I Know What I'm Doing (18 page)

I understand why doctors and dentists need our address (to send us bills and reminders to actually pay those bills). I understand why they need our social security number (to send our information on to the collection agency when we forget to actually pay those bills). What I’ll never understand is why they need to know if we are divorced, married, or single. And why are those three statuses even considered the same category? Marriage is a legal contract. Divorce just means that the legal contract no longer means squat. “Single” is a big tent word. Under this tent you’ve got your sluts, speed daters, people in committed monogamous relationships, people looking for love, people who have stopped looking for love, celibate monks, even noncelibate monks. Single is not a type of relationship. Single is a type of person. It’s fluid and can change in an instant. And sometimes exchanging fluids is involved.

Does the treatment differ depending on your relationship status? If I had Ebola would they just let me bleed out of my eyes in a corner? “She has Divorced Ebola. We don’t need to begin treatment right away. Take care of the Married Ebola cases first! They have someone to live for!”

I labored over whom to put as my new emergency contact. My entire family lives in Massachusetts, so if I get some horrible flesh-eating virus none of them could bring me clean underwear for at least twelve hours. My friends with kids can’t come and get me without losing valuable time futzing with a child’s car seat, plus those kids have germs. I figured the only time I would be in my doctor’s office is Monday through Friday during business hours so I put my manager Kara. She’s been my comedy manager and friend for more than eight years and I know that she answers her phone. If she doesn’t, her assistant will. And she has an interest in coming to help save my life because she gets 10 percent of the rest of my life and she’s got big show business dreams for me. This choice confused Dina the receptionist. “And Kara is . . . your spouse?”

“
No.
We’re not
married.
”

“I’m not judging.”

“That’s my manager.”

“Okay, I don’t have . . .” she hesitated, “
manager
as a drop-down option for emergency contact. I have . . . other?”

“Sure. Put other. I’m sure we won’t ever need this anyway.”

“And you can always change this if something
changes
with . . . Kara.”

“Yes. If I get a new comedy manager, you will be the first people I call.”

“Again, I’m not judging.”

“What are you getting at? Even though I said ten times that Kara is my manager you still think that Kara is my lover, don’t you? Do you think her feminine wiles caused my divorce or do you see me more as the one who had an awakening and left my husband?” I knew I shouldn’t have worn a Ramones T-shirt to a doctor’s visit. I looked like a post-punk lesbian, which is fine. Dina wasn’t judging.

I sat in the waiting room looking at the sign that said
ABSOLUTELY NO CELL PHONE USE. BE RESPECTFUL OF OTHERS
. I glared at the toddler playing a toy piano loudly. This kid’s penchant for hitting the C key over and over and over is somehow considered within the definition of respect for others?

Once in the exam room, my doctor was feeling my divorced boobs. “And you’re doing breast exams in the shower every month?”

“Yes,” I lied.

My doctor went down her checklist. “Smoker? Did you ever smoke?”

“I haven’t smoked since I quit when I was twenty-seven,” I lied. She didn’t need to know that I had spent the last six months of my marriage having two cigarettes for dessert.

“Anything else you wanted to ask me about today?”

“Um, yeah. Can we throw in some STD tests?”

Dr. Beverly cocked her eyebrow. “Are you at risk for something?”

“No. I figured it would be nice to get a piece of paper that says I don’t have any diseases in case a new partner asks.”

“How many partners do you have?”

“Well, I mean, no it’s not like that. I mean, I have a friend with benefits. But I plan on having a relationship and, um, if I meet someone I would love to show them, since, um, they don’t know me very well, that I don’t have anything. Because I don’t have anything.”

I swear I saw a look of disappointment. She said that she was sorry for my divorce and that my grief shouldn’t cause me to act out and engage in risky behavior. I explained to her that I hadn’t done anything risky. I did not sleep with anyone who had a disease. I did not have any diseases. I just wanted it documented. In the single world, that piece of paper that proves you don’t have herpes is like a college degree because a lot of times people won’t let you in without one.

