When I went off to college, I was required to get several shots that would supposedly make me immune to the things that preyed on the young living in close quarters. These excluded a vaccine for STDs and fuckery, unfortunately - I was staying in the dorm so notorious for poor sexual decisions that it was known as the STD Dorm. I was not told of this particular dorm’s reputation when I labeled my top four choices for residences on the housing application. I was 18, and naive, and there were no indicators on the form - things that would have been helpful such as “The STD Dorm - BEWARE” or “The Dorm Full of Theater Fuckery and Emo English Majors” or “The Dorm At the End of the World” - there were simply the official University names of these dorms, and I went with the few that I had actually heard of and knew of the approximate location. Looking back, this was probably not the best plan as there were probably reasons why I’d heard the names of these dorms bandied about, especially my number one dorm of choice - it was not because this dorm was full of future Nobel Prize winners, but because it was a hotbed of sluts. Unfortunately, I got my first choice in dorms, and I became a slut by association.
Not that being a slut, male or female, is a bad thing. I’m going purely on the comic reputation here, the kind of reputation that gets furthered by dumb nineteen-and twenty-year-old college kids - when they say STD Dorm, there’s either a profound and self-righteous disgust, or, more often, a kind of beaming pride. I subscribe wholly to the words of Dan Savage on sluttery - if you want to go slut it up, go be your slutty self, and have fun and be safe. I suppose, however, that because it was called the STD Dorm and not the Condom Dorm that it implied that these sluts, self-identified or not, were not being safe. So, basically, when I got to college, I wasn’t only a slut, but a dumb, unsafe slut by association with my living quarters.
My first roommate actually lived up well to the reputation. She’d go to the Campus Christian Churchy Church Group and then, with the love of Jesus in her heart, she would get so wasted that the young men she was with would have to carry her up the five flights of stairs to our shared room (the elevators never worked when I was living there). She would flop around like a Jesus Fish out of water and I would sleepily look up from my lofted bed, attempting not to hit my head on the ceiling, wondering if she was okay. The sink became her personal vomit bucket once or twice; after the first time I put in a request for a new roommate. I never saw my resident hall live-in lady, and she probably wouldn’t have cared anyway, as I’m sure it wasn’t her first sink barf rodeo.
Apparently my roommate didn’t care for me either, what with my staying in and trying to slog through Crime and Punishment, my holding normal hours, and my willingness to put up with her yarking in our sink. Perhaps she suspected me of eating a shitload of her Laffy Taffy without her permission, which, yes, I did, but she had it in a huge jar and her skinny ass wasn’t going to eat it anyway. She hatched a plan with her friend who lived two floors below us, who also had a roommate she didn’t want to live with, and soon this girl and I were meeting, and they were asking if some switching could happen so they could be roommates and have drunken Jesus slut times together. We agreed, and the new roommate of mine became a good friend - she still is. As for those two, we never saw them eat in the cafeteria together, and figured that they had grown sick of each other - there was no better punishment in our minds for our former roommates than having to share a cramped 15 by 12 room with one another.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t be immunized for crappy roommates, but they did stick me with the Meningitis shot and some other fun stuff. I hated shots at this time, and I was terrified. I hadn’t gotten a shot for quite a while, and I hadn’t see a doctor ever since that out of control athletes foot that got me out of junior high swimming (thankfully) for a few days. I wasn’t even going to a big girl doctor - I was still signed on with my pediatrician, and that’s where I was scheduled to receive the necessary shots. As the day grew closer, I got more and more nervous about it. My palms burst into sweat upon the thought of it.
When the Day of the Death Shots arrived, I went to the pediatrician’s office. I don’t think my mother was with me, though she might have been; I don’t recall her there, holding my hand or anything. I sat in the waiting room, along with the other patients, jealous that they were still young enough to play with the wooden spirally thing with the beads that move around, and I was stuck there reading Overprotective Parenting Monthly, waiting. They were oblivious to what terrible things waiting for them behind those doors, but I knew. I knew.
The nurse called my name and I stood on shaky legs and went into that confusing hallway of examination rooms. She made me do the usual stuff, stand on the scale, hold out my arm so my blood pressure could be taken, and then she lead me to my execution room. The nurse said a few calming things, probably because I looked all sweaty, and prepared the shots. Then, needle in hand, she told me to look away, as if she was going to saw off one of my gangrenous limbs. I turned my head, and she administered the shots.
“That was fine!” I said, and suddenly my vision had dark shadowy frames around it that were closing in. I passed out.
I almost instantly woke up from my faint, but the damage had been done, and was worsened when I told one of my best friends about the incident. Rightfully, she laughed at me, but we are the kind of friends that can laugh when one of us faints at the pediatrician's office or gets a pencil stuck up her nose at her ACT prep course.
I have not fainted since that time, and I’ve had several rounds of shots, flu included, and I’ve been tattooed. But I do get a little sweaty when the nurse holds up the needle. Recently, I had to get a physical for the fancy new job. This consisted of sitting in the waiting room for ten minutes and then being lead back by the nurse for the usual weigh-in and pee-in. She gave me a shot and drew blood, after asking me if I was okay with shots. I laughed nervously. “I think so,” I replied. It probably didn’t put her at ease, but I didn’t faint. The worst part of the entire thing was waiting for twenty minutes in the nakey gown for the doctor to come in, and when he finally did, he checked my ears, knocked on my knees with that silly hammer, and then told me I could go. I’ve clearly passed that youthful stage in my life where I’m frightened of shots, and have blossomed right into my elderly self. I got pretty much naked for that? Pff, I thought as I put my two layers of pants back on. Grumble, grumble.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
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