By Ella Dawson

Andy was giggling. To be fair, we both were. Andy was working on a political campaign in Maine while I finished a social media internship in New York City. And after texting for two months about how much we wanted to see each other—and have sex with each other—he and I were finally standing side by side. We had agreed to meet in the middle: the campus of our alma mater in Connecticut. What we hadn’t anticipated was that because we weren’t students anymore, we didn’t exactly have a bed to call our own.

But Andy and I were resourceful kids, and we weren't about to give up on two months of sexual tension. Borrowing a trick from our teenage selves, we grabbed a blanket and hunted down a secluded enough corner of the campus softball field. It was a Sunday night at dusk, and we reasoned we would see other people approaching before they saw us in a compromising position.

It was also November, and we were freezing—but it was some of the best sex of my life. In fact, the same could be said for most of the sex I’ve had since I was diagnosed with genital herpes two years ago.

But sure enough, the doctor at my university’s health center took one look at me before announcing, “This looks herpetic.” I remember very little of what she said after that; I was too distracted by the way the walls seemed to be closing in on me to catch more than the words “incurable” and “not prevented by condoms.” To say I was shocked would be an understatement—a tidal wave of shame unlike anything I had ever experienced hit me over and over again.

When I looked up the statistics on how common genital herpes is, the math didn’t add up: If one in six people had genital herpes, how was I the only person I knew to do the ultimate walk of shame from the student health center clutching a stack of STD pamphlets? Further Google searches opened my eyes to the powerful and invisible stigma associated with sexually transmitted diseases. Stigma is what keeps people from chatting about herpes the way they discuss allergies—we associate genital herpes with liars, cheaters, and the rampantly promiscuous. Despite being a sex-positive writer and activist, I wondered if this was some karmic punishment for my values and the way that I had lived my life. On a logical level I knew that getting herpes had nothing to do with my actions and didn't say anything about my character; it was simply luck of the draw. But this was easier to know than to actually believe.

The next six months were a bit like learning to walk again—I stumbled around like a baby deer, too heavy for my own body. Rebuilding my sense of self was harder than getting over the symptoms of my first genital herpes outbreak, which only lasted about a week and a half, thanks to Valtrex and a ton of Extra-Strength Tylenol. After a few weeks of isolating myself from the world, I made my first foray into dating and the conversation it now required. A soft-spoken and adorable nerd on OKCupid invited me out for drinks, but we parted ways when I brought up the fact that I'm herpes-positive on our third date. He apologized and said he had just gotten over chlamydia and wasn’t in a rush to gamble with his sexual health again. Although I respected his decision, I wasn’t able to separate his rejection of the virus from his rejection of me. I was devastated, and it felt like getting diagnosed all over again.

My next attempt was more successful. I developed a crush on a new friend back at school, and we went for a long drive through the woods on a Thursday night, about a week into our budding relationship. We chatted about the health center on campus, and with my eyes fixed firmly on the road, I told him about my experience getting treated for genital herpes. He asked me without any trace of judgment what having an STD meant for my sex life, and I answered that condoms were a must. He nodded contemplatively before changing the topic.

It helped to not have to look at him and watch as he processed the new information. It was also easier for us to talk about herpes in the context of my general health, as opposed to our possible relationship. He felt less pressure to decide immediately whether or not he was comfortable proceeding, and I felt less like a freak asking someone to decide if sleeping with me was worth contracting an incurable illness. As fate would have it, he quickly decided I was awesome, but I still didn’t quite feel like myself. The first time we had sex—and the first time I had sex since getting diagnosed—he was so nervous that his nose started bleeding, and I couldn’t focus on how excited I was because I was so caught up in my own head. I was worried he would change his mind, and as our relationship progressed, I was convinced that each night would be the last time we hooked up. Even worse, I couldn’t blame him if he did leave. There was a rift between my mind and my body. I felt estranged from myself.

I don’t know what made me decide enough was enough. I didn’t feel like the woman that my friends knew me to be—a bold and outspoken campus badass—but I was sick of making myself small because I had herpes. Six months after my first outbreak, I started dropping the “herpes bomb” into conversations casually. My logic was that every time I told someone, “I have herpes,” the words would get easier to say. I started looking for opportunities to share this fact about myself, seizing the chances presented by time spent waiting in line to pee at frat parties and by lively class discussions about health care. Although surely some people made faces as soon as I walked away, I never once got a negative reaction to my bold over-sharing. Most listeners were surprised, curious, and oddly excited to hear someone’s experience with a disease about which they knew nothing.

My favorite disclosure happened when a guy made a herpes joke while chatting me up at a party. He offered me the rest of his expensive beer and said with a wink, “Don’t worry, I don’t have herpes or anything.” I had a choice to make. I could laugh his comment off and pretend it didn’t hurt, but that would mean laughing at myself. Or I could steer into the skid and stop being so afraid of what people thought.

“That’s funny,” I said, with as warm a smile as I could manage. “Yeah, that’s really funny. Because I have genital herpes.” His face crumbled. Not because I grossed him out—I could practically see the wheels turning in his brain as he realized he’d made an ignorant joke at someone else’s expense. The guy started apologizing profusely.

It was one of the most surreal moments of my life, and in retrospect, it was odd I made it so long without someone making a joke in front of me. Herpes is a safe punch line in an era of comedy where making fun of someone’s race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, and class is increasingly considered politically incorrect. Joking about HIV and AIDS is distasteful and insensitive. But who cares about herpes? I’ll never forget the winning line from The Hangover: “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Except herpes—that sh*t’ll come back with you.”

The thing is, this stranger wasn’t intentionally making fun of me. He wasn’t making fun of anyone because most of us don’t associate herpes with actual people. But the second I spoke out against his joke, I was hooked on reactions like his. I had seen in the flesh what a simple “I have herpes” could do when said fearlessly, without shame. Because when a real person—a woman you know and respect—casually mentions having herpes, it stops being a punch line and starts being someone's reality. The more I saw that understanding dawn on someone’s face, the less fear I felt. I wanted herpes to have a human face, and I wanted it to be mine.

Getting diagnosed with an incurable and stigmatized STD like genital herpes is assumed to be a death sentence for your love life. Every time I tell someone that I have genital herpes, I run the risk of it being the only thing they remember about me. But when I tell them on my terms, with confidence and cleverness instead of shaking hands and shame, I am immediately positioned to get a better response.

When you disclose having herpes, generally whomever you’re disclosing to follows your lead. During those early conversations when I couldn’t maintain eye contact and constantly apologized, I radiated insecurity and doubt. It made herpes unnecessarily terrifying for me and for my potential partner. Casually mentioning it in an unrelated conversation on a first date, as opposed to making it a big, uncomfortable, “I have something to tell you” reveal after a few dates, makes it a conversation topic instead of a problem. It gives my new boo time to process and do research, and we can discuss it in more detail later if we decide to become sexually involved.

Which brings me back to the softball field and to the gorgeous man grinning at me as I dug condoms out of my purse. I had told Andy I had herpes in one of our long, late-night texting conversations in the fall. He immediately replied that herpes didn’t bother him because it was just a skin condition and he’d seen way worse during his days as a high school wrestler. Suddenly, ringworm was the most romantic thing in the world.

It's been about six months since that night, and when I asked Andy recently how he remembered me disclosing to him, he said, “I didn’t see you as ‘Ella with herpes.’ I just saw you as Ella.”