One of the great things about the fraternity boys and being their advisor is that there are never any dull moments. Shawn and I were relaxing on the couch watching Sherlock and one of the boys (you don’t know him and I have never mentioned him and will never reveal his name) showed up and said he needed to talk to me privately. I said sure, and we went into my office and closed the door, and then I got blasted in the face with this unexpected shit that I didn’t see coming:
“I think I have chlamydia. Can you take me to the doctor tomorrow?”
I just burst out laughing.
Me: “You gotta be fucking kidding me. Was it worth it?”
Him: “Oh, Yeah.”
Me: “Why didn’t you wrap?”
Him: “I did.”
Me: “I’m not taking you unless I hear you call her and tell her either you gave her an STD or she gave you one, because she has to know because that could really fuck her up long term fertility and healthwise.”
Him: “I will call her.
Me: “Alright, what time tomorrow?”
I didn’t have kids for a reason, but it appears I ended up with 30 of them. He’s calling her tomorrow (too late tonight and he was kind of drunk because he didn’t really want to deal with this but knew he had to, so opted for liquid courage) before we roll out, because that stuff can really mess up a woman. I’ll follow through.
So yeah. Off to the clinic tomorrow.
And don’t get me wrong- I love that they trust me enough to come to me before their mom and dad, and I will take care of him and get him fixed up (fixed might be a better option) and no one will know. I wish I had me when I was 18. Seriously.
One of the things that is great about being so close to these young guys is that it reminds you how fucked up and clueless you were at that age, so any time I can help out and get guys pointed in the right direction I feel like I am undoing some of the trauma I inflicted on the world while I was a young clueless shithead.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
Dumb question at the time. Raise it later.
ETA: Close your italics tags. Please.
burnspbesq
If you haven’t done so yet, check out the new John Fullbright album, “Songs.” It’s going to be on every best-of-2014 list.
burnspbesq
Let’s see if the close italics tag I dumped into my last comment solves the problem.
ranchandsyrup
Glad they have someone to turn to, Cole.
Did some daddy blogging of a sappier stripe today.
burnspbesq
David Ferguson’s new kitteh, Travis, is the cutest thing ever to walk this earth.
cmorenc
Of course, when we were young, the truly dread STD we all feared possible from unprotected sex was Herpes. Did that make us any smarter back at oh say, age 20? Nope, we only tended to get concerned about it during those frustrating intervals of young manhood when no sex of any kind was anywhere on the horizon. When there was some tangible hint of possiblity, we resumed thinking like male rabbits near a female rabbit in heat.
craigie
Cole, you’re like a character in a movie. And I mean that in a good way.
Hieronymous Mantitty
when the q-tip thingy does a half turn in your pee-pee hole “worth it” becomes a question of nil import. fucking amateurs.
Mnemosyne
Still playing Sims Freeplay pretty obsessively, and I have a Sim ice skating on my iPad right now. Annie is absolutely fascinated and keeps touching the screen with her paw.
Belafon
I’m not too worried about my oldest – 19 now – and women, but I do kind of wish he had someone up at college about your age (which is my age) that he could talk to like that. He decided to stay in the college town for the summer instead of coming home. The school is pretty nice in that he could rent a place on campus for $10/day. He found a job at a coffee shop – I’ve been trying to convince him to be a ph@rmacy tech since he’s studying biochemistry (no go) – but he’s basically going to finish the summer with zero money. I don’t mind that he’s staying up there, but he needs someone to kind of say “think a little bit and don’t be trying to prove you can do it all on your own right now, because you can’t.”
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
Getting drunk because you don’t want to deal with the concept of having an STD is troubling behaviour.
tsquared2001
The summer before I went to England for my junior year, my older brother hooked me up with a construction job where he was crew chief. Nearly early week, before we could start work, older brother had to go to the Red Door (the local STD clinic) for a shot of antibiotics.
Why is the “wrap it up” lesson so difficult?
lamh36
You’re a really good egg John Cole.
I’m sure in your former RWNJ life, I’m sure I would have hated ya, but even if you were crazy way back when, if you still had a nice heart about things I’m guessing you weren’t a horror to be around.
Or were you a complete RWNJ in non-blogging life too?
Anyway, like I said as of right now, You’re a good egg
eemom
oh, *I* get it.
