Honey’s Greatest Hits: The Guy Who Said I Gave Him Herpes

This is probably one of my funniest dating stories in retrospect, though it was not funny in the least at the time!  As I mentioned in a recent post, after Lance and I broke up “officially,” I hooked up with two guys in 24 hours.  One of these guys was someone I had known for about 2 years who I had always had something of a mutual crush with.  He was by then working for an academic publishing house, though I’d met him when he was a graduate student in history.  His name was Evan.

Since we’d known each other for some time, and also because he knew I was moving, it was pretty clear (even without telling him all the deets of my recent breakup) that this was a pure hookup situation, NSA sex.  We used a condom, it didn’t break, nothing weird about the encounter at all except he did speak Portuguese fluently and there was a lot of sexy talk I didn’t understand but which turned me on pretty effectively.  A couple of weeks after our date, I moved to Arizona.  Then he called me a month later,

“Is there anything about your sexual past you need to share with me?” were the first words out of his mouth.

“Ummm…no, but I am guessing there is something you’d like to share with me?”

“I have herpes and you’re the only person who could have given it to me.”

Since it had been less than a year since my annual exam and full STD workup, and since Lance was the only guy I’d been with during that time prior to Evan (I slept with the third guy after Evan), I was pretty sure that I couldn’t possibly have given him herpes.  However, now (apparently) there was a pretty significant possibility that he’d given it to me.  After some awkward back-and-forth where I denied having herpes and he insisted that I had diseased him, the phone call ended.

I went to the student health center the very next day, only to be told that if I was not exhibiting any symptoms (which I was not), then I needed a blood test and I would have to wait at least 3 months after my possible exposure before they could be certain that the results were conclusive.  So that pretty much put the brakes on any immediate dating in my new town.  Lame.

But I waited (or, I should say, freaked out on a daily basis and subjected my lady parts to near-constant scrutiny with a hand mirror) and then went in for the blood test after the appropriate amount of time had passed.  The result: I have the cold sore version of the virus (which I knew), but not the genital herpes version of the virus (um…which I also knew).  So, armed with clinical evidence that I was not a dirty whore, I called Evan back.

“Hi, Evan, it’s Honey, I was just calling to let you know that my herpes test came back negative.  I don’t know what to tell you except that it couldn’t possibly have been me that gave it to you, so I guess you’ll have to think a little harder about your recent activities.”

“Oh, that!”  Chuckling.

“Um, WTF do you mean ‘oh, that’?”

“It turns out I was allergic to my detergent.  No worries!”

I spent the next ten minutes reaming him out.  For, you know, not calling the person he accused of diseasing him to let her know she could have sex again.  For self-diagnosing his “herpes” instead of going to the doctor (which it turns out is what he did, because he was “embarrassed” – um, dude, I think you should be embarrassed about being a complete fucking douchebag idiot). 

He had no excuse for the self-diagnosis (though I did offer the helpful judgment that if he was too embarrassed to go to the doctor and be honest about his sexual history, then he probably would get herpes or something worse at some point).  As far as not calling me, he said that he’d had “a lot of family stuff, you know, drama” going on and just couldn’t spare ten goddamn seconds to leave me a phone message, pencil-dicked bastard.  Then I did the only thing any self-respecting 24-year-old girl would do in that situation:

I called my close friend, Jana, who worked at the same publishing house as him, told her the whole story, and suggested that she feel free to pass along to anyone who might be interested that Evan had recently had a herpes scare.  I’d just moved across the country, after all, so the liklihood of me working there or meeting any of those people was slim to none.

Though, ironically, Lance’s next girlfriend after me also worked there and was also friends with Jana…Jana gave her my contact information and the girl either called or emailed me to ask about why Lance and I broke up and if I would recommend dating Lance.  Lance, do you remember who I am talking about?  In a spectacular show of goodwill considering the circumstances of our breakup, I told her that Lance was a great guy and that I highly recommended him.  Which is I think why he took me out to dinner that December when I flew back to Florida for the winter break, and also probably why it wasn’t a date.  So, karmically, I think I emerged even from that one

What’s the worst scare you’ve ever had?