by Raqiyah Mays
“I haven’t been to the doctor in a long time,” he said, looking expressionless at the laptop. “Man, I don’t even remember when.”
“Which is why we should go. Like, when’s the last time you got checked for STDs?”
“Ooh,” he said, scratching his neck, voice in a low mumble. “I don’t remember that, either. Years.”
“What’s that you said?” I asked loudly. “I couldn’t hear your last words there.”
He cleared his throat. “I said, ‘Years.’ ”
“Wow, so how do you know you don’t have anything? If you’ve been fucking for years, how do you know you’re not giving me something from all that raw sex?”
“I mean, I’d know,” he said, his voice in a defensive high pitch. “It would be a brown color or burn or something.”
“Not all the time. Sometimes these STDs are colorless and have no smell.”
He took a deep breath and sighed. “Okay . . .” The word trailed off till he whispered three more: “We can go.”
“What was that you said?”
“We. Can. Go.” He enunciated, straight-faced, aggravated.
“Well, I knew I was going,” I said, back in the bathroom, fixing my makeup. “Just wanted to make sure you were coming with me.”
“When you wanna go?”
“Today. As soon as I finish getting ready.”
“Wait,” he said, picking up his planner and turning the page. “Today? Why the rush?”
“Why wait? If we’re thinking about it, we might as well go before we talk ourselves out of it. I’ll just text Denise, tell her I had an emergency and needed to go to the doctor.”
“Well, won’t that make her ask questions?” He nervously began cleaning up his desk. “Don’t tell my business.”
“Sean, don’t insult me.”
“I feel a little insulted.” He got up and walked to the bathroom door. “You think I have a disease or something.”
“And I’m insulted and suspicious that you don’t want to go. What are you scared of?”
“Nothing, I just don’t like doctors.”
I adjusted my hat, blotted my lipstick with tissue, and took one last look at the mirror before brushing past him and squeezing my way out the bathroom door. He stood there, hunching. Gone was the confident, upright strut of a Leo man. Replaced with a slight frown below eyes of fear. I turned to grab his waist.
“Come on, baby.” I felt his tightness melting in my palms, muscles relaxing. “You know I love you. I just wanna do things right. This is the right thing to do.”
I looked up, chin on his chest. He looked down, halfway smiling, before folding his lips inside his mouth.
“See, you’re lucky you’re cute.” He pulled away, marching to the couch and grabbing his backpack. “I wouldn’t do this for any other girl.”
He grabbed his keys off a hook and opened the front door.
“Why are you standing there?” he asked, walking out. “Let’s do this before I change my mind.”
Chapter 21
The clinic on Twenty-third Street in Manhattan was the filthiest health facility I’d ever seen. The middle of the front lawn was littered with papers, bottles, miscellaneous junk, and a sign reading “Helth Clinic.” The line of would-be patients arriving early, hoping to be seen first, trailed out the door and down the stairs. One woman with a tattered leather jacket yelled at her kids for picking up bottles off the grass: “Get over here! Shit!” Another, with a toe hanging out the top of old, decrepit, laceless Adidas sneakers, made his way down the line, asking, “Do you have a cigarette or spare change?”
“Is it always like this?” I questioned the guard giving out numbers. “What’s the wait?”
“Yeah, right after the weekend, it’s crazy,” he said, rolling his eyes and shaking his head. “You lucky you didn’t come after Halloween. You should definitely give yourself two to four hours today.”
I looked at my watch: nine thirty. My immediate text to Denise read: At doctor. Won’t be in till after lunch.
I knew I was safe today. The magazine was in the early weeks of its next issue. Things were less hectic, allowing Denise to busily edit and not take any calls. She texted me back: No worries. Hope everything is ok. See ya then.
After an hour, Sean and I finally made it to the waiting room. We passed time by playing tic-tac-toe and hangman while snickering at the poorly written and acted “safe sex” movies flickering on an old TV. Doing our best to hide giggles when watching the craziest of the city walk into the waiting room. Two hours passed before we were seen. Sean was called first.