Hey, is that a Guy Thing or a Kid Thing? Don’t make me consult Urban Dictionary….my kids hate it when I do that.
lamh36
@eemom: that does seem like an “old” word, but I actually thought of this skit from Dave Chappelle “Wrap It Up”
tsquared2001
@eemom: It is a lesson not easily learned.
maya
There’s another problem or two, here, wise counselor: Where did he get chlamydia from in the first place? Might well be two people he needs to notify or she needs to. Worked in this area – case epidemiology, mainly with syphilis. With syph you have a longer time for incubation and infectious exposure and it was easier to track (locating source of infection) Gonorrhea and chlamydia have much shorter i/time and few visible signs for women. Almost impossible to track this, especially with sexually active young adults involved. But, it is not unusual that these STD’s travel in the same small circle of friends. Actually, it’s more the norm. You may need to talk to all your boys.
Steeplejack
@eemom:
I think it’s an Army thing (subset of guy thing).
Mnemosyne
Also, I finally made my first trip to the allergist today and discovered that I am allergic to … nothing. Well, mold, but that’s not exactly a common environmental allergen in So Cal. And yet I’m still showing all of the symptoms of nasal allergies. The PA is puzzled and is going to discuss it with the doctor on Monday. In the meantime, I got two kinds of nasal spray, an oral asthma medication, and an inhaler I can’t use because it makes me too jittery but my insurance won’t cover the one I need.
tsquared2001
@Mnemosyne: I want to say thanks for the instagram links earlier today re POTUS. I spent quite a few hours clicking that arrow to the left.
Steeplejack
@Mnemosyne:
Could you have some sort of sinus infection?
I have never thought of myself as allergic to anything (except for penicillin), but I think the pollen has been kicking my ass lately. The weather here in NoVA has been beautiful, I’ve been leaving the windows open, and a fair amount of the time I wake up in the morning with my eyes simultaneously scratchy and a little runny. We had some rain last week, so I closed the windows and ran the air conditioner, and the eye thing stopped. Go figure. The weather has been beautiful again the last few days, so the windows have been open, pollen be damned. And in truth the scratchy-eyes phenomenon is a mild thing.
tsquared2001
@lamh36: I thought of that skit too but the more pertinent one is the sex contract one.
Mnemosyne
@tsquared2001:
Pete Souza is a really brilliant photographer. I love how he’s able to capture candid little details that you wouldn’t think of, like the Obama bobblehead in the cyclist’s back pocket.
Violet
It can be transmitted by oral sex. A guy may wrap it up for vaginal or anal sex but oral? I don’t know how common that is.
Violet
@Mnemosyne: Maybe try some things like a steam using eucalyptus oil and/or tea tree oil. That helped me when I was dealing with my brutal sinus infection earlier this year. What also helped me was increasing my magnesium. I did epsom salt baths and I also bought magnesium oil at Whole Foods–you can get it online too. Bonus with increased magnesium is it makes me sleepy and I slept well.
Comrade Dread
@Violet: Or you can be too drunk to remember. I was there one New Years Eve night with my wife. Nine months later we had our daughter.
Mnemosyne
@Steeplejack:
It’s not a sinus infection — I’ve already done two rounds of antibiotics with no effect. There apparently is such a thing as non-allergic rhinitis (aka drippy nose) that I have a few risk factors for, so that may be a possibility. The post-nasal drip is making my mild asthma worse, so they’re treating it a little aggressively for the month until my next appointment.
Greg
You just made me feel way better about myself. I am old, like 55 old, and I decided to go back to school to get the degree that I bailed on 35 years ago. And I was really worried, because I was afraid that the kids would make fun of me, or think I was a perv or whatever. But instead, what keeps happening, is they grab me outside of class and ask if they can talk to me. I was in the travel industry for years and have been all around the world, and what they want to talk about is their dream of going to Paris for the summer, or wanting to go a language school and learn Spanish, or sometimes they just want to talk about how they don’t know how to deal with finding a job and then hesitantly ask if I would write a letter of recommendation for them. And my age, and the fact that I am gay, doesn’t seem to bother any of them at all. They just don’t care. It is a very different world from when I went to college the first time around. But weirdly, I fit in better now than I did then. So instead of being made fun of, I have become the cool older guy that they wish their Dad was. So I know you are a lot younger than me, but we are kind of in the same position. Oh, and they want me to run for Student Council…ha ha ha ha ha!
