InDefenseOfGettingOff's Blog

I knew I had to do the responsible thing and confront the guy directly, although I don’t like going to people with unsubstantiated claims about medical problems that don’t even exist on the internet. I figured it didn’t make sense for me to get tested; the potential disease was on his side of the condom, so I had to go to the source.

Approaching the source at an appropriate time was more difficult than I had imagined. I wanted to pitch the story in person because somehow it felt more safe and responsible that way. If someone thought I had a disease, I would not want the news to be transmitted via text message. I guess the way I really felt about the situation is that telling someone in person is more intimate and almost suggests that you are not rejecting them, not angry, etc. Even if he did have a disease that he potentially exposed me to, provided that he was getting checked out regularly as he claimed, it wasn’t his fault. STDs do not discriminate, just like the flu, strep throat, and mono do not discriminate; STDs are simply more stigmatized as per our society’s puritanical treatment of sex. I was a willing participant and knew the risk. It could have just as easily happened the other way around.

The next time I saw him was on his birthday, but I didn’t want to be like, “Happy Birthday! Hope it’s a memorable one! By the way, I think your penis is leaking blood. I came to this conclusion last week when I disposed of a condom that we used approximately one month ago.” I got a late night phone call from him weeks later, but it was clearly a booty call and I didn’t want to mislead him into thinking he was getting laid when all I would be laying down was the bad news and a suggested game plan. Think of the disappointment he would have faced had I allowed him to get that look in his eye signifying that he was no longer listening to me, thinking he was seconds away from sticking his dick in me, when in reality he was days away from having a swab shoved up his urethra. I planned to spare him the additional pain; I hate to be the bearer of bad news.

Finally it got to the point where my not telling him was becoming irresponsible—reckless, even—considering the amount of girls I assumed he was sleeping with. One night he booty called me and I was like, ‘That’s it; I’m not calling him back tonight because I don’t want to get his hopes up, but I’m taking care of this tomorrow and calling him early enough in the day so it’s not implicitly a booty call.’ I followed through and asked if he wanted to hang out that night. He said probably; he was busy then but would call me later when he was free. I went out with my friends in his neighborhood and waited with anticipation as the night winded down. No phone call. More waiting. Prepared to break the bad news, I called him and asked if he was home. He said yes, but he didn’t invite me over immediately, which was out of character. I asked if he had company. He said no, but he was going to soon: some girl he was casually seeing.

Disappointing: I have been shelved as the booty call of a guy with orange semen. I asked if he wanted to hang out sometime soon. He said yes, he would call. So I started walking home, thinking the night was a bust, until he called me back. He asked me how I was getting home, and when I said I was walking, he asked if I was still in his area. He sketchily met me on his corner, and I assumed we were going out for a drink. He was high as shit. I figured that would temper the pain. He invited me back to his place, and as we walked up the stairs, he played a little game of grab ass. Great, so he was in good spirits; I could let him down gently. He staged things as if we were about to hook up, which was weird because he was still expecting his company, and I was going to have to leave when she texted him. Did he expect to fuck two girls in one night? That is quite ambitious for a guy with orange semen. Maybe his semen has super powers and he is the male version of Alex Mack. Maybe he can turn into a puddle and spy on people. Sweet!

He turned on his music and faced me square on. I told him we had to talk. It was time for the talk. I’m not sure what he expected, but even in his high stupor, I’m sure he didn’t expect something good. I pitched the story the best I could. He said that he got checked out regularly and indicated that he was in disbelief. I explained that I knew he got tested regularly, so did I, but there had been many sexual partners since my last test as I’m sure there had been since his; these things happen. I said that if someone came to me with similar news, I would immediately make certain nothing was wrong with me. More disbelief. Granted, this went better than last time I was part of an STD scare—a scam. At least this time no one was blaming me and calling me a whore. Denial sometimes looks so peachy, I mean, orange.

