Well
kids, October is here and that means school will
be starting up again. As I kiss my summer contingent
of piggish beer-swilling college trollops goodbye,
I realize that unless I join Frank in combing the
downtown streets for wayward high-school urchinettes,
I'll be forced to rejoin Portland's incestuous singles
scene. Everybody I know has fucked everybody I know,
and I'm loath to climb back onto the sexual Mobius
strip.
I was thinking back to my own carefree college days
recently. Even back then the campus was no Elysian
field of virginal co-eds who smelled of rose petals.
Pregnancies and the rude awakening of that first painful
burning with the morning's urination were common among
my classmates. Since I was the requisite campus pre-med
nerd, I was privy to many of these disasters. True,
I never got laid, but I did learn how to make meth
in my organic chemistry class--but that's another
story.
In retrospect, however, I realize that while part
of the fun was tormenting friends after a night of
snuggling with Itchy the ugly campus floozie, many
of them could have been well-served by a short talk
about the kinds of foul things that infested the human
Petri-dishes they were dipsticking. At my school most
guys focused on rugby rather than the technical mastery
and operation of the condom. And it caused a lot of
grief.
Dark thoughts of STD's weighed heavily on my mind
one particularly dark night this summer and I decided
that it would be a good idea to put together a basic
primer on some of the more horrid diseases that parties
share when making the beast with two backs. Now all
of you Gen-Xers, Gen-Ys, rich-kids-playing-hippies
and other hipster-pukes need to pay attention. There
are no grades being given on this material; it is
pass/fail. I also know that only half of you will
read the course material prior to the first time you
piss fire and pus, knock up some tawdry bar whore,
or find a herpes blister on your gear, so don't say
I didn't warn you.
I'll concentrate on the biggies. For an added bonus,
you can see which celebrities are afflicted. It adds
an aspect of shabby nobility and coolness to these
diseases if you share them with a famous person, I
suppose.
HIV:
aka "Big Nasty"
After
a decade of decline, HIV infections are on the rise
again. 
Joy.
Didn't you dumbfucks take it seriously the first time
around?
HIV is transmitted via blood and body fluids (semen,
vaginal fluids). Rare cases of oral transmission have
been reported. It is 20 times easier for a man to
give a woman HIV. It is also easier to transmit HIV
via anal sex versus vaginal sex. HIV is not spread
through casual contact or mosquito bites.
Symptoms: Flu-like symptoms occur 3-6 weeks after
exposure. Antibodies to HIV appear in the bloodstream
about 4-8 weeks after the infection. After a possible
HIV exposure, blood tests to confirm the infection
are done at time zero, one month and three months.
A person has to seroconvert, or in simpler terms,
generate the blood-borne markers for HIV that the
lab scans for. This takes time.
Cure: None. Expensive cocktails of several different
antiviral medications aim to decrease the "viral load"
or number of viral particles in the tissues. This
helps to preserve long-term immune function and hopefully
forestall full-blown AIDS. When the immune system
is under less pressure from direct attack by the HIV
virus, the host is obviously in better health.
Celebrity
Coolness Factor=9.5
Famous
Victims: Rock Hudson, Liberace, John Holmes, Arthur
Ashe, Freddie Mercury, Magic Johnson
Herpes:
aka "The gift that keeps on giving" 
Genital
Herpes is caused by the Herpes Simples Virus II (HSV
II). One out of four adults has it. 80% of those who
have it are unaware of it. Herpes victims shed live
virus all of the time, even when they don't have the
painful burning blisters and ulcerations on their
genitals. It's five to twelve times easier for a man
to give it to a woman, and transmission is possible
even when condoms are used. There are no documented
cases of a person catching herpes from a toilet seat
or surface such as a brass pole. However, cases of
oral herpes (HSV I) transmitted to the genital region
via oral sex are increasingly common.
Cure: None. Antiviral medication must be taken
at the onset of symptoms, which occur almost monthly
in some individuals.
Test: Expensive blood tests are available, but
a new finger-stick blood test is available as well.
