Actually, I've never had an STD. For years, though, I thought that I had.
Listen, and I'll tell.
Early Spring and oh, I had the Itch.
Literally. I would lay in bed at night and cry because I couldn't sleep, so badly did I itch.
Finally, I dragged my sorry, sleep-deprived ass in to the clinic. The doctor didn't even bother to examine me. You could see the wheels of homophobia turning in his smug-ass head as he assessed me.
Gay guy, itch: must be venereal, right?
Scabies, he diagnosed.
As I was leaving the exam room, he leaned forward, fixed me with his eye, and said, in the smuggest, smarmiest possible voice: “And have a blessed Easter.”
Yeah, you too, nazz, and the horse you rode in on.
I schmeered on the prescribed goop, and a week or two later, all was well.
So for years I thought that I'd had scabies.
More the fool, me.
You wouldn't know it from our reputation, but in Winter, the North is a desert.
Deep Winter. With prolonged cold, the air loses all moisture. For all the snow on the ground, it's dry, dry, dry, and all the hot showers in the world won't put back what the cold sucks away.
Some survival strategies as we make our annual journey through the High Desert of Deep Winter.