Don't Kill the Birthday Girl (18 page)

“A study shows at the end of an hour, there is no allergen left in the saliva,” Miron said at a press conference, paraphrasing the known science in order to spare the boy a lifetime of guilt.

That story touched off an international wave of interest in “kissing reactions.” Mount Sinai School of Medicine staged an experiment in which volunteers ate two tablespoons of peanut butter in a sandwich. Subsequent interventions to neutralize the peanut allergens included brushing one's teeth, chewing gum, and rinsing the mouth out with water. While some subjects' mouths were clean of peanut proteins after nothing more than a five-minute wait (maybe people had not chewed thoroughly; maybe they harbored particularly aggressive saliva), some people had detectable traces of nut in their mouths more than three hours later. According to a study published in the
Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology
, the most foolproof way to avoid causing a reaction in a romantic partner—if you insist on eating something he or she is allergic to—is to wait four hours and chew on something “safe” before kissing.

Tell that to the guy picking you up for dinner and a movie on a Friday night.

A decade ago, as I entered my twenties, more and more friends began forwarding me articles on reactions caused by intimate contact, asking, “Have you heard of this?” Of course I had. I was the girl who, at my own ninth-grade Christmas party, had forced myself to veto a spin-the-bottle kiss from the guy I had a crush on. Why? Because he confessed he had eaten a handful of M&M's before the game had started.

Then there was the college boyfriend whose love affair with dairy had been entrenched long before I came onto the scene.
Once, during a particularly vicious fight at his house, he stalked out of the bedroom to cool off while I stayed in bed and fumed. He came back and we began making up—and making out. After a few minutes, I pulled away. Something was not right.

“Guess your allergies aren't
so
bad,” he said.

He had used his time out of sight to snack on a square of chocolate. I ran to the bathroom and flipped on the light, to reveal that my collarbone was erupting in hives.

That relationship was not long for this world. But a guy doesn't have to be callous to cause harm; even simple carelessness poses a danger.

Before moving in together, Adam and I had spent a few years trying (and failing) to make a long-distance relationship work. He was still at the University of Virginia, attending law school, while I worked in D.C. as the assistant to a journalist. Both of us were strapped for cash and perpetually exhausted. On the weekends, we made long road trips to see each other, thinking it would keep the spark alive. Instead, we'd struggle to stay awake long enough to watch a rented movie on his laptop, which had a screen prone to reflective glare and a DVD drive that froze up every five minutes. Then we'd pass out on my too-small futon or the mattress he laid on the floor in lieu of a proper bed.

One Friday, having fought my way out of town despite a particularly grueling evening rush hour on Interstate 66, I marched into his house determined to have a “romantic” reunion. I ignored the trash bags piled by the front door. I ignored the fact that the living room reeked of citrus (courtesy of a construction-worker roommate who appeared to eat nothing but oranges, strewing piles of peel and pith around the house). I
ignored the fact that Adam had just gotten back from the gym and was still in basketball shorts and sweaty T-shirt.

Ignoring it all, I hopped onto his lap, before he could get up from his hand-me-down plaid couch, and gave him a deep kiss.

I had also ignored my knowledge of Adam's habitual post-workout routine. After a second I tasted the chalky residue of milk on my tongue. I yanked back, pressing my palm to my lips, but it was too late. My mouth began to tingle.

“What did you have?” I asked, only then noticing the water glass filmed in white.

“Ovaltine,” he said sheepishly.

“What are you, a grandmother?” I snapped.

I got off his lap and went to take a long drink of lukewarm water from the tap. The reaction could not be stopped. A Benadryl pill later, I settled in on the couch, lips apart so I could take in air even as my nasal passages shut down. Nothing more attractive than a pissed-off mouth-breather, I know.

“I'm sorry,” he said. But I was madder at myself. So much for Date Night.

Every relationship revolves around issues of trust. We prioritize our individual expectations—in terms of religion, sex, family, money—and hope to find the person who can honor those needs. In every relationship there will be moments when that trust is broken. You can internalize your partner's reactions to these moments, picking and choosing when to flip out and when to let it go; most of the time I can, too. But I can't shrug off a lapse in judgment when it comes to handling my food allergies. Each violation is as undeniable as a hive on the cheek.

