Written by Ruth Boon
It’s the summer of 2019 – Covid is unfathomable and I’m having sex on top of a hill in South East London. And we’re not even trying to hide it. Mo* and I are brazenly shagging on the top of a grassy mound that overlooks the London skyline. It is a sticky summer’s night, and I am a sex goddess. Just minutes before, while Mo fumbled with my skirt, I asked if he had a condom. A slight laugh, not dismissive but not entirely reassuring either – Nah. Okay, I thought, I was already risking being arrested for public indecency, why not throw in pregnancy and a whole list of sexually transmitted diseases too?
I’m not certain that Mo is the person who gave me herpes, I’ve slept with plenty of men, women and non-binary people who could have had it. No, I’m not certain, but I’m pretty damn sure. After the act was completed, the semen shot into a muddy patch of stringy green grass for someone to undoubtedly put their hand on the following day, we headed down the hill.
Mo and I had a good run. I didn’t quite understand what he had meant when he said he previously had to take a year off drugs for his mental health. And he didn’t quite understand what I meant when I said I was not his manager, after he had hallucinated that I was somebody called Tom whilst high on two grams of ketamine in bed one night.
All that being said, I suppose there was a distinct feeling, perhaps a mutual understanding, that we weren’t right for each other but that, despite this, we still liked one another very much.
When Mo got fired from his job at Hot Dog King*, he booked an impromptu trip to Bali. He flew off to paradise, and it only took a week until I developed what I thought was an incredibly painful UTI. I told Mo about it, while he was away taking large handfuls of mushrooms and swimming in luxurious pools, listening to subpar DJs. My medical dilemma was met with sympathy, but no mention of herpes. Mo and I lasted two more months, and then we called it quits.
In 2020, in the thick of the lockdown, Mo and I had a video call. It was one of those classic lockdown calls, an orange-sun stroll in a park frothing with pollen, the year when reparation conversations with exes felt mandatory. It was then that Mo confessed that he’d probably given me herpes. I was angry. What I thought was a conversation of romantic reminiscence was actually a guilty confession. Mo, the sinner and me, the sexy priest… now, in all likelihood with herpes.
Yet I didn’t have any active symptoms to test whether I actually had herpes.
I was told by multiple doctors I didn’t need to tell anyone because herpes was so common, and I didn’t even know officially if I had it.
But of course, that was exactly what I wanted to do. We were finally allowed to socialise, and after spending five months locked at home with housemates who all had partners, I wanted to fuck and connect and fuck and connect. So fuck I did, with condoms, guilt, and impending hangovers, but I didn’t do much connecting. Not knowing whether or not I had herpes was alienating. I couldn’t ignore it, and I couldn’t embrace it. Sex was one of the few things I believed I was truly good at, and now it felt like I was being punished for it. I was full of shame, and all the language around it was shameful too. Are you clean? I’d hear a TV character say, as if having a virus made you dirty.
My second herpes outbreak, after the initial outbreak in the summer of 2019, was when I contracted COVID. Not only was I coughing with a runny nose, achy joints and the slight fear of impending death, I had open sores… on my arse. By this time, I was in a committed relationship where I’d properly explained, for the first time to another sexual partner, the parameters of my Schrodinger’s STI. And so it was confirmed, I officially had herpes and was finally allowed to join the herpes club
Colourful balloons and welcome banners hung in the corridors of my mind. I proudly told people I had herpes, wore it like a pink frilly birthday badge. Any shame I had previously contracted had been about The Not Knowing, the doubt, the uncertainty of potential deceit, the moral grey area of it all. And in many ways, that was the case with Mo and previous lovers, too. For years, I had clung to relationships built on sex and deeply inadequate communication styles. Far too scared to relay my boundaries or understand someone else’s truth – Had my lover spent the weekend at another woman’s house? Was it okay that I sometimes fancied my coworker? Was it normal that I wasn’t quite sure if I wanted all this? My relationships were based on what was unsaid, what we were both willing to silently accept, what we communicated with our bodies until we simply couldn’t anymore, until our bodies weren’t enough. I couldn’t do that any longer.
A body that relies on other bodies for self-acceptance is not a body that truly accepts itself. A person’s lack then becomes dependent on what another person can give. As a result, I found myself floundering for appreciation just about anywhere, from men in their seventies to women who quite literally draw blood when they bite your neck. This desperate need to be liked, loved or adored led to dangerous decisions that further perpetuated a sense of self-loathing.
The connections I had made came quickly and wildly, they faded just as fast. They weren’t connections built on depth; they were connections built on surface-level emotions.
To be clear, I’m not saying that sleeping around is bad. I love my past and I’d do it all again (mostly). I love all the stupid and strange decisions I’ve made. I love the lovers who’ve told me it’s okay to have body hair, those who’ve been brave enough to listen to me read poetry after we’ve had sex, I love the people who’ve played chess with me, cooked rice with me, ménage à trois’d with me. But there have been times that weren’t so pleasant, people who used me, pretended that I didn’t have feelings, that my body didn’t hold consciousness. And though I don’t regret any of it, I wish I could cuddle my younger self, stroke her hair on the sofa, give her forehead soft kisses and let her know that I don’t need the approval of absolutely everyone, that I never did. It’s difficult to write this sort of thing without coming across as horrifically cliché – so what’s the message (written in cartoonish, fluffy font?) Loving yourself can be even more pleasurable than rawdawging someone on top of a (very public) hill.
*Names changed to preserve anonymity
About the Author:
Ruth Boon is a writer living in South East London. She finished her MA in Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths University in 2020. She’s contributed short stories, poetry and essays to various publications, including Ragaire Magazine, Away With Words and Horizon Magazine. Her previous unpublished novel, ‘The Second Person’, was longlisted for the Mslexia’s Adult Novel Award 2021. She runs a review Substack called Keeping Moving and is a freelance writer and editor. She is currently working on a new novel about siblinghood and the impact of trauma on political identity.