I flashed back to when my ex-husband and I were just embarking on becoming boyfriend/girlfriend. We both decided to get STD tests and show each other our results before we slept together. I remember discussing this with that very same doctor. She had asked, “Do you want to get married?” A silly question to ask a thirty-year-old who had only been dating someone for a couple of weeks, but I thought I was all grown up back then and I said, “Yes. I think I’m going to marry him someday.” Now that I admitted to two partners since my split she was looking at me like SHE needed to get tested just from being around me.

A few days later I received a terrifying e-mail. No, not a Paperless Post invite to a shower for someone’s second baby but an e-mail from my doctor’s office with the heading: “ABNORMAL RESULTS FOUND.” The body of the e-mail included a PDF file showing check marks in every negative box, HPV, Herpes, HIV (yoo-hoo, fellas!), but one marked ABNORMAL. Hepatitis C. I had hep C? I was dizzy. I immediately began to google hep C. The only two people I’d ever heard of that allegedly had hep C are Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee. They didn’t even get it from making that sex tape. Pamela claims that she got it from sharing a dirty needle with Tommy at a tattoo parlor. I’ve never even been NEAR a needle except to take this stupid blood test. Other things came up in my Google search for hep C, like how unhealthy nail salons can be. I thought that if I did have hep C no one would ever believe that I’m not some dirty whore but instead I got some dirty pedicure. I thought of the two guys I had been with since my divorce. They most certainly did
not
have hep C. They probably didn’t even have
vitamin
C in their bloodstream. They weren’t even hep dudes in the 1960s “cool cat” sense of the word. How did I potentially have this? Was I born with it? My friend Sarah tried to put my mind at ease by reminding me, “I’ve been much sluttier than you and I’ve never had hep C. If I don’t have it, you don’t have it.” My friend Sharon soothed me, “Some asshole I dated cheated on me with a porn star. If I don’t have it, you don’t have it.”

Back in the waiting room at my doctor’s office I used my cell phone even though it was frowned upon. If preschoolers could bang on that damn out-of-tune toy piano then I could continue to research hep C. I finally found a message board discussion group where worried people shared their stories of hep C false positives—people who test positive who in no way have or carry the disease. According to experts, antibodies that the immune system has produced to combat infections other than hep C can be what’s known as “cross-reactive”: the initial test winds up picking up on these antibodies’ presence and can incorrectly come up positive. What really determines whether one has hep C is what’s called an RNA test. I hadn’t had an RNA test.

Sitting in my doctor’s office, I wondered why I had to be in the paper gown. More humiliation? Did she want easy access so she could yell at my vagina face-to-face?

When she walked in I pounced and told her I read that 50 percent of patients come up with a false positive on the first round of testing. That’s why it’s recommended that people only get tested if they’re in high-risk sexual situations or doing anything involving needles. I don’t use needles, not even sewing needles. I have a fake Christmas tree so that I don’t even come in contact with pine needles.

The doctor took another vial of blood for the RNA test. She said there were no false negatives or positives with this test. And then she said, “We can determine which treatment is best.”

Her statement dumbfounded me. “Why are we talking about treatment when we haven’t even handed my blood over to the lab yet?”

“Let’s just act as if you do so that we can get in the mind-set of treatment.”

Isn’t that guilty until proven innocent? Good thing my doctor wasn’t a lawyer. She would suck at representing the plaintiff. “Your Honor, although my client shouldn’t have to go to jail for the crimes she didn’t commit, I still believe her to be a filthy tramp and may I suggest a good old-fashioned stoning as her punishment?” She told me that she would call me personally on Friday morning with the news if I was negative or about to join Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee as yet another name that comes up in a Google search for people with hep C.

The night before finding out my hep C results, I wasn’t able to take my mind off of what that phone call might bring. I did laundry, organized my clothes by color, consolidated lotions in my bathroom, and threw out expired eyeliner just to take my mind off of things. But my mind kept taunting me.
“When you get the official word that you have hep C, Jen, this is how you’ll spend every Friday night instead of ever being able to be with a man again!”

