Valtrex

     I've been with a lot of men sexually but I've reserved actual sex for the only two people I've actually loved. I did this on purpose to protect myself from HIV and STDS.  Unfortunately both of them gave me an incurable and painful disease.  Brian gave me herpes.  Well, it's just a cold soar on my lip that appears once or twice a year when I'm stressed out or extremely pissed off, but there is always some ass hole out there that feels the need to tell you, as if you don't already know, that cold soars are a form of herpes.   Usually it's my brother.  Somehow whenever my cold soar decides to grace the world with it's shimmery puss, my brother Nick, is always there to yell, "YOU HAVE HERPES" and then laugh until I either cry or kick him in the shin.  But I can't remember the last time I called Nick by his name, as his permanent nick-name is Dyke, so I guess we're even now. Then there is Cow, he gave me MERSA, a highly contagious staff infection that is resistant to antibiotics and causes huge boils to form where small cuts used to be. 
      I spent the better part of my morning preforming yet another surgery on myself.  Digging into and draining a MERSA infection that is slowly taking over my leg.  Holding back tears I couldn't help but feel slightly irate in blaming Cow and Brian for their permanent scars on my body.  As if they hadn't already ripped my heart out, cut it up, poured lemon juice on it, and put it back barely beating; I now have to be reminded of them every time I get a cold soar or an abominable boil. 
     I remember the exact moment I acquired the cold soar virus.  Brian was taking care of me when I had mono.  I got fired from my job at Kohls because I hadn't been able to get out of bed or even make it to the toilet before puking for three weeks, much less be able to handle standing behind a register answering questions about the early bird sail and weather or not the senior discount would be applied in addition to it.  I was utterly dependent on Brian to be my mother, my lover, and my pay check; a responsibility that will destroy a partners desire to make love or want to touch you.  Not to mention the perpetual stream of boogers that were cascading from my nostrils and the smell of sickness that permeated through our room with the intensity of a fingernail polish and gasoline cocktail.  Brian hadn't touched me in almost a month before I started feeling better.
     I mustered the energy to clean the bedroom, take a shower, and sort of style my hair while I waited for him to come home from work.  When he arrived I was fully dressed, something neither of us had seen in quite a while, and I thought this would excite him.  I tried to kiss him but he turned his head and my lips softly landed on his cheeks, where they stayed in disbelief for a few moments.  "I have a cold soar Ryan, I can't kiss you until it's gone."  I looked at him as if he just told me he rode a tricycle home from work.  I remembered from health class in high school, from which I had just barely graduated,  they showed a plethora of pictures containing blistered genitalia, dying aids victims, infected vagina's and a long list of famous people who have died from syphilis.  Never had I heard of a cold soar, and it didn't appear to be as awful or as repulsive as the pictures I'd seen in school.  "Who gives a shit!" I said, planting a big smooch on his big herpe blister.  It felt like the big kiss in Funny Girl where Nicky Arnstein lays one on Fanny Brice in the solitude of a rented out dinner room in a high end hotel.  I could practically hear the string instruments roar in the ferocity of that kiss.  He pulled back though, cutting the off the violin right before the crescendo of climax and he said, "Ryan, you don't get it, I have a cold soar and I don't want you to get it." 
     He was right, I didn't get it.  I didn't get it a week later when I felt a tingling sensation in my lower lip accompanied by a throbbing blister.  I didn't get it when I went to the doctor and tested positive for herpes simplex 1 - that's the technical term for cold soars - and I didn't get it when our relationship ended, his mark on my body did not.  When I met Cow, I had just received a clean bill of health from the doctor.  I don't know why but a negative HIV result makes me horny.  It's like I know I'm clean, and I want to share that with the world, which is exactly how to not stay clean.  I know this, but seeing a negative gets me so excited I practically roll into the gay bars on my back in a gynecologist's table, feet in stirrups and all.  So needless to say, when I met Cow I was ready to get down.  And we did within hours of meeting, going against my morals that required love for sex.  I just figured we'd fall in love later, and we did.  The following week, I forced Cow to get an HIV test so I could have the comfort of knowing I wasn't sleeping with a disease bucket.  I practically had to coat his pillow in chloroform in order to get him to stop protesting.  I swear to God he couldn't have been a bigger bitch about it, but like everything else in that relationship one of us reluctantly caved to appease the other. 
     Turns out Cow didn't have HIV but what he did have was advanced MERSA.  "Holy shit Ryan, you have to get over here, there is a huge boil on my armpit and it's about to pop!" He screamed into my phone while I was at work.  Luckily I rarely did my job and I was my own boss who made my own hours, so I left my office and dove thirty miles to Cow.  "Don't you dare pop that son of a bitch until I get there or I swear to God I'll shove everything back in there and make you pop it again!"  Cow's armpit looked like someone shoved a white egg underneath his skin, coupled with a tuft of armit hair it looked like a crowning baby.  I should mention that I've had an infatuation for popping pimples since I started getting them on my back in 8th grade.  My skin cleared up when I turned 20 so it's rare that I get to enjoy popping them on my body these days.  When I saw Cow's boil, I fell in love.  I watched in glorious horror as he drained the monster, I even helped.  It was a mystery to me then, that weeks later I had a similar boil on my thigh.  It wasn't until Cow got an inection in his nose that we went to the hospital and discovered he had a staff infection called MERSA and that it was highly contagious.
     His face was swollen like a balloon, and I tried to make him laugh by pretending to be a doctor and inspect him while we waited for the real doctor, who judging by the rate at which she was taking to help us, had no legs and misplaced her wheel chair.  I took humiliating pictures of him with my new i-phone, and we both laughed harder than we did at the Kathy Griffen concert we went to a year prior.  This is when I loved Cow the most.  I wasn't even mad that he had given me MERSA, I was just happy to be sitting by his side at the hospital.  I hate to admit it, but it's one of the best memories I have with him.  Almost as much as I hate to admit that I have herpes.