Sorry, Helen

How do you spell deja vu?

Christmas was a bastard.  I don't know how three months escaped my sense of time, but there they went, and other things too, and suddenly it was March and nothing had really improved.  My partner left me.  I took such measures to avoid giving them away, but I suppose now it doesn't matter and her name was Helen.

Helen's a soldier and as such has sexual health checks every six months or so.  This time one came back positive and as she hadn't been with anyone else it must've been me.  Therefore, understandably, she left me.  I know I deserved it.  I do know and I don't need anyone else to tell me.  I get scared and I can't say no and I never want to do it but I don't know what else to do and I'm so, so sorry, Helen.  I only cared about you.  They just frightened me and you know how badly that can go.

Thank you for the care and the patience and the love.  You kept me going.  I don't know if I could regret anything more, and I hope you can forgive me one day.

You are the wonder that's keeping
The bright stars apart
My muse
And my marvel
And half of my heart.

Sorry, darling.

Sexually Transmitted Despair

My genitals feel unusual.

Usually my morbid fear of diseases would tell me this must definitely be cancer of the cock, but alas, I fear this current discomfort may instead be due to the fact that I haven't used it in fucking forever.

It could be an STD of course, but the tragic lack of action lately makes me disinclined to believe it's so.  Besides, the one and only time I've had an STD it was chlamydia and therefore blessedly, deceitfully symptomless.

I only had chlamydia for a week or so, when I was eighteen, after I slept with some fiend I met at the pub.  I say 'slept with.'  It was up against a tree in Vauxhall Park which is notoriously shit and it was 5am.  I was picking bark out of my arse for a week after.  Anyway I was afterwards informed that said fiend was not at the pinnacle of genital cleanliness, and advised to get myself checked out.  I followed this advice and it took me to the local clinic, where an extremely disapproving nurse broke the news to me.  Thankfully the disease was cleared up by a couple of antibiotics and my penis hadn't fallen off and the worst bit by far was listening to the nurse lecture me on the importance of contraception and maintaining good sexual health.  Of course I knew it all already, but I had been drunk and all sense and judgement and the thousands of pounds spent on my education fly off to all four corners of fuck when I'm drunk.

I have since managed to avoid contracting anymore sexually transmitted diseases, which might not be something to shout about exactly, but with my general lack of regard for sexual safety over the years it makes me feel really quite fortunate to have only come out with one bout of the clam.  Still, I do wonder if I should get it checked out just in case.  The prospect of infertility is a galling one, because I would quite like to father children one day even if at the moment it is a terrifying thought and my biological clock is ticking like a horrible, spermy, average-sized timebomb.

Ahem.

I simply couldn't bear to listen to the nurse again, though.  If I haven't learnt by this age, it's a lost cause.

It won't be an STD.  Would that there had been any recent opportunity to contract one...

It is important to distinguish between clams and the clam because only one of them should be eaten.