“Fifty-two. Number fifty-two.”
He looked down at his creased cardboard numbered square to make sure it was his. And then he stared at me, pursed lips and nervous eyes reminiscent of an eight-year-old.
“Good luck,” I whispered with a smile. “It’s gonna be all right.”
He slowly got up and followed the nurse down the hallway. I took out my journal and wrote:
At the STD clinic with Sean. I’m sooo glad he came with me today. Maybe he isn’t cheating on me. I mean, this is a step in the right direction. The fact that he came with me at the last minute, when I was sooo bitchy this morning. Think my period is coming. I hate when I PMS. But that shit with Kelly. That name on his calendar 4 times? WTF?! Nah, for real, if that asshole has anything, I’m killing him. I mean, not for real (in case something happens to him and the police read this journal for evidence. I would never kill Sean. I love him). But nah, I’m definitely breaking up with him. And I’m confronting that Kelly bitch. But wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. Lemme relax. He’s here with me. He came to the STD clinic. He loves me. Relax.
“Number fifty-three. Fifty-three.”
I dropped my journal on the floor. The pen rolled under the seat in front of me, and I bumped into a homeless man moaning and gritting his teeth as he dozed in and out of sleep.
“Ooh,” I said. “I’m sorry, sir.”
“Motherfucker! Shiiit,” he yelled. “Can’t even get some sleep at the damn doctor!”
He grunted, crossed his legs to the right side, and fell back asleep.
As I rushed out of the waiting room, Sean walked in, face full of fear.
“What happened?” I asked, grabbing his hand. “You okay?”
“I hope, just waiting for my results.”
“How long?”
“They said like twenty, thirty minutes.” He glanced at the waiting nurse. “Your turn?”
“Yeah. Wish me luck, babe.”
I hated the doctor’s office. Any of them. It was never comfortable, always tense and cold. Same gown open in the front so your breasts and pubic hair flashed the world. Same embarrassed thought of I should have shaved before I came here. Or I should’ve put some Vaseline on my legs this morning. Same nurse questions, like “When was your last period?” “Are you on any medication?” “Why are you here today?” She scribbled something down on her pad. You never knew what, even though she was staring at you like a specimen waiting to be felt up. And in came the doctor with his investigation.
“Have you had any discharge?”
“No.”
“Itching?”
“No.”
“Burning?”
“No.”
“Good, lie back and relax.”
Out came the big silver tongs after he snapped on his gloves, with my legs wide open, vagina hanging out, and lips parted for the world to see. The entire moment was straight from Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologues. Minutes later it was done.
“You can get dressed,” the doctor said without looking at me, dropping the tongs into a sink. “Go back to the waiting room, and someone will call you in twenty or thirty minutes with your results.”
Back in the waiting area, Sean was reading The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Peo
ple. I slid beside him.
“They call you back yet?”
“Nah, just waiting with the crazies,” he said, as a white lady with a raggedy ponytail and dirty cast limped by with her giant pocketbook bulging from clothes falling out the broken zipper.
“Number fifty-two.”
Sean’s head shot up like a frightened deer’s.
“You want me to come with you?” I asked, grabbing his hand again.
“Um, yeah,” he said, squeezing it back. “I got nothing to hide.”
We were following the nurse down the hall when I was stopped by a counselor.
“Are you two together?” she asked, looking down at us from her size-thirteen, five-ten frame.
“Yeah, I’m his girlfriend.”
“Let me discuss a few things with him in private, and then you can come back,” she said. “I’ll get your results, too.”
My exit left Sean with a pale, empty look. Like a sick person, about to vomit. The counselor closed the door behind her as he walked inside the office.
Fifteen minutes later . . .
“Number fifty-three.”
