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'Herpes: the great icebreaker!'
It's a balmy Sunday afternoon and I am sitting at a sidewalk café having a latte with a guy I met just twenty minutes ago discussing the blisters he gets on his penis. Herpes, you just gotta love it for breaking down the barriers and getting straight into the intimate stuff!
A year ago I couldn't imagine even talking about a man's penis to a virtual stranger, let alone asking him the most intimate questions about it. Now it's pretty much a common occurrence. Learning to live with this pesky little virus has given me a thirst for knowledge that I just can't seem to satisfy. I have read books and websites, chatted online and off, and still I never tire of hearing about how other people get through this ordeal.
Some people believe that the shame is the hardest thing to deal with but that's not the case for me. I contracted genital herpes the usual way, by having sex, and I have never been ashamed of having sex with someone I love so I don't see any reason to be ashamed of catching a virus that way.
It's the physical symptoms that get to me. They say it gets better with time, but I'm still waiting for that to happen. I take antivirals and I live in the hope that one day I will not need to depend on them. Right now every time I stop taking them I get an outbreak within a few days. Maybe I am a wimp but I just can't handle the pain of the blisters. I get them across my butt and it's pretty hard to disguise the fact that something's up when you can't sit down without wincing. Everyone at work probably thinks I've got piles.
So, back to the latte. I just met Bob a little while ago and we're having an in-depth conversation about his symptoms. Herpes is so tricky, with symptoms varying so much that it's so easy to not be aware of it, or mistake it for something else. I thought mine was some kind of a rash because it comes up like little red bumps at first which then turn into blisters. For Bob it was kind of the same; he first noticed it in a sweltering summer and thought it was sweat pimples. He didn't think about it being anything more serious until the season changed and he was still getting them, so he had his doctor check them out.
A few others have arrived now and intros and coffee orders are going round. Coming along to these monthly meetings has helped me heaps, but it's not all about satisfying my curiosity, it's also about helping others too. I know how hard it is to go to your first meeting; to actually talk in person with someone about your spots 'down there'. It makes me feel good when I can welcome someone new to the group and help them through that, "Oh my God, what did I ever do to deserve this?" stage.
We're all just ordinary people, it's just the luck of the draw. Yeah, I wish I didn't have it, but I would never go back and delete that part of my life because the love and happiness (and yes, the sex too) was definitely worth it!
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