I laid down the facts one last time. I explained that I knew it was his semen because I hadn’t had sex with anyone else in my room since the last time we had sex in my room, that the condom was with his Skyn condom wrapper, and that the garbage was practically empty so nothing could have contaminated it. His argument was a cogent one: He said that he sees himself come frequently and nothing is wrong with it. Understood, but as I argued, he didn’t let his cum sit for a month pending reexamination. Often I left condoms in my garbage can for extended periods of time, but this was the only case in which semen left untouched turned orange. I pleaded with him to at least consider the possibility that something could be wrong. In a last ditch effort to understand his resistance, I asked, “Do you think I am making this up? Why would I have a reason to? I’m not really enjoying this conversation.” He said that he believed me and what I saw and didn’t think I was lying, but if that was what I saw, something else must have been going on.” Something else? Like, supernatural? Oh, obstinacy. Well, I couldn’t say I didn’t try.

His “company” called from downstairs, and we had an awkward exchange where I asked if he wanted me to leave and asked if I would bump into her on my way out and he asked if that would be weird. Not weirder than discovering orange semen. I was a little confused about the whole situation and didn’t think we were quite done with our conversation, not that I didn’t want to be.

The next day he called and left a message apologizing for being an idiot. I have received many a message from him containing similar words. But I accepted this one as particularly conciliatory, and I was glad that he was mature enough to not let a little bloody semen get in between us.

I returned his call the day after that, and he invited me to go to the movies with him. I appreciated the sentiment—the effort. But the movies—really? What do people who aren’t fucking do? What do people do besides fuck? This conundrum begs that question.

I woke up to the faint trace of his musky man scent, a sore but satisfied vagina, and some drippy condoms to dispose of.

Weeks later something horrifying happened: I went to empty my bedroom trash can because I was expecting company. I never ever empty my bedroom trash can because I never produce enough garbage in my bedroom to warrant trash can emptying. The emptier a trash can, the more obvious it is full of used condoms. I try to avoid having guys see other guys’ semen, because it’s just gross. Taking this precaution is a step above washing your sheets and a step below washing your body on the scale from decency to indecency. I have some decency.

As expected, there was that fucking awful used-condom smell: the fermentation of semen and synthetic. But when I unstuck a condom from the bottom of my garbage can, I was accosted by something else: orangeness. I held it up to the light: distinctly orange semen. Unsure of what to make of it, but totally fucking repulsed, I needed to dispose of it immediately. In the incinerator room, I held it up to the light one more time just to make sure: definitively orange. The kind of orange that could potentially be the mixture of red and yellow. I mean, that’s how you make orange. Exhaustively, I thought of all the potential things that could turn semen orange, and I kept returning to that one: blood.

Frantically, I googled “orange semen,” “bloody semen,” and “blood in semen.” Fuck, I should have known this would happen: the eventual transmission of disease. Or, at least, the presentation of diseased body parts or infected bodily secretions. He is a bigger whore than even I am—a fact of which I was shocked to learn. I assumed that if a guy is a whore, he has slept with fewer people than I’ve slept with because it is so much easier for a girl. But he has an easy advantage over me: He is a serial cheater. Had I cheated on recent boyfriends, for sure, I would be caught up to him.

Unfortunately, there are few questions and even fewer answer online pertaining to discolored semen.

http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/457632-overview

The best source I could find essentially says that blood in semen could be a symptom of any and every urinary, reproductive, or prostate problem in existence. The internet was no help. Not even a poem to raise my spirits. Where are the artists and medical professionals when I need them? The perverts? Anyone? All I learned from my research was that bloody semen could be benign or could be something serious. Thanks for nothing, purportedly endless information source.

Last time was emblematic of why we are sexually perfect for each other despite not being attracted to each other: We are co-conspirators.

I called him late at night and he got the point. It was mutually understood that we would pull an Andy Greustein and not talk before we fucked. After all, I had been waiting around for him all night, distracting myself from getting off. We made out and it was hot as per our dynamic where he holds me down but I’m not scared because I trust him, because we are both sexual absurdities—sexual narcissists engaging in a balancing act between vanity and pragmatism. Our fucks are proof that we are mature—mature enough to let our bodies prevail in the battle against enormous egos.

