Dominatrix Next Door

I’ve had a lot of trouble over STD testing.

Not STD’s, just the testing.

This particular rant started when I got my AIM test results in my email a couple of weeks ago. I also read an article about Belladonna’s retirement. Getting into the adult business has really opened my eyes to the strange attitudes people have toward sexual health and testing.

First, the notion that people exist in two states: healthy, or leprous. Second, that STD testing determines such.

I know ignorance is bliss, but relationships are broken and even lives ruined over this topic. So educate yourselves, folks, please! Stop using fear and shame and outdated binaries against the people you love.

In the spirit of openness, I’ll talk about my own gynecological health. I know, you were just dying to find out. Let’s look at some (potential) results I ripped off my AIM test:

“negative”
indicates that the bacteria or virus was not found
“negative with immunity”
indicates negative, and that positive levels indicate vaccination, or previous exposure, providing immunity
“positive”
indicates that the bacteria or virus was found, and that the individual is presently infectious
“not detected”
indicates that the bacteria or virus was not found
“detected”
indicates that the bacteria or virus was found, and that the individual may presently be infectious
“non-reactive”
indicates that the individual is not expected to be infectious
“reactive”
indicates that the individual may presently be infectious
“equivocal”
indicates that the testing procedure was unable to determine a result, given the specimen
“indeterminate”
indicates that the testing procedure was unable to determine a result, given the specimen

Mere lab tests, see? Not decrees from above. Note the conspicuous absence of such terms as “angel” or “sinner”. And as I explained to a lover recently, you never test “clean”; you just test “we can’t be certain you’re dirty yet”.

One nasty assumption is that testing is prophylactic or reactionary, and thus something only dirty people do. I don’t get tested because I’ve exposed myself to risk (like unprotected sex — assumption one), had an accidental high-risk encounter (like a broken condom — assumption two), had an infected partner (assumption three) or had symptoms (assumption four). I get tested to answer a simple question: Do I have these viruses/bacteria? Neither the question nor the answer need imply anything more.

And the Belladonna article brings up an important point about the almighty test: there’s more to safe sex than fucking only tested partners. Porn performers are wise to this. We may be tested, but more importantly, we’re professionals. We’re informed about sex even off the set. We don’t live in a fog of questions like “If I ask to use a condom, will he say I’m just jealous and worried he’s cheating?”, or “When he says he’s clean, does he actually know?”

Tests are only diagnostics. They shouldn’t substitute for safe sex or personal responsibility. They are not indicators of virtue, purity or chastity. I have heard of people in poly relationships banned from dating anyone who once tested positive for anything. How silly! Most STDs are curable, others treatable, and some clear on their own. And tests are subject to human error: sometimes false negatives and positives occur.

This brings us to my personal anecdote.

A few months back, while heading to coffee with a friend, I answered a call from a California number. It was the clinic that had processed my last test. “You had a positive result. Hold on, I’ll transfer you to someone, and we’ll let you know what it was.”

I halted in the drizzle, clutching my phone as passersby shouldered me aside, and felt like sinking into the pavement. This made no sense. Blame aside, there had to be physical transmission since my last test. Besides protected sex with my boyfriend, I’d had precisely two encounters: one with the female performer on set, one with a lover wearing a condom.

“Gonorrhea?” said the friend when I told him. “Do people still get that? That’s so… medieval!”

The lover in question took the news placidly. He inquired about my health and hoped that I was well. (Well? Of course I wasn’t well. I was pissed.) My doctor was puzzled by my asymptomatic case, but prescribed me antibiotics as a matter of course. On my request she redid the test.

Something must’ve screwed with my chemistry (strange lube and toys? stress?) because I developed a real infection, not the invisible STD. And the antibiotics for that definitely screwed with my chemistry, because it gave me the worst yeast infection of my life. I was ready to crawl back to my doctor, begging to have my reproductive organs excised from my abdomen, when it finally went away.

A few weeks later I remembered the second test. And then the unbelievable: it was negative! My AIM test must have given me a false positive.

Let’s recap: $200, easily, in medication and fees. Two genuine medical problems caused by the unnecessary treatment. And then there was the drama: I dealt in the dumbest ways possible. My poor boyfriend was afraid (needlessly, of course) that his promiscuity had brought it down on us. I cried a lot and felt filthy and ashamed. We fought about my job and our open relationship. I didn’t have sex for a month. And all for something less serious, with modern medicine, than the common cold.

The affair went so badly, I’m almost glad we had a trial run of it. We knew the risks and yet, unlike the minor BDSM injuries to which I am so accustomed, were unwilling to accept the consequences. That’s logic I despise.

Still, until that phone call, I don’t know if anything could have dislodged my fantasy of uniqueness. I was good. It couldn’t happen to me.

Posted in porn, sex work, activism, shame, polyamory, STDs, testing