I followed the social worker to the end of the corridor toward a red door. Inside, the beige room was covered with STD posters full of statistics: “15 million Americans become newly infected with an STD each year.” “Untreated, chlamydia can lead to severe health consequences for women, including infertility.” “Condoms are not 100% effective against pregnancy.” Pictures colored these stats, featuring graphic images of warts framing chapped lips. Crusty, peeling sores on bald vaginas. Gashes outlined with dry blood on penises. It was like sitting in a room of sexually repugnant erotica.
I looked at Sean. He didn’t acknowledge me, instead leaning to the side, crossing his legs and uncrossing them.
“So, ma’am, how’s your day?”
“It’ll be better when you tell me my results. I know you want to build rapport, but the wait is killing me.”
“Very well.” She opened up my folder and chart. “Your results came back clean. Your chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis, HPV, herpes, and HIV all came back negative.”
“Oh, that’s good.” I breathed a sigh, smiling at Sean, who continued staring at the floor.
“Um, sir, did you want to discuss your results with her, or . . .” Her words drifted off, and Sean slowly turned to face me.
“They sayin’ I got gonorrhea or something.”
“What?” My face was stuck in a position of solid stupidity and disbelief. “Wait.” I gathered my thoughts. Swallowed. Took a deep breath. “So how do I not have anything and he does?”
“Well,” the nurse began, ruffling through her papers, “he could be a carrier and not have passed it on to you yet. Has there been unprotected sex?”
“Yes,” I snapped without a thought. “Sometimes.”
“Well, consider yourself lucky.”
I turned to Sean, who had the stupidest expression that reminded me of Big Bird, only with a long beak of lying Pinocchio bullshit.
“We’re going to give you both a prescription of medication that works to clear up gonorrhea,” she said, nodding toward me. “For you, it’s just to be safe.”
At the diner down the block from the clinic, the food looked like gonorrhea. Green slimy crap splattered across the plate. The putrid eggs smelled like ass. The greasy bacon sat to the side, cold, crusty, and decrepitly crass. The grits looked like cold, white shit with specks of black stool. As Sean ate, he slurped with his tongue, slithering hissing saliva over each morsel. The bacon didn’t crunch inside his mouth. Instead, it was sloppy and chewy, melting from the acid of his gums.
Everything about that man disgusted me. He was like a virus, full of puss, bloated and swollen like a whitehead dwelling on a skin’s surface. My eyes were razors, sharp needles waiting to burst him—the pimple—and watch his blood splatter across the glass where the stench of his remains would smell worse than gas passing through intestinal membranes. Worse than the Newark extension of the New Jersey Turnpike. He swatted away a gnat as he put a fork full of grits into his mouth.
“So you’re not gonna say anything to me?” He said this with his trademark half smirk, scraping the last morsel off the plate. “Meena, I’m sorry. I really didn’t know.”
He took a sip of tea. A tiny drop dripped from his lip as the sip burned his tongue. “What do you want me to say?”
“Something.”
“Something like what, Sean?” I sat there waiting for an answer. “Oh, I know, um . . . you’re cheating on me.”
“I’m not cheating on you.”
“So how do you have full-blown gonorrhea and I don’t? We use condoms most of the time. You’re fucking someone else.”
“I don’t know, maybe I already had it. We only been together four months.”
“Eight,” I spit back.
“Four. We were just hanging out for the first four.”
“You know what?” I shook my head and sat back, crossing my arms. “You’re lying.”
“Okay, so who am I fucking?”
“I don’t know, um, Kelly Jones, maybe?”
He paused too long, grabbing a piece of bacon by way of distraction.
“I’m not sleeping with her.” He looked down at his plate. “That’s not true.”
Silence. He chewed till there was nothing else on his plate. Then he slowly looked up.
“She is just a friend, someone I’ve known for a few years. We’re just comrades in this writing game.”
“Then why do you have so many meetings with her on your calendar?”
“’Cause she wants to get into freelance writing for magazines, and she’s been asking me to look over some of her work.”
“Oh, she needs your help, how convenient.”