Redshift
Fuck cancer. A friend of mine died of cancer this evening. Younger than me. Not a surprise, but a bit sooner than expected. He was diagnosed a few weeks ago, started chemo but the side effects were too bad.
Ruckus
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo):
He is dealing with it. He talked to an “adult.” Said adult is aiming him in the right direction and giving him reasonable advice. This is the kind of thing that can shock a young, nothing can happen to me, guy. I give the young man points for asking for help. Many wouldn’t till things progressed much farther. Don’t know the appropriate name today but we used to call this a number of things, macho, a man’s man, a tough guy.
justawriter
Watching “The Spanish Main” on Turner Classic Movies. I was curious about the star Paul Henried (Victor Lazlo in Casablanca) so I went to IMDB to read his biography. He was an Austrian who abandoned continental Europe because he hated the Nazis. He became an American citizen and lost his movie career because he was insufficiently anticommunist and put on the Blacklist. Fortunately, a Brit didn’t give two shits about McCarthy so he wound up as a director on Alfred Hitchcock Presents and had a long career in television as a result. In the movie the Spanish Aristocrats could be replaced easily with current Republicans. No wonder he was blacklisted.
Ruckus
@Redshift:
Sorry about your friend.
Cancer is a bitch. Young, old, bad habits or none. I often wonder how people know something is wrong in time.
Greg
@Mnemosyne: I am originally from SoCal too and had the same issues. It was just the friggin air pollution. Also, do you live anywhere near cedar trees? Doctors often don’t think to check for cedar. I am hideously allergic to it, and there are currently no medications that will work well on it. Cedar is not super common is SoCal but when I lived in TX (yes, don’t ask) having cedar touch my skin would make me break out in a rash. I have found that Singulair and Flonase make a good combo for treating just about everything. I understand your inhaler problem. They had me on albuterol and after using that I felt like I was going to crawl out of my skin.
Anoniminous
@Ruckus:
I know how that sucks. One of my oldest friends got pancreatic cancer. He called me up Christmas Eve to tell me and by mid-April he was gone.
TG Chicago
@Violet:
Okay, I read this and was a bit confused, thinking it related to the OP. Whew.
Why does a college kid need somebody to take him to the doctor? I mean, don’t get me wrong: I think Cole did great here. And if the kid asked, I guess it’s better to take him than to tell him to take the bus. I just don’t understand why he wouldn’t deal with it himself. Oh well, the “call to the woman” Cole is forcing is a good thing, so I guess it’s all for the best in the end.
NotMax
Learn something new every day. In this case, that there’s a term for it: anthropodermic bibliopegy.
Ruckus
@Anoniminous:
Nearly half of the family, cancer. Of course there’s always Alzheimer’s to look forward to, both parents. My gene pool seems to be deeply polluted.
askew
@Redshift:
Sorry to hear about your friend. Cancer does suck. My dad has been in the hospital/rehab since the day before Mother’s Day with stage 4 esophageal cancer that has spread to liver, spine, etc. They started chemo, but he still can’t walk and can’t come home. It’s been awful.
tsquared2001
@Mnemosyne: Plus it is cool that POTUS is so good with kids. Who doesn’t like a picture of some shorties?
Mnemosyne
@Greg:
It seems to have gotten particularly bad the past couple of years, which sadly may mean that I’m in perimenopause (I turn 45 next week, so I would be pretty much on schedule if that’s the case) since non-allergic rhinitis can have hormonal causes. They tested me for two dozen different kinds of trees, but I don’t specifically see cedar on the list, so I may ask.
I wanted Xopenex (levalbuterol) because it supposedly causes fewer problems with agitation/hyperactivity, but my insurance company doesn’t cover it because, medically, it doesn’t do anything that different than albuterol. Since it’s not that expensive, I may pay for it out of pocket to see if I like it any better and then have my doctor appeal for coverage if it works.
Ruckus
@Anoniminous:
@askew:
I appreciate the replies but I think you may have meant to reply to Redshift.
My problem is not as immediate, I just have a gene pool that should be declared a Superfund site. Maybe I’ll get lucky. It is possible, not very likely but still it is possible.
kwAwk
It is really great advice to call the girl and let her know, but I think it would be okay to wait until after the doctor’s visit just in case he’s mistaken about what is going on.
A couple of hours shouldn’t do any harm.
NotMax
@justawriter
imdb, while handy as a quick check for casting and such, has a tendency towards hyperbole.
