Siddity in the City

My fifteen-year-old brother has been invited to prom. To senior prom. By a senior.

I’m mortified. I had planned on having at least another, oh six months before having to have The Talk with him I was sure my parents would not have. And now this. Tomorrow. Tux and everything. FIFTEEN, DAMNIT!

So I just emailed him the following:

Hey, so I hear you’re going to the senior prom. That’s nice. Congrats. Well done. Etc.

Just wanted to remind you to be careful. I’m sure mom will say something completely overblown and threaten to break the girl’s kneecaps or something, and lord only knows what, if anything, dad will say regarding the embarassing issues surrounding prom, like, oh, sex, drugs and rock and roll, etc. I

Therefore, I am taking it upon myself to give you a little crucial info that should (fingerseyesarmslegsandtoes crossed) should keep you 1. healthy and 2. out of jail. Is this ridiculous and awkward? Yes. Do I have faith that you are getting accurate information from ANYONE ELSE? No. So just bear with me, ok?

1. Health/STDs: Look, I know mom said you said this girl is only a friend. Ok, fine, that’s great. You still need to know this stuff if you don’t already. I’m including the annoying, the life threatening, and things you could catch and never even know you have…until someday the love of your life develops a life-threatening cancer and…I said I wouldn’t be overblown, right? Sorry. Onward.

I’m going to break these down into diseases that are curable, and the ones you get to carry around forever and ever until you die, flaring up every now and then just to remind you they’re around.

And for the record, all of the diseases below can be transmitted via ANY kind of sexual contact, so you could end up with symtoms of some of these in your mouth, throat, eyes…you get my drift.

Curable
Chlamydia
Risk: High–A record number of new cases were reported 2006-2007. According to the CDC, via US News and World Report, “About three quarters of infected women and about half of infected men don’t have symptoms.” So most people who have it have no idea they have it.

The problem is, “untreated chlamydia can cause infertility, ectopic pregnancy, and pelvic inflammatory disease. And it makes women up to five times as likely to contract HIV if exposed as noninfected women. Chlamydia can also cause penile discharge in men, as well as rare but serious complications such as urethritis and epididymitis, an infection of the epididymis, a tube that carries sperm.”

Treatment: Antibiotics– one dose of azithromycin or a week of doxycycline pills. You hate pills. Keep that in mind.

US News

CDC

Syphilis
Risk: Low but growing, as this too has seen a resurgence in recent years.

Syphilis is a doozy. You can get it, and not know you have it for decades–it may produce a sore or a few, but may not, and if you don’t find out you have it within a year after catching it, guess what? “The late stages of syphilis can develop in about 15% of people who have not been treated for syphilis, and can appear 10 – 20 years after infection was first acquired. In the late stages of syphilis, the disease may subsequently damage the internal organs, including the brain, nerves, eyes, heart, blood vessels, liver, bones, and joints. Signs and symptoms of the late stage of syphilis include difficulty coordinating muscle movements, paralysis, numbness, gradual blindness, and dementia. This damage may be serious enough to cause death.”

Oh, and back in the olden days, before antibiotics, it could seriously rot your frickin’ nose off. No kidding.

Oh right, and just assuming one day you’ll fall in love, get married, and have a wife and want a child you will care about, it’s a huge danger to pregnant women and their babies. “Depending on how long a pregnant woman has been infected, she may have a high risk of having a stillbirth (a baby born dead) or of giving birth to a baby who dies shortly after birth. An infected baby may be born without signs or symptoms of disease. However, if not treated immediately, the baby may develop serious problems within a few weeks. Untreated babies may become developmentally delayed, have seizures, or die.”

Treatment: A single shot of high-dose penicillin if you catch it early, several shots if you don’t. Oh right, and the utter HORROR AND HUMILIATION OF HAVING TO LOOK MOM, DAD, and/or our PEDIATRICIAN IN THE EYE AND TELL THEM YOU HAVE SYPHILIS.

CDC

Gonorrhea
Yes, this is grossing me out as much as it is you, ok? Keep reading.
Risk: High. It seems to fall just behing Chlamydia in number of new cases each year and the risk group? “Any sexually active person can be infected with gonorrhea.[but] In the United States, the highest reported rates of infection are among sexually active teenagers, young adults, and African Americans.” Booooooooo to you and your lady-friend falling into two out of three of these categories–wait, she’s all three, assuming she’s 18.

