The second time she brought up my promiscuity was when she had plans to drive with this boy from her class to California in search of a new car. It certainly wasn’t out of concern with my behavior; it was more for her sanity and safety when she returned. Another Frenchie midnight wakeup call was not going to be tolerated again. As she neatly packed a bag on the opposite side of the barracks room, she casually asked and told me at the same time to give it a rest. “Listen, girl, I’m driving with dis white boy to California and bringing back a car. So I’ll be on leave for two weeks. Could you get out all ya fuckin’ before I get back?”
I dismissed the idea with a wave of my hand and told her I was done sleeping around because I was getting married. As if it was actually that simple. She didn’t believe a fucking word I said.
While she was gone, I put my hands up in the air and backed away from my struggles with sexual orientation so I could focus on my upcoming unity with Robert. We talked every day on the phone about our future and how exciting it was to rekindle our childhood romance. We discussed his daughter and finances and practical things that go along with moving and procedures for getting married. I felt our love was so transcending that I sat through a painful session in a local tattoo parlor to get his initials permanently etched into my skin.
And then, the next morning while happily checking and washing my new ink, I was hit with the reality of bumps on my genitals. Sexual flamboyancy is a time bomb ticking away, and one day, boom, you explode with a disease. All you can do is hope and pray that it’s not something that lasts a lifetime or worse. If anything kicks a person in the teeth to the realities of promiscuity, it’s a venereal disease. Additionally, mine appeared right after the decision was made to stop my shenanigans. I almost made it without getting burned. The following morning the doctor immediately diagnosed me with genital warts. The first few days I was disgusted with myself, but I knocked on Josh’s door, telling him to come to my room as soon as possible. He had to be told.
He came in; I shut the door and didn’t hesitate springing the news for fear that I would lose my nerve. We were alone, but the subject matter was so serious that I spoke at the lowest volume possible, yet I was very matter-of-fact. “Look, I went to the doctor, and the last person I was with was you, so I think you should get checked out because I have genital warts. I wanted to tell you because I think you gave them to me.”
There we stood in the middle of my room, staring at each other, blinking, not knowing what to do or say. I hadn’t realized how unattractive he truly was until that moment. Freckles, which were cute in the beginning, covered his entire body, but, under the circumstances, they just made his skin look dirty. His teeth were yellow and coated in what appeared to be a thick layer of plaque. The t-shirt he wore was stretched out and slightly grey. I’m not sure if he showered regularly, but he sprayed enough cologne on to choke a horse. I wondered how I could overlook those things and engage in sex with this animal. This was definitely an eye-opener to the standards I had been setting for myself.
After he stared at me with deer-in-the-headlight glare, he shook his freckled face in disbelief, then squinted as if to shoot daggers at me with those green beady eyes. “You didn’t get them from me,” he said bluntly. “I know you sleep around.”
Let me tell you how wonderful it feels to have a freckle-faced, bumpy-dick, motherfucker tell you that you are the virus-carrying slut. Not so much. Yet, I was trying to be the bigger person, so I remained calm and explained the situation before I could panic and slap the red out of his hair. “The last guy I was with was a week before you, and the doctor says it takes three days for it to appear, which means it’s you because you were the last one I was with three days ago. And really, that’s not the fucking point. Just go get checked out before you spread it around. I’m trying to set aside my embarrassment by telling you and doing you a favor, okay?” By the end, my anger had escalated, but my restraint was impeccable.
When he left, I felt relieved that I’d done my good deed for the week, even if it meant undue shame. And so began my pills and weekly visits to a military doctor for topical treatments; to say the least, it definitely aided in my transition to becoming a little less sexual.
When Tenesa came back, she was sporting super tight braids and a renewed Jamaican accent that was heavier than when she left. After unpacking, Tenesa cried in pain as she tried to lay her head on her pillow and was unable to do so. Her hair was so tight she had to sit against the wall to finish her story about the white boy who accompanied her and how funny he was the whole trip. Tenesa spoke of his glasses and how nerdy he was as she prepared to sleep seated in that position. The funny part was Tenesa said she had to sleep like that before due to some “tight Jamaican bray-den.” She assured me she would be able to sleep normally in a few days.
Every comment of hers was a shot of happy energy to my sad soul. I wanted to listen to everything that happened on her trip, even though we had never really had much of a conversation before. I could tell that my enthusiastic demeanor over her stories served as intangible shots of happy energy for her, too.
Between laughing at her tales of woe and the agony of her “Jamaican bray-den,” I teased that she must really like this guy because she couldn’t stop talking about him. Tenesa insisted that she was not into white boys, but if she was, this kid would interest her. We cracked jokes about black and white love, making references to all possible clichés. For once, the weird hostility between us relaxed. It could have been the pain that subdued her, but it was nice to chat and make her laugh even if it snapped her head back to the only comfortable position she could find. Her misery as she gently placed her hand on her braids was amusing to me because she winced every time, yet she kept doing it. After awhile it wasn’t funny anymore because, as she pointed out, it was so tight that each hair on her head was about to pop out of the embedded root of her scalp. She was very serious as she sat upright and still on her mattress to catch a fleeting pain free moment. Very slowly she articulated, “The only other time…my head felt dis way was…when…some nigglett ripped out a braid…he left a bald throbbin’ empty square patch.”
With my hand over my mouth, I tried not to laugh, but I exploded and cackled so loud and hard that I sprayed the inside of my hand with spit before my face turned three shades of purple. Thank God she laughed too—well, she tried not to. I believe this was the first time Tenesa and I had a good conversation; it was therapeutic, really. We talked for quite some time about the white boy, her family, my tattoo, and how her boyfriend got mad when she broke things off with him for some guy she met in the army. The boyfriend’s quote was, “Who this nigga Nees-a? I’ll knock his blackness back to Aff-ree-ka.” This last comment and delivery of it threw us into hysterics before I tuckered out and fell to sleep.
The shame that accompanied pills and weekly visits to the doctor became a burden I couldn’t bare. I had four bumps that refused to go away. It was enough to drive me to into a self-loathing cleaning frenzy; one shower after physical training, one at lunch, another after work, and my last one just before bed. All were attempts to decontaminate my skin and rid my mind of the terrible infliction. I was trapped within my revolting body.
So, on my last visit to the doctor, I begged the attendant to give me the damn chemical so I could burn the fucking things off myself. That is how I asked for it, too.
I explained my excessive cleaning routine and how it was becoming painful (not to mention the most horrible experience) to see a new person every clinical visit. The soldier, who must have been my age, left the room and came back minutes later with a new bottle. It was tucked into his sleeve like we were doing a drug deal, trying not to get busted by the pigs. He told me to use it once every other day to speed up the process of removal.