17 December 2005

When love means having to say you're sorry

I remember a time when, shortly after being intimate with someone, I discovered that I'd had a communicable disease at the time. Although we lived on different continents, I was luckily in the city where she lived when I discovered this, and so was able to tell her in person. I took her into an empty room, closed the blinds, and proceeded to offer abject apologies and express my sincere hope that she was OK, but that I thought she really ought to go to the doctor and get checked for...

I realize now that I should have begun with this last bit of information, as she was pretty worked up by this point. Who could blame her, considering the nasty, even lethal, bugs that are going around out there?

Anyway, she went and got checked out, and as it turned out, she hadn't managed to catch my mononucleosis.

But she was a friend. What if she'd been someone I'd met casually? Now San Francisco and Los Angeles are providing an answer: a service which sends an e-card to those you slept with, telling them what they might have. One problem with this—you have to have their e-mail address, and they need yours. It might be a good idea to set up a special one, like tellmeifihaveanstd@yahoo.com.

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