Throughout the 1950s, there was not a single year in which Henreid did not appear in or direct a film (or both) under his own name, in addition to his work on TV.
Good thing he did change his birth name though, as it would have wrapped clear around any marquee. Twice.
Paul Georg Julius Freiherr von Hernried Ritter von Wasel-Waldingau.
Anoniminous
@Ruckus:
I F****d that up.
Mayken
@Mnemosyne: actually if you tested positive for mold you really ought to have your housing inspected. Friend of ours had a horrible time in one place he rented due to the mold. Moved and it cleared up literally overnight.
Also, don’t know where you are but mold is actually quite common in SoCal, ESP on the coast and in agricultural areas. I have terrible mold allergies and yep any time we actually get wet weather I can count on the allergies and asthma popping up.
OTOH must not have been that bad a reaction if doc isn’t concerned.
Ruckus
@Anoniminous:
No worries. It all works out in the wash.
I wasn’t sure you meant to comment to me but what the heck until I saw askew’s comment. Then I knew, but askew fixed his(?) while I was writing and that cinched it.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Ruckus:
I didn’t say he wasn’t dealing with it, I said he was dealing with it by drinking. Going to an adult with a problem while drunk is not the same as going while sober. The question is what he will actually do today whole sober.
#IAmAnAlcoholic
Pogonip
@maya: I was wondering that too. Unless the girl says, “Oh, yeah, sorry, I forgot to tell you, I have it too,” seems like there are least three people involved.
I have never met a fraternity member, but “frat boy” often seems like a synonym for “unpleasant, probably criminal, kid.”. Do all fraternities have advisors?
Zeecube
Should not the disease first be confirmed by the doctor and/or STD test before this young man calls the young woman? To prevent possibly unnecessarily scaring the shit out of her? Could turn out to be nothing more than a UTI.
Zeecube
Should not the disease first be confirmed by the doctor and/or STD test before this young man calls the young woman? To prevent possibly unnecessarily scaring the shit out of her? Could turn out to be nothing more than a UTI.
brendancalling
@Hieronymous Mantitty: friend of mine works for the Philly Dept. of Health on their syphilis campaign (syphilis has made a comeback here). Apparently they don’t do the q-tip thing anymore.
Keith G
@Zeecube: I was thinking the same thing. There are a number of issues that can cause urethral irritation. Lubricants, condoms, and even spermicide have been known to cause such irritation – not to mention all types of other organisms that dwell comfortably on other body parts.
Steeplejack
@Hieronymous Mantitty:
Fuck you, you cowardly anonymous troll.
Ruckus
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo):
You are correct that drinking doesn’t solve the problem or even usually add anything positive. But he came to and talked to Cole specifically about his problem. That’s handling it. Not the way some would do it but he is handling it. Did he fortify himself with alcohol? That’s what it sounds like. If that is his response to every problem then yes, he has a much bigger underlying problem, that will only get worse. But this is a snapshot, of a young man in trouble. He won’t be the first, nor the last to take a shot, or however many, of liquid courage. Would it be better that he go through life stone sober? For many the answer is absolutely. Is he somewhere on the road to being an alcoholic? Not for me to question, based on this very brief snapshot of the man’s life. John might know, we don’t.
Dan
I thought I had chlamydia and called the girl and went to the doc and found out (after the life-wrecking q-tip scenario) that it was a prostate infection. So I had to call her back and apologize. Let him find out what it is before he calls her.
kindness
How did the frat boy know he had Chlamydia? It’s usually asymptomatic in men.
JosieJ
@Mnemosyne:
Delurking to say: try Jalaneti. Safe, effective, and entirely drug-free. Video available at the link. Once you get past the fact that you’re essentially pouring saline water up your nose–something you’re doing anyway with saline sprays, just in quantities way too small to do an effective job–it’s surprisingly easy to get used to.
(I am not connected in any way with the website linked. That’s just where I bought my neti pot over 10 years ago, and it’s still a great resource.)
Mnemosyne
@JosieJ:
I do neti as well, but sadly it did not solve the problem on its own, so I had to take a trip to the allergist. :-( From everything I’m seeing/reading, it’s probably related to my untreated asthma, which is why they decided to give me Singulair and an inhaler in addition to the antihistamines.
mclaren
Also — the guy says he used a condom.
What did he do wrong?
Paul in KY
@Greg: Glad the 2nd time has been this interesting/fun.