This one also can have few (burning urination, icky discharge, etc) or no symptoms, yet untreated can result in infertility in women and danger to babies.

Unfortunately for men, the test for this often involves jamming a q-tip in the urethra. A Q-TIP IN THE URETHRA. I want you to think about that for a second, because I think it’s rather important to note that the test for the disease sounds like it’s A LOT more painful than the disease itself.

Treatment: Antibiotics.

CDC

There’s the short list of curables. There are more, but these are the common ones. Now, let’s move on to the incurable menaces!

Incurable

Herpes, also known as HSV 1 and HSV 2 (herpes simplex virus)
Risk: fairly high, when you combine the two. “Nationwide, at least 45 million people ages 12 and older, or one out of five adolescents and adults, have had genital HSV infection.” HSV I is mostly responsible for “cold sores” and HSV II is mostly responsible for genital infections, but both can be passed to either area. So it someone’s got a cold sore and kisses you, ahem, elsewhere, you can get said sores…elsewhere. Got it?

Now, it is important to note that, even though the idea of the herp is all about painful sores, there are other symptoms–after initial infection, you could have sores or a bunch of symptoms like a really bad flu. The herp can also be passed when there are NO sores visible, and sores aren’t necessarily great big poxy-looking scabs–an outbreak can look like a bad rash, or razor burn, etc. Blech. Point being, not seeing sores means fu…dge all. It can still be passed. And again, can’t be cured, only treated, can be passed to loved ones, risk to babies, etc.

Did I mention it can’t be cured? But that most people don’t know they have it? I did? Okgood.

CDC

Treatment: Valtrex and not being able to kiss, share dishes with (oh wait, this is you we’re talking about, nevermind) or be intimate with your loved ones until the outbreak has passed.

HPV (human papilloma virus)
Risk: This one is special. It is the single most common type of sexually transmitted infection. “Approximately 20 million Americans are currently infected with HPV, and another 6.2 million people become newly infected each year. At least 50% of sexually active men and women acquire genital HPV infection at some point in their lives.” That’s the most conservative estimate of the percentage of infections I’ve ever read.

You’ve probably heard all about it on the news, since there’s a vaccine now that can help prevent it. The vaccine is only given to women, since the virus, according to the genius medical community, only really “affects” women. This is not strictly true. Assuming the straight men of the world date, love or marry the straight women, and most people don’t like to watch those they date, love or marry suffer incurable infections or cancer, especially if the men are the ones passing it along, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say it affects us all.

There are dozens of different strains of the virus grouped under this name, and some of them cause visible warts, while others just cause tissue inflamation and cell abnormalities not usually visible without medical equipment. Some of these strains have been shown to cause cervical (and other) cancer. Others may just cause unsightly warts, which you have to either live with or have frozen or chemically burned off. Oh, and the kind that causes warts does NOT cause cancer, and vice versa. Take your pick–warts or cancer risk, cancer risk or warts. Shitty options.

It can be totally asymptomatic, so most people never know they’ve caught it. Symptoms can turn up years after initial infection, too, so you might not even know when you got it. For some people, the immune system fights it off–it’s still there, but doesn’t do any more damage. For others, the system can’t fight it and they may eventually develop cancer. Worse, since there are so very many different strains, you can catch one strain and your system can fight it, but later catch another and have to deal with it all over again–possibly with less success.

Now, this one isn’t all that well prevented by condoms–skin-to-skin contact can transmit it, and condoms just don’t cover enough skin.

CDC

HIV
Risk: Probably low, but very dangerous, as you know. Unfortunately, this one is deadly, as it can progress to AIDS, and young African Americans are at much greater risk than the rest of the population for a variety of reasons. I can’t even begin to sum this one up, so I’m including the CDC link below, and reminding you that of the 1,000,000 people living with it in the US, it is estimated that 250,000 of them don’t know they have it.

CDC

And those are just a few of the many unwelcome gifts that may await you once you become sexually active. I haven’t even bothered with crabs (because frankly, eeeeeeeeeeeeew bugs in your crotch).

OH MY GOD, I ALMOST FORGOT THE WORST ONE.

Babies
Risk: Exceedingly high. Most humans will eventually lose their minds and actively seek this one, whether or not they are in any way prepared to handle it.

Symptoms: Vomiting, diarrhea, screaming, tantrums, headaches, years of fear and anxiety, minimal gratitude, and financial hell.

