If Only The Greeks Had This

Here’s the picture for you – you live in San Francisco. You’re male, homosexual, and sexually active. You’ve lived a life of excess, and now you’re feeling funny. There’s definately something wrong downstairs. You get it checked out, and you have an STD. Now you have to tell all those people who may have given it to you and you may have gotten it from. But how on earth can you locate all those men? All you have are email addresses, because the gay male in-the-know stays connected via the web. Plus, you are scared of sharing your secret. For the person in this situation, what are your options?

The website is called inSPOT. It puts a smiley-happy-Halmark face on telling people that they may have an incurable, painful disease. It makes sharing your horrible, life-ending secret easy and fun.

You’re welcomed by the welcoming words of the site’s welcome.

In San Francisco, there’s an easy way to tell your sex partners you have an STD. Send them a free inSPOT e-card, ANONYMOUSLY or from your email address, right here.

No information will be reported to any government or private agency. Please respect the community and don’t use these cards to spam.

In our above situation, you already know you have a VD, so the next step is to tell everyone about it. You click the “Tell Them” link. There are six fun and funny designs to choose from. Each one breaks the news in a comical manner, allowing your ex-partner (or trick – we all have them) to warm up to the idea that they may have one, too.

You decide to go with this one:

You notice, however, that they don’t say “How?” or “Why?”. No mind. Off to the next step! You click “Use This Card”. Then there is the security page. This makes sure that you are above the age of 5, below the age of 87, and that you aren’t just a computer program written specifically to spam people with “I have VD” ecards. Type in the code and we’re off to the next step.

Then you get to create a message. It should be succinct and apologetic. After all, let’s not forget that unprotected sex is a dangerous game, and you just found out that you lost. We are going to use the message “Oops.” This gets both across. We could add “(shrugs)” or “(blush)” after it, but to bring the mood back up, we’ll simply add “:)”. “:)” is the new “:-)”. It’s cuter without a nose.

You could consider using a poem. The old usage of Roses are Red, Violets are Blue is quite popular. Try something like:

Roses are Red
Violets are Blue
I have AIDS.
(courtesy of the Fark forums)

After your message, you can pick in your pre-filled STD. I’m not sure what a pre-filled STD is, but you have the following STDs to choose from:

• Chlamydia
• Crabs and Scabies (pronounced skay-bees)
• Gonorrhea
• Hepatitis A
• Molluscum Contagiosum
• Non-Gonoccochal Urethritis (NGU)
• Shigella
• Syphilis

Of course, the option they don’t have, which kills the most people every years, is AIDS/HIV. They must have a special site devoted to “I Have AIDS” ecards. To get more information on any of these STDs you can go to the info page on the same site. How informative!

We were going to pick Herpes, which is argueablly one of the funniest STDs to choose from, or Syphilis. Of course, a quick consultation to the info site tells us that STDs fall into two categories: Curable and Treatable. Of course, you have to treat the STDs that are curable to cure them, but the treatable ones can never be cured. You have them forever. Unfortunately, there is no cure for Herpes. Yet. So instead we Syphilis.

Then comes the email addresses. It says that you can enter up to 6 partners for the previous 6 months. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t stop at six, nnn’kay? ;) But, you only have six email addresses. So, armed with the email address of every partner (or trick) over the last six months, you set to typing. I need to send one to Megan, Bryce, Tony, Jeff, Your Mom, and John.Com. I’m sending one to John.Com because he got really defensive when Jeff asked him if he was gay, so I think he should be aware of his options.

He’ll probably kick my ass for this, but I’m banking on his inability to read, and my ability to duck really quick-like.

You decide to send it anonymously. After all, it’s your right to ruin other people’s lives with your indescretion and then slink away in the shadows never to answer directly to those who you have hurt. Then you hit Preview to see the damage. It looks good. Hit Send.

That’s it! It was that easy to clear your conscience. Now you can get back out to the bars and find a partner (or trick) by sundown. All thanks to the San Francisco Department of Health. Hey, if you can’t stop ’em, at least placate ’em!