no longer an option. I urge you to do your part and get tested. Whatever the results may be, it's better to know now and deal with it than to live in denial and potentially hurt yourself and others. And just remember, if your results come back positive, it doesn't make you a person of any less value. In fact, it makes you just like all the rest of us sexually active people: a victim of chance.