Those with allergies are forced into becoming custodians to the lifestyles of those around us. It's one thing to announce
you're going on a diet and then sneak a cheeseburger on the side. That's your business. But when you then kiss me and I have to go to the hospital, even though you've allegedly been eating nothing but celery and hummus all week, your business becomes my problem.

So with Adam, and boyfriends before and since, I have to question (“Did you wash up?”). I have to quiz. I have to be meticulous about the other person's hygiene, at the risk of feeling less like a lover and more like a mom. And I can never get entirely swept up in the moment.

Cosmopolitan
and
Glamour
hype the importance of good “chemistry” in a relationship. Not just conscious traits and habits but that ephemeral mix of hormones, pheromones, and every other kind of moan. Do my food allergies alter my chemistry? Should I be holding out for a neat freak? Looking for a vegan? Could I have stayed with Adam if he'd woken up one morning knowing his true calling was as a shrimp fisherman?

As if that wasn't enough to worry about, judging “chemistry” with a partner has an additional critical (if slightly vulgar) dimension. There's another kind of allergy people ask about. I'm going to demur on calling it a food allergy, but let me just say once and for all: Allergies are triggered by ingestion or exposure to proteins. Any proteins. Proteins found in food, pet dander, pollen.

Proteins found in sperm.

After you filter out all the misdiagnoses related to sexually transmitted diseases and chemical irritation, semen allergy is rare. But it exists. The first documented case was in 1958, when Dutch gynecologist J. L. H. Specken examined a sixty-five-year-old woman who experienced postcoital hives
and bronchial spasms. The allergy is usually diagnosed among women in their twenties who have a known history of vaginitis unresponsive to other treatments. The marker for diagnosis is an absence of symptoms when condoms are used; a skin-prick test will confirm IgE-based response to seminal proteins.

This is one allergy I have never experienced firsthand. But that doesn't mean I think of it as the punch line to some dirty joke. Having struggled to be honest with a partner midkiss, I can't even fathom the stress of having to pull away in bed to say, “Um, I think we have a problem.” The physical impact is as agonizing as any reaction. Not just burning and redness in any area of contact—which can last from hours to days—but wheezing and other systemic symptoms.

The long-term consequences are also intimidating. Once diagnosed with a semen allergy, a woman trying to conceive may have to begin taking prednisone in the seven to ten days prior to each predicted ovulation, to prime her body to handle the stress of unprotected sex. Anyone who has taken prednisone knows it is quite the mood killer, associated with rapid weight gain and extreme irritability. If that doesn't work, the couple may have to resort to the expense and complications of in vitro fertilization, even if they have otherwise healthy sperm and eggs.

There are a couple of desensitization treatments, preferably using materials taken from the likely sexual partner. One option is receiving shots containing small doses of the, er, allergen. The other method would be a “graded challenge,” in which various dilutions of semen are placed in the vagina every twenty minutes, building up a tolerance to the whole and undiluted form.

Once tolerance is established, the allergy sufferer needs to maintain a certain minimum level of exposure to the allergen.
The recommendation: sexual intercourse no less than every forty-eight hours.

You could look at this as the silver lining. Unless you or your partner travels frequently, in which case medical necessity dictates the creation of some very unholy variations on the freezer pop, to be used in his absence.

•  •  •

My first date with Adam was in my second year of college. Not a date, really. More like a “Hey, Sandra, I'm grabbing a bite. Wanna come along?” Not exactly rose petals showered at my feet. But if you're a girl deep in the clutches of a crush, such an invitation trumps Prince Charming pulling up in his gilded carriage.

We had gone to Café Europa, a popular hangout on the Corner known for cheap Mediterranean sandwiches served deli-style from behind a glass counter. Souvlaki, falafel, feta, and eggplant: the messy, greasy comfort foods that help a nineteen-year-old power through a ten-page sociology paper or a raging hangover. The café's logo, a woman with a strong nose and wiggly lines for hair—presumably Europa—looked like it had been doodled with a Bic pen on someone's napkin. The plates were paper, the forks plastic.

