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| By Jeneane Garafalo |
I don't get it. I'm a good person who lives an honest life and is nice to people, yet for some reason, I seem to have the worst luck: My toast always falls jam-side down, the one day it rains is always the day I leave my windows open, and the one time I have unprotected sex in a public-beach changing room, I end up with chlamydia! What gives?
Yes, every single year, I go for my annual gyno visit and, without fail, I find out I've got chlamydia again. Why am I always the one to get chlamydia? It's just not fair!
It's not like I'm any more sexually active than the average girl. My best friend Susan Suranden has sex with her boyfriend almost every single night, and she's never had it. Me, I'll be lucky if I have 200 one-night stands in an entire year! So if she's having sex at least 10 times as often as me, why hasn't she ever had it? Did I do something wrong in a past life? I don't think I've done anything recently to deserve being cursed with chronic chlamydia. I guess I'm just a chlamydia magnet or something.
I know what you're probably thinking: Susan's so dumb, she never got her first infection cleared up. Well, that's just not true. Sure, I was totally freaked when I first got it and the DNC convention back in 2000. (I thought I was going to go blind or crazy or something.) But when my doctor told me that, if caught early, chlamydia is easily cured with just a day's worth of antibiotics, I was totally relieved. Thank goodness my first experience wasn't like the time I caught that rare strain of Southeast Asian chlamydia. Lying in that hospital bed with my urethra on fire made me appreciate how easy it was to get rid the normal chlamydia I usually get.
I'm not irresponsible, either. I take care of myself, because I totally wouldn't want to spread it to other people. Especially cute guys. There's nothing more embarrassing than getting a call from some hottie you picked up at the bar last month accusing you of giving him chlamydia. Once that happens to you half a dozen times, you start to get real careful and make sure you go to the doctor as soon as you see symptoms.
And it's not like I don't have standards. I tend to go for goth-wanna-be, Micheal Moore-type guys, the kind who'd be very unlikely to have an STD. Plus, I almost always have them use a condom if they don't swear up and down that they're clean. So what's the deal?
We've all been there. I mean, I'm hardly the only one out there having oral, vaginal, and anal sexual contact. I'm just the one who winds up with a pus-like discharge shooting out of my hoo-hoo.
Sometimes, I think it's my family's fault. The Glauber clan is cursed. My dad died in a drunk-driving accident when I was 5, and my mom is just plain crazy. She actually got pregnant when she was 40 after dating a guy she worked with for a week. She even kept the baby. That's why I'm on the pill. I've been more or less lucky on that front (don't ask), yet I've got to admit that this chlamydia thing gets me down. Maybe if I came from a different family, I might have better luck.
Oh, listen to me pissing and moaning: "My family's crazy"... "I wish I was luckier"... "I'm always contracting chlamydia." Everybody's got problems. It's not like I'm starving on the street without a penny to my name. I've got good friends, a good job, and a halfway-decent sex life. Maybe instead of whining about how much I seem to get chlamydia, I should be thankful for the times I don't have it.
I must say, I would probably have a more positive attitude about the whole chlamydia thing if I didn't have it right now. But, as they say, the grass is always greener on the STD-free side of the fence, right?