I am a very lucky man. I have managed, even through various misjudgments, miscalculations and severe cases of the hornies, to have avoided ever having a social disease.
Having been a pirate all these years, especially, a Seafair Pirate in the 1980s, I am quite frankly both surprised and thankful that this is so. I used to kid myself that this was so because I was selective. But nowadays I’m not so sure that this was really the case. I instead think someone was watching over me.
This was back in the days of unprotected sex. Yes, I know. They had condoms back then, too. But I wasn’t very diligent in that regard. That’s because I had dated a girl who found them funny. Every time I would put one on, she would burst out in laughter. Needless to say, that plays a little havoc with your psyche and the budding flower of lust below the waistline would simply wilt on the vine. As such, they never really worked for me as I said. So I will just stick with lucky.
Fast forward to two years ago. The Janmeister worked in a hospital as a dietitian. One day, as most couples do, we were talking about her job. She remarked that the biggest problem with healthcare (besides the fact that the system is broken), is that doctors over prescribe antibiotics.
The fallout from this, she said, is that eventually some bacteria is going to mutate enough that it won’t respond to even the strongest antibiotics on the market. Those most at risk will be the ones who have taken a lot of antibiotics over the years, because their resistance to fighting any bacteria naturally is already compromised. As such, a bug is going to get you, or perhaps get us all.
Well, surprise of surprises, out comes the news a couple weeks ago that this is indeed already happening. The World Health Organization (WHO) reported that gonorrhea will be resistant to all drugs in a couple of years. That’s right, a sexual disease that millions of people get each year in the world will eventually become untreatable.
Even cephalosporins, considered the last line of defense in treating this disease, isn’t working.
As we all know from sex ed classes and history, gonorrhea was the scourge of sailors and soldiers. It’s often called the clap. And the usual treatment was penicillin. Well, that stopped working some time ago, at least the original forms. So now doctors have to resort to more powerful versions, including designer antibiotics. These too are beginning to fail us, particularly in less developed parts of the world.
It seems that our old friend the clap is particularly good at adapting. It does this by stealing DNA from other bacteria, using what it needs to become more resilient and stronger.
In short, it is about to become our first super bug and is already spreading like wildfire overseas. In time, it will hit the U.S. as well.
Now, we know how to fix that, don’t we? Always use protection. That would be great if gonorrhea was going to be the only superbug out there. But it’s not going to be alone for long. Others are working on their own mutation plans and eventually, something is going to come along that will really give us trouble. Black Plague level trouble? Perhaps.
Perhaps not. Thankfully, researchers are already working on new generations of pharmaceuticals that will fight these beasts of the bacteria world. Experts at the WTO hope that they will have a solution before the problem of unresponsive strains becomes too large to tackle.
This will have a profound effect on society, obviously. Millions of cheating spouses and significant others will be running the risk of dying if they stray too far from the homeland. Where you used to just bring home a little social disease, now you can bring home the plague, or at least, the sexually transmitted version of it.
Yes, dick sticking, at least dick sticking without using a raincoat, may be our downfall. And a hefty raincoat at that. As we all know, when you fail to wear a raincoat in the wintry weather, you get what – yes, a disease. A nasty cold and the sniffles. Well, it’s kind of the same here. You go out without a coat, you suddenly break out in nasty sores, things go from bad to worse, your dick finally falls off, and you die.
I for one am glad that my dick has been put out to pasture. True, it’s a bit of a stud farm still, but with only one filly in the field.
Best of all, I don’t have to worry about the big G coming home with me. So as my still sowing their wild seeds friends drop dead all around me, I will be able to enjoy a little lovin’ in the oven, knowing that a week from now, I’m not going to blister up and boil over in some emergency room.
As they say in the old sailing days: “Red sky at night, sailors delight. Red blisters in bed, you’re going to end up dead.
Well, something like that.
Still, the poetry of dropping dead of a disease that was the scurge of the seven seas does have an alluring, enduring romance to it. I know, slightly sick and wrong. But it was a short life and a merry one back then. Sailors and certainly pirates didn’t live long anyway. I’m not sure what’s worse, dying from a festering wound caused by a rusty cutlass or dying from a disease where you could conceivably say, “Well, guess I was fu**ed from the start.”
Oh, well. I obviously need not worry about such trivial matters any longer. I am at anchor these days in a safe harbor, where the lass will lower down her sail, for the weatherin’ of the gale and no one has to worry about the plague waltzing up our gangway.
In the Emerald City, keeping a weather eye out for the flash girl who wants to hand every sailor a rousing round of applause (Clap! Clap!)
– Robb