I wanted someone by my side when I got the phone call with the results. I wanted to sleep in someone’s bed. I texted Gypsy, who had moved back to Los Angeles earlier that year. He was more than happy to have me over, even with the news that he was being diagnosed with “no chance of having sex with me.” We sat and looked through old photographs. He was doing a little organizing himself—scanning pictures so that they could also never be looked at again in digital form. We found a picture of us hanging out in that living room back in Boston where we first bonded over Cat Stevens, Joni Mitchell, and broken hearts. Even if I wasn’t potentially suffering from a contagious sexually transmitted disease I knew deep down that I still wouldn’t have wanted to have sex with Gypsy that night. Our pheromones had cooled that year. He let me wear his favorite T-shirt and sweatpants that he’s had since high school. Every once in a while I would remind him that if I did have hep C, he might have it too. Gypsy was unconvinced that anything was wrong with me but he offered, “If you and I both have hep C we can get married.”

“No, Gypsy, it’s not a
baby.
”

I felt cozy and sort of like what married couples always say they feel like at year twenty. Maybe that hot passion had faded but what was left was a deep familial fondness. The new benefit of being Gypsy’s confidante was that we were almost family—a fucked-up family of two who have fucked each other, but still family.

I woke up fully clothed next to Gypsy, my alarm and my phone ringing all at once.

“Hello. This is Jen. Is this Dr. Beverly? What is it? Just tell me!”

“Hello. May I speak with Jennifer, please?”

“Yes. Yes. Yes. This is Jennifer. What.
What?
”

“This is Dr. Beverly. I am calling about your results.”

“WHAAAAAT ARE THE RESULTS?”

“Is this a good time to talk?”

“YES. IT IS THE BEST TIME EVER TO TALK. WHAT. WHAT. WHAT?”

“You’re negative. You do not have hepatitis C. You are not a carrier of hepatitis C. That first test was a false positive. But if you continue to engage in any high-risk behavior it is important to get tested yearly.”

What was it with this biotch? “Doctor, I am not engaging in any high-risk behavior. I don’t even watch episodes of
Intervention
where they show junkies using needles! I’m sorry that I didn’t stay with the same man until death did us part but I am not going to be shamed because I am a single woman who occasionally has sex!”

I hung up the phone and crawled back into bed. Gypsy said, “We might have the longest-running relationship of anyone we know, though.”

“That’s true. Our secret is we’re not in love and we mostly see other people.”

“Jen, maybe it’s not
love
love, but I have so much love for you.”

“I not
love
love you too.” I snuggled up on Gypsy’s shoulder so relieved that I wasn’t going to have to attend any hep C–themed charity lunches with Pamela Anderson and that my skin wasn’t going to turn yellow.

Gypsy and I remain platonic friends. Our FWB dissolved years ago. And I have a new gynecologist, Dr. Karen. I went to her for a second opinion and admittedly to get a little validation that Dr. Beverly was an uptight prude. When I told her the story of my “hep C” scare she rolled her eyes and said that she’s treated far too many divorced women who were feeling judged by their former doctor. Dr. Karen isn’t a sanctimonious goody-goody but unfortunately she is quite a straight shooter. Once I got my feet up in the stirrups she said, “You know you have some gray pubic hairs, right? I can’t pluck them but you might want to.”

Well, I don’t have an STD but I do have something that
will
ruin my sex life and eventually kill me—AGE.

15

DROPPING THE BALL (OR A GUIDE TO STAYING AT HOME ON NEW YEAR’S EVE WITH DIGNITY)

The only way to spend New Year’s Eve is either quietly with friends or in a brothel. Otherwise when the evening ends and people pair off, someone is bound to be left in tears.

—W. H. AUDEN

T
he best party I’ve ever been to in my life was on a neighbor’s multiacre front lawn. The DJ—clearly enamored of me—put up with my request that he play Eddy Grant’s “Electric Avenue” twice in a row. I danced with wild abandon, not even doing clear-cut dance moves. I sang along at the top of my lungs. “We gonna rock down to E-LEC-TRIC AV-E-NUE!” I fell down, tripping on the hem of my long summer maxi dress. I got back up and continued to flail around, not concerned with the grass stain that was making a home in my dress fabric. The fun only ended when the police told the DJ that that was enough. It was almost midnight and Eddy Grant was cut short, “And then we’ll take it—” Silence. The friendly policemen said that we could continue the party quietly inside or just . . . go home. I turned to my parents. “Time for bed, Jennifah.” I was ten.