Celebrity
Coolness Factor=3
Famous
Victims: Every French girl has it, so that means
the chick from Amélie and the No Talents
and the nice clean-cut college guy you fucked after
he backpacked around Europe.
Chlamydia
The
most common bacterial STD in the U.S., just edging
out gonorrhea. Usually infection is first detected
by painful urination, a mucous-like discharge and
itching. Diagnosis is made by jamming a swab up the
male urethra or swabbing the inside of the vaginal
vault. Chlamydia can persist in the female genital
tract for months without producing symptoms. Since
the infection is "silent" in some women, long-term
complications such as impaired fertility are a risk.
Treatment:
Usually a round of antibiotics will take care
of this, but resistance to current medication is evolving.
Celebrity
Coolness Factor=4
Famous
Victims: The Girl Next Door
Gonorrhea:
aka
"the clap" 
This
is chlamydia's little brother. While it is the second-most
common bacterial STD in the U.S., it ranks above chlamydia
in other parts of the world. Symptoms include painful
urination, redness around the penis or vagina, and
a thick discharge of pus. Like chlamydia, gonorrhea
can extend out of the vagina and into the upper female
reproductive tract in about 15% of women, leading
to rare long-term complications. Gonorrhea can also
cause infections in the mouth and throat in those
engaging in oral sex with an infected partner.
Diagnosis:
Samples are collected as with chlamydia. Most
clinics routinely test for each pathogen.
Treatment:
Antibiotics can treat Da Clap fairly effectively.
Celebrity
Coolness Factor=5
Famous
Victims: That guy in that band who works at that
bar.
Syphilis
Caused
by the same family of microorganisms that cause Lyme
disease. Referred to as Spirochetes (spy-ro-keets),
these guys are spiral-shaped and propel themselves
by rotating like propellers. In the U.S. it is most
commonly seen in black and Hispanic men from urban
areas.
Syphilis has three stages. The first stage manifests
on the genitals as a painless blister that then forms
an ulcer. Lymph nodes in the groin area will often
swell up, but are also painless. The lack of pain
helps differentiate syphilis from herpes. In the later
stages of untreated syphilis, nasty rashes occur all
over the body. In the third stage, the disease can
attack the heart and nervous system.
Diagnosis is made by blood tests or by examining a
sample under a special microscope.
Treatment:
1.2 million units of Penicillin G in each butt-cheek.
Celebrity
Coolness Factor=2 (due to it being an old school
disease)
Famous
Victims: Paul Gauguin, Al Capone, Scott Joplin,
Nietzsche, Charles Baudelaire, Oscar Wilde, Isak Dinesen,
Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann
Pubic
Lice: aka "crabs" 
The most benign, but one of the most disturbing. These
nasty little fellows infest the pubic hairs and the
adult nits are visible as they clamber and scurry
about. Itchy blue rashes in the genital area measuring
2-3mm in diameter are common. Crabs are easily spread
through infected clothing or sexual contact.
Treatment:
The critters are easily killed using a topical
cream, but all infected clothing and objects must
be sterilized with heat. Clothes and linens must be
put in a dryer at 65šC for 30 minutes, and combs,
brushes and other objects must be boiled at 65šC
for five minutes or soaked in insecticide for one
hour.
Celebrity Coolness Factor=7.5
Famous Victims: Questions remain whether or not
he's a sufferer, but the Midnight Enquirer
reports that Charlton Heston's dying wish was to be
reincarnated as, yup, you guessed it, pubic lice.
Here endeth the basic STD guide. Granted, you should
know that there are a myriad of other horrible things
that are sexually transmitted, some of which are still
incurable like Hepatitis B and C and small screaming
children. Use some common sense, demand blood tests
from a new partner, or at the very least use a condom.
Above all, realize that the maxim that says once you
fuck somebody, you've fucked everybody they've fucked
is true. Hammer that one home the next time you're
drunk and lustily eyeballing that person across the
quad. But most importantly, don't come bitching to
me when your own stupidity gets you into trouble,
and stay away from anyone I'm fucking.
