The Syphilitic Canal

This article was published in the February 2022 issue of The Drunken Canal.

I’ll be the first to tell you: I’m a slut for love. Holding hands, kissing, hugging, touching fingertips as you pass the joint, prolonged eye contact with a stranger on the subway, and other things too crass even for The Drunken Canal. Now I know that in the OnlyFans age, this sort of radical sex positivity is no longer, well, radical, and pretty much any other faggot you might see crossing the street would probably also self-identify as a slut. However, they probably wouldn’t identify as a neurosyphilis haver. At least I hope not, because that’s my thing! 

Towards the end of summer 2020, my head started hurting; sharp, sweeping pains that ran over my brain seemingly at random, getting worse every day. Everyone I asked suggested I drink more water — which, yeah I should — but your piss can only get so clear before it starts coming back up out of your mouth (I’m joking!). Even my doctor didn’t know what was wrong with me, until my blood test came back positive for syphilis. That’s perturbing enough on its own, but he urged me to go to the hospital for a spinal tap, which is definitely a little wackier! And yes, I did ask the doctor, mid-tap, if it was true you could use a spinal tap to test for LSD. (He said yes, and honestly did a very good job hiding his reverence of my sick-nasty lifestyle). 

The test came back negative and they treated me for garden-variety syphilis, and the headaches began to go away. I still felt like something was off, but all the doctors said I was cured, and who am I to argue with professional nerds? 

With my clean bill of health serving as written approval of my hedonistic lifestyle, I began to “date” again. The boy I had been seeing over the summer had ended things (unrelated! I didn’t pass it to him), and I felt a new hunger for attention, passion, sexual and physical validation. Healthy stuff. I felt a little conflicted about my liminal status, and I didn’t want to bring anyone over – due to COVID/roommate judgment – so I had to get creative: making out with a boy on my roof and dry humping like we’re in 7th grade; sharing a cigarette and a walk until I saw my roommate leave for her run and sucking his dick in my room for a few minutes… I made it work, I always do. 

By the time my birthday came around at the end of October, the headaches were back in full force. Every day that I continued to do nothing about them, I woke up with a heinous little cackle and applied my clown makeup in the mirror. I held a rave-themed birthday party for myself on my roof and made personalized rave candy bracelets for all my friends; mine read “SYPHILIS BOY.” 

That week, I made an appointment with an infectious disease specialist at Columbia. I wore my new bracelet, to make his job a little easier. He told me that my spinal fluid sample had returned a value soooo close to negative for neurosyphilis that they just went with it, to make me happy I guess? He set me up with a home nursing service that would be in touch with the next steps. 

Remember the unseasonably warm November day when Joe Biden officially won the presidency, and everyone took to the streets to party? I was confined to my roof, as I had a fresh needle in my arm, connected to an IV bag full of penicillin, where it would stay for the next two weeks. It came with an electric pump and a cute little backpack, so that I could be syphilitic on the go. This might sound crass, but for probably the first time I experienced being disabled in some way, having to assess where I could and couldn’t go, the ways I could conceal my condition, the ever-pressing fear of the plastic tube infiltrating my veins getting snagged on something. Unlike a real disability, however, I had an end date. Every day I counted down to the end of my two-week internment, my health returning with every drop of penicillin permeating my bloodstream. 

You would think I wasn’t having sex during this, if not due to the lessons I had learned about self-worth and safe sex practices, at least because who would want to fuck someone with a power cord? (Un)fortunately, I had begun seeing someone new who lived nearby just before I got plugged, and he was kind enough to overlook my newest appendage. I needed to have sex like I needed a second IV in my arm, but lucky me! I got both. On one particular rendezvous, my little syph backpack sat on the floor beeping incessantly while we banged. I ignored it as long as I could, but eventually decided to prioritize my health, for once. Turns out, my tube was clogged, so I ran to the hospital, imagining a quick jaunt where they would unclog it with, I don’t know, a Q-tip and some WD-40? Six hours later, I’m begging for the blood thinning medicine that will unclog me, each member of the staff afraid I’ll bleed out like I’m a fucking Romanov. They ultimately decided to just give me a new IV in the other arm, which promptly slipped out and filled my arm with penicillin, swelling up and creating tiny penicillin blisters that I popped with my fingernails. 

Several months later, the last of my headaches were finally gone. I can laugh about it now, because I have to, because otherwise it’s pretty fucking dark. I tell this story because I’m tired of being ashamed, scared to mention it to boys for fear they might ghost me for it (it’s happened). Sex positivity is great and important, but won’t truly be radical until we’re honest and realistic about all the realities of sex. It’s hard, it’s sticky, it’s uncomfortable (woof), but disclosure is almost always the best policy, even if it’s easier to just say you got COVID and buy yourself a week and a new doxy script. Things happen, and rather than freak out or get caught up in who gave what to who, the only pragmatic course of action is to get tested regularly. Faggots: PrEP is awesome and an important step but it is not a cure-all. Either wrap it up like it’s 2004 or make a standing appointment with your GP. Even if you have no visible symptoms, the onus of venereal integrity falls on your rippling shoulders, king. Take it from me, you don’t want neurosyph, or any other host of invisible diseases. It’s a lot harder to treat something no one else will acknowledge.

And to the gays still reading this: I’m totally cured! Now who wants to go on a date?