Dear Judgmental Members of the Health Services Staff

Is strep throat the only fucking illness you know how to diagnosis? I understand that maybe I’m not in a position to judge because I didn’t go through years upon years of advanced medical training, but I’m gonna judge alright. Because I am sick and tired of sitting in that waiting room while you slow mother fuckers take your time. People are dying here, okay? Look. Look at this girl sitting next to me. She can’t even breathe out of her nostrils without sounding like a congested platypus. Have you no concern?

I just do not understand how a university with over 20,000 students can have a health services department staffed by two doctors, three nurses and two apathetic receptionists. We pay $600 per semester in health service fees. What the fuck are we paying for? Do you know the kinds of shoes I could buy with that kind of money? Now, I don’t mean to call people out, it’s not my style, but Tanya, the black woman with the horrendously bad acrylic weave, shoo’ed me away with her bony finger this morning, and I thought, No she didn’t, then I realized, Yes she did, and from my seat in the waiting room, I saw that she was drawing stick figures on that old Windows program called Art. Seriously, what is going on up in this bitch? I wanted to just cough in her face so badly, but I didn’t because that’s not what Jesus would have done.

Why is it that every time I come in complaining about a sore throat, the first thing you ask me is how many sexual partners I’ve had? That is an incredibly awkward ice-breaker question because, hello, we just met when you walked in the door. You know nothing about my life, we are practically strangers and you’re already asking me questions that involve my beautiful, naked body. That would normally take three tequila shots and a handful of salted peanuts to get out of me. So why do you cut straight to the sexy talk? You could at least buy me dinner first, like a normal person who just wanted to use me for sex.

You see, I didn’t go to medical school, I have no special nurses training, but if someone came into my examination room with a sore throat, I would, y’know, consider the common cold or the flu before immediately jumping to some indirect conclusion pertaining to gonorrhea of the throat. What kind of hussy do you think I am?

The conversation usually goes something like this:

You say, A sore throat? Hmm. How many sexual partners have you had?

I say, I’m celibate…? which trails off in a way in which to intonate a question with an emphasis on overall confusion and awkwardness.

No, you say like you’re already tired of this conversation, like you’ve already had it nine times within the hour. It’s okay, you can tell us. (Notice the omnipresent us.) Then you remind me that this room is a non-judgmental space. You wave your hands in the air as if to emphasize the phrase non-judgmental space.

I can just picture you and the other members of the university health services staff burning sage and reciting the Chant of Metta in hushed tones every morning at 8 a.m. in an effort to clear the space of negative energy.

So I tell you that I don’t keep count. And this is where things really become awkward because then you stare. You just stare at me and there is this awkward silence. I’m talking about a good 20-seconds of intense, hardcore staring action going on and I suddenly feel the need to go into Eat Shit Mode.

I say something like, I mean, I’m not saying that because I’m a big ho — I’m not. It’s not like I’m ho’ing it up and down all the time. I don’t even know how to strut my stuff. Look at me. Really, look at me. Yeah, so, I just don’t keep count.

Meanwhile, I’m thinking: FUCK. Holy Mother, she thinks I’m just slutting it up every chance I can. But this is college. It’s what people do, right? I can’t be the only one. I wonder if people actually keep a tally in some kind of sex-designated black book Moleskine with names, dates, and ratings on a possible five-star Scale of Excellence. People don’t do that, right? That would just be so totally weird. Total creepster status.

Then, I can just feel you judging me with your beady, clinical eyes. You say, Just try to estimate.

Oh, I don’t know, like fourteen or fifteen.

You say, Uh-huh, all prolonged and shit for clinical dramatic emphasis.

I continue, Or twenty. Two. You know. Ball park.

I’m just eating shit, guesstimating, having no idea what kind of light I’m portraying myself in. All for a single fucking sore throat. It’s amazing how the inability to swallow without experiencing the slightest amount of pain can suddenly place a person in this kind of situation. I wonder if all of you have lunch in your staff rooms and place bets on how many sexual partners all the sore throat patients have had. And Tanya with her bad weave and stick figure Art people are involved in some kind of underground bookie scheme to swindle the university out of all its medical funds.

I’m on to you bitches. You better watch yourselves.

As you write on your little notepad, I think about that saying. The one that goes, when you sleep with someone you’re also sleeping with everyone they’ve ever slept with, and everyone they’ve ever slept with, and everyone they’ve ever slept with, et al. And it really brings the whole six degrees of separation into a shocking reality. Then I feel like my estimate isn’t so high. We should just have a system in place where we calculate all the possibilities. Like, with 95% certainty, there is an 85% probability that I’ve had sex with Jennifer Lopez based on the clinical six-degrees of sexual separation. Then we could draw normal distribution curves and T-charts and have a blast! So, would that mean I’ve indirectly fucked like 3,590 people in my lifetime? It’s like some kind of crazy compounded number. Like 6!: for every six people you’ve fucked, you multiply six and five, and five and four, and four and three, and so on until you get to one. Then you add it all up and when you see that number, whatever number it might be, you’re like, Wow. I don’t know whether this number means I’m gross and slutty or if I’m just a mack daddy and I got it like that. It’s all algebraic, like accounting and shit. But I’m not really sure; I was never a strong math student.

All I know is that everything in this health services room is about sex or strep throat. That platypus girl with the obstructed nostrils could be on the floor, dilated, crowning, with a baby half-way out of her vagina and you would probably say, Strep throat! Slather some Noxzema on it, drink some tea and get lots of rest.

Rest? We’re sick students; rest is not in our vocabulary. It’s not like you have to read the next 17 chapters of Don Quixote by Friday, worrying how the hell you’re going to do laundry because the ice hockey team ruined all the washing machines by peeing in them. The only way I’d actually be impressed with you guys at Health Services is if you actually came up with some kind of rest plan that we could actually fit into our schedules. Work on it. Get Tanya’s ass on that project. It’ll give her something to do with her time. Then you could give her a merit bonus so she could treat herself to some quality hair.

Love,

Sore & Bitchy

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