Treatment: None. So don’t screw up on this one either, k?

Seriously, don’t have sex possibly ever, or wait until marriage (and even then, make sure your partner is tested for EVERYTHING), but if you can’t wait, I cannot stress this enough: CONDOMS. CONDOMS. CONDOMS.

I don’t care if you think you are both virgins or she claims to be, if you both claim to be in a faithful relationship, if she says she’s “on the pill,” and is an alleged virgin and you think she is faithful. At the end of the day, you and you alone are responsible for safeguarding your health and your future. You. That means not taking your partner’s word for it, or assuming because they say they care about you that they have their own health and safety in mind, let alone yours. As evidence of that, I direct you to a blog post written by a woman who admits she was in a monogomous relationship with a guy for TWO YEARS, having unprotected sex during this time, before she told him she had herpes, and even then, she only told him because they were breaking up.

That’s what awaits you in the “real world.” People who, though they say they care–and maybe they do–they care about themselves much more. So they lie. A lot.

Always. Always. Always use a condom. No sex is worth either your health or your future, should you get some girl pregnant before either of you can handle it. And make no mistake: once you get a girl pregnant, you have no say in the outcome. She can choose to abort, or have the child whether you want her to or not, and you will be legally obligated to support that child if she decides to have it. She tells you she wants to have it, you don’t have to be involved? Pfft. When she realizes how hard it is to raise a kid and changes her mind about support, you still have to pay up.

That pretty much covers health. Onto jail!

2. Jail

Rape/Sexual assault
Kid, I know you, and I trust you. You’re not a jerk. But I also know that rape is a huge problem that isn’t going to go away if people assume everyone they know is not a jerk and “would never do” or “never have to do” something like that.

Since I’m pretty confident you’ll never take it into your head to climb in through a stranger’s window or jump out at some fetching gal from the bushes, let’s limit this to “date rape.”

As far as I can tell, it should be really, really easy for date rape not to happen, for “confusion” never to occur. And yet, I personally know several women who trusted “nice” young men, men at Yale, men at other schools, friends and classmates and ex-boyfriends, but who were still raped by these “nice” boys. I also know several men who say they know men who were “falsely” accused of rape. Clearly, something is very wrong.

The basics:
Never, ever get a girl drunk or high in order to have sex with her. That is rape. You’re in a gray area if she even gets herself high or drunk and asks you to have sex with her. Because she wasn’t in her right mind at the time, she could be rightly disturbed by her behavior the next day, and you would still bear some blame in the actions, and could possibly be charged with the crime. If she’s worth a damn and actually cares about you, she’ll sleep with you sober, too. So make her wait.

Obviously, if a girl is passed out drunk or sleeping, and you have sex with her, that’s rape.

If you start having sex with a girl, with her consent, and she changes her mind at any point, you have to stop. She has the right to change her mind, as do you. If she asks you to stop, and you don’t? That is rape.

If you’ve had sex with a girl before, and she is in fact she’s your longterm girlfriend, you still have to get permission. Every single time.

This one isn’t really about you. It’s about your friends. Please, if you ever see one of your friends doing any of the above, or trying to, be a stand-up guy and put a stop to it. That may mean intervening to see if the girl is ok, or if you’re in danger, getting out of the situation and calling someone else who can help instead, but don’t just let it happen.

I think that’s it. Lots of horrifying images should be dancing through your head right about now, and I hope to god the most horrible one is of having to tell mom, dad, and Doc you’ve gotten yourself into any of it. *shudders* Horrifying. So think really carefully before you get involved, and once you do, take very good care of yourself, you hear?

Oh, and I promise to personally come kick your high-yella backside if you get somebody knocked up and have to leave school, or end up even connected tangentially to a rape/sexual assault. You hear me? Personally. Kick. Your. Ass. Down the east coast and up the west. And that’s after mom and dad get their licks in.

Drugs/Alcohol and blahblahblah driving.
Don’t ever drink and drive. Or do drugs and drive. And sure as shit don’t get into a car with anyone who has been drinking or using drugs and driving. If they even look at you crosseyed, do everyone a favor and call dad to pick you guys up. Or mom. Dad before mom. Well, just call one of them, ok?

Now. I promise to never speak of this ever again. In fact, the prospect of having to has pretty much put me off having my own kids. I’m off to scrub my hands, eyes and ears.

Enjoy prom!

>:-}

*****

I’m evil. I know.