I bent under my bed to reach for a condom and he stopped me abruptly: “Can we try something new?” Why, of course. He reached for a bag and it hadn’t occurred to me that something new could involve an object—a prop. As he unsheathed it he began a story, the kind of story that starts with “My friend…” and ends with something he is secretly into, except it was really about a friend and the surprise was just another box of condoms.

They are the new Skyn non-latex condoms. They are made out of polyisoprene. I happen to know all about them because I am a huge sexual health dork and just printed out a spreadsheet with all the different condom materials approved in various countries that are way more politically advanced than the US. I figure we must have a latex lobby and that is why we are so behind. I ponder what latex lobbyists would wear to a meeting with Congress. I suppose they dissuade the FDA from approving of new materials with their power of sexiness. No wonder the government has its summer recess: The latex lobbyists could never survive the heat.

http://www.fhi.org/en/RH/Pubs/booksReports/latexcondom/index.htm
http://www.fhi.org/en/RH/Pubs/booksReports/latexcondom/nonlatexcon.htm

I interrupted him to clarify that we were, in fact, having storytime as a prelude to sex. A nice interlude like taking out a guitar and breaking into song by a campfire. Our sexual encounters were pretty clumsy and routine anyway, so storytime was a welcome distraction. His story ended in “My friend swears by these.”

Okay, so condoms that you can actually feel the other person through. What a novel invention. I was skeptical but it seemed at least as good as our other option. I made a mental note to smell them. But then I forgot. I’m not sure if it was just the placebo effect, but he came substantially quicker. Which is good because normally our sex is boring and is exciting for a minute or two but gets old quickly when I realize it is uncoordinated and we aren’t attracted to each other enough to care. He apologized for coming quickly but I shrugged it off and we worked on me. Anyway, hot to see someone in such fervor.

I finished for the night and had already gotten off once before he came over, but as the night winded down and we ended up in bed to go to sleep together, he started groping me again. That’s why I like him: Because I like being groped, and he likes groping, and we have no problem admitting that this is what we like. We’re not above it. And that’s what makes us superhuman. Because we actually act like people and aren’t too good to acknowledge that we are animals and just want to be touched and like naked bodies and rubbing up against them even if we don’t particularly like them. So awesome.

It was a spoony finger and fuck, and it was almost as romantic and clumsy as relationship sex where you can fumble with each other’s bodies mindlessly as if they are your own. I remembered how much I miss having an entreating cock pressed up against my back, rubbing my asshole, parting my lips.

I was turned on again, although tired. We fucked and it became boring and I realized that I was half asleep and wanted to go to sleep, if only I hadn’t ruined my state of being good for sleep. We had a pristine communication where I offered myself unambiguously: “How do you want me?” And he replied incisively: “You want me to wrap this up?”

If you want to put it that way. So he held me down with that crazed, feverish look in his eyes, which is why I love him, and in less than a minute he collapsed into a limp heap of man musk. The expedient way to put it would be: And with a few emphatic thrusts, he was done. A sexual narcissist, he smugly connoted his victory by pronouncing: “I know myself so well.” Confirmed.

The directness was too much for me to handle. I throbbed for more. His self-satisfaction was met with my sheepish announcement that I didn’t know if I would be able to go to sleep without getting off. Fuck, he got me where he wanted me. In that awful place where I was too horny to go to sleep but too tired to get off. I was dependant on him, a slave to my own body.

In a joint-effort extravaganza, we—I, he, and my box full of sex toys—tried to get me off. Exhausted and depleted, after a few minutes I threatened resignation: “I don’t know if I can. I might just be making myself sorer and sorer. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get off. Now is the time when you talk me down.”

I hate defeat and he knows this. He whispered devilishly, seductively: “But you’ll have trouble falling asleep.” Fuck you, temptress. Bad influence. SEXUAL ENABLER. Plotting my scheming, ego-laden self against my best instinct—the impulse to pass out and cut my loses.

It took two vibrators at once, and it was a success if you could call it that. I knocked myself out.