“Can you find something here?” Adam had asked.

“Sure!” I'd said brightly. “I love this place.”

Actually, I'd never eaten there. Its student staff, while friendly, didn't seem overly diligent about avoiding cross-contamination or contamination, period. I waited for Adam to
get his order and then sent him off to grab a table while I asked question after question of the guy behind the counter.

I settled on hummus, carrot and celery sticks, and wedges of pita, setting my plate down on a table that wobbled to the touch. The hummus was a bad move—grainy, garlicky, an eminently unfit premise to a kiss. But I soon had much bigger problems.

Bubbles. I tried to ignore the sensation of pockets of air rising from behind my sternum, working their way painfully up my windpipe, popping, rising again. Focusing on eye contact with Adam, I took a long sip of a Coke that had been mixed with too much sweet cola syrup. Pop. Pop. Pop.

This had to be a minor reaction, a contamination issue as predicted. Carrots and chickpeas were harmless. The manager had sworn up and down that the pita contained no dairy. (Later, I'd find out the staff did not consider goat's milk a form of “dairy.”)

Adam was making small talk about movies. It was all I could do to stay upright, nod, smile, swallow, smile again. Occasionally I would trace my fingertips over my cheeks, hoping it looked like a flirtatious gesture as I felt for radiant heat or hives.
At least
, I thought,
my skin isn't getting all blotchy. Yet
.

Forty minutes passed in a blur. We walked back together to Alderman Library, where he was meeting a study group. Only after I saw the doors close behind him did I walk to the building next door, find a pay phone, and call the University Hospital. I was in an ambulance soon after.

I've always been quick to hide a reaction if I can get away with it. Sometimes it's because I'm embarrassed by the cause.
One evening, at the age of ten, I was feeding my kitten bits of dried cat food—flicking it across the laundry room floor so he would chase after it—and without even thinking, put a piece on my tongue. Dried milk, beef extract, shrimp protein, who knows what else: gulp. Gone. I
squonked
my way through dinner that night, while insisting to my mother that everything was fine.

Even under more dignified circumstances, there is an element of pride. I want to be with someone who cares about me, not someone who considers himself a caretaker. As far as dates go, allergy attacks aren't pretty. A reaction is no dainty “spell” that leaves me dabbing at my mouth with a handkerchief. There will be gasping and sweating and retching. Getting ready to go out for a dinner date, I always line and shadow my eyelids knowing that by the end of the night they could be swollen and heavy with fluid. I coat my lips in Chapstick, not knowing if I'll end up with a kiss or mouth-to-mouth from a fifty-three-year-old paramedic with halitosis.

Eight years and several breakups after that ill-fated Café Europa meal, Adam and I would once again be sitting down to eat together—this time in D.C., in a diner called Open City, across the street from an apartment he'd rented in my neighborhood. By then, I'd gone on enough dates to know to steer clear of bread entirely. Still, a few bites into my salad, I felt that familiar tickle.

I got up to use the restroom, taking a long look back into the kitchen as I passed. I could see that while the men were wearing gloves as they mixed the greens, they were not changing gloves between salads. Which meant that the residual oil from
someone's handful of cheddar was now all over the roasted red peppers on my plate.

Returning to the table, I nibbled on another leaf or two, then pretended I was full. As Adam walked me back to my place, my mask of composure slipped. I slowed, then staggered. I leaned against a metal railing, sure I would throw up on the street.

“Let's get home,” I said. “I need to get home.”

Once in the door, I ran to the bathroom, hunching down as my guts roiled. Adam waited outside. Every few minutes he would call in, “Are you okay?”

I was determined to be okay. I couldn't let Adam see this, but I couldn't let him leave me alone, either. The second Benadryl was failing to take hold. I felt dizzy.

“Are you okay?”

I heard the question, but couldn't shape a response. As sometimes happens with bad reactions, a surreal image was rising up in my head. This time it was my breath as the bow on a violin, being drawn back and forth. Back … forth … back …