“Meena . . .” He realized something all of a sudden. “How do you know what’s on my calendar?”
“You know what?” I grabbed my bag, preparing to leave. “This isn’t going to work out. I can’t be with you anymore.”
Sean looked up at me. His droopy, puppy-dog eyes were the first sign I’d ever seen of defeat. It gave me confidence, so I continued.
“I don’t trust you. And I just can’t be with anyone I don’t trust. I mean you’ve got an STD, from this girl I feel you’re spending time with. I think we should take a break.”
He looked down at his cup and whispered, “Okay.”
We sat there in silence, avoiding each other’s eyes. Looking around, uncomfortably, waiting for the slow waitress to drag her fat ass to the table and bring the check. Minutes later we parted. He to Brooklyn, me to the Buzz office. Fuck him. I needed to deal with Kelly Jones.
Chapter 22
A week later I began to look for a new apartment. Searching in the Village Voice, pulling out a checkbook when interested, I took only two weeks to find the perfect spot. A one-bedroom in a four-story walk-up in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. Word was, Biggie used to live around the corner. The apartment Lil’ Kim grew up in was a block away. The wild days of crack-fueled gunfights had calmed down into a gentrified, cleaned-up area that was on the rise as far as overpriced places to live.
But it didn’t take long for me to regret moving to Brooklyn. Weeks of not speaking to Sean had me yearning for home and wishing I’d picked Jersey City, instead of a borough that reminded me of him. After a long November weekend, a friends-and-family production of unloading boxes and furniture into my tiny spot, I trudged down the chilly block to the C train. Observing gloomy clouds and couples skipping with the promise of falling in love, my heart withered with blackened anger and moldy envy. I noticed the dead leaves turned inward, spotted crisping branches and potted plants suffocating from a craving for water. At work I sat hard, motionless, like a corpse in rigor mortis. The words on the computer screen were blurry to me, meshing with its blue background into a mirage of
letters on the horizon of sleep. I dragged on tirelessly to the promised land, the land of the finished task—proofreading documents, typing memos, sending e-mails, making copies. I could see completion in the distance, but getting there was an upward hike. Something was holding me back, for days, weeks. The heat of depression, anger blazed across my brain like an oppressive heat wave—thick and pressured—sitting on triggers igniting my migraines. Tension in my stomach built, blocking my appetite, mooching my smiles, robbing me of all happiness and love. Damn that evil man. The aftermath of my breakup with Sean was murdering my soul.
“Meena!”
I jumped out of sullen inertia and found Denise standing over me with a confused look of concern on her face.
“Come in my office,” she said, before placing yet another pink Post-it with a to-do list atop my inbox pile and walking back into her office. “Get an intern to answer your phone.”
I took a deep breath and dragged myself behind her.
“Close the door,” she said, sitting at her desk, typing an e-mail. “Let me ask you something . . .”
The thoughts inside me ran in frenzied, circular disarray. What did I do now? Sean cheats, damn near gives me an STD, and now my boss wants to fire me. Fuck.
I plopped down on her white leather recliner. In front, atop a marble table, my eyes focused on a dying bouquet of roses turning brownish black, a tiny petal hanging like my heart from its tall glass vase.
“Okay, what’s going on, Meena?” Denise walked over and sat next to me. “You’re starting to depress me. Did something happen?”
“No,” I answered in a monotone, eyes fixated on the dead flowers, concentrating on keeping tears from flooding my eyes. “I’m just tired.”
“Meena, come on now. Been there, done that,” she said, placing her lipstick-stained, tall cup of coffee on the table. “What’s up? How are you and Sean doing?”
Priding myself on being private, I hated that everyone knew Sean was my boyfriend. It was as if he’d made a point to tell every single writer, editor, and publicist in New York City that we were dating. He had to find a way to let people know our ups, downs, and outs. I’d run into people on the train and they’d say, “Hey, are you okay?” With a sad, pouting look of apology they’d add, “I talked to Sean.”
