Day 10: My Back Up Plan
One of my friends recently got laid off from their job and found themselves with a very large flexible spending account to spend. Rather than buy a lifetime supply of Advil or Q-tips, she decided to buy 33 packs of the morning after pill, also known as Plan B and share the wealth with me and a couple of other sassy broads.
This makes me think of all of those wonderful times that Plan B & I have partied together. There’s the first time: in college, having to do that ultimate walk of shame from one end of a freezing cold campus to another in the dreary Oberlin winter to pick up the pills in which I convinced myself that I not only had every STD known to mankind, I would also now have to raise a child, who would now ALSO have every STD ever and we would be exiled to a leper’s colony, a colony full of people who did not use condoms each and every single time they had sex. A few weeks later, my uterus revealed she was indeed empty. A couple of months later, it was confirmed I did not have every STD ever. Those were good feelings.
Then there was that time when I was actually on regular birth control but had of course forgotten to take a bunch of them for a couple of days and naturally, that exact same weekend was the weekend my man was in town and the minute he left, I made my friend drive me to the Potrero Hill Walgreen’s to take care of things. The little queen pharmacist looked me up and down and after asking me all the regular intake questions (last time I had sex, last time I took my birth control) sucked his teeth in, rolled his eyes and said “Uhhhh..yeah…you should PROBABLY take it”. Like you’ve never had unprotected sex, SIR. Why the dirty looks?
Having unprotected sex is one of the dirty little secrets of adult life. Everyone has done it when they probably shouldn’t have and everyone likes to get on their high horse when other people admit to doing so. I mean yes, ideally, we should all be using condoms all the time including for oral sex. Lets be real here - if you truly want to get serious about preventing STDs, you should also be using dental dams, finger cots, and gloves. Oh, and don’t kiss anyone either because you may get herpes. Just stare at each other from across the room; abstinence really is the best prevention, you know.
Fuck that. It’s called risk assessment. Some times you take a big one and hope for the best. Plan B throws a little more certainty into that “hope” cocktail. Here’s to you, Plan B, to always having backup, and to all those babies that never stood a chance. I’m raising my glass to you tonight!
(For more info on Plan B & emergency contraception - visit Not-2-Late.com, run by Princeton University. It is the grand daddy of all morning after pill sites and even teaches you how to use your regular birth control pills as emergency contraception, if you do not have access to Plan B.
To find out where to get tested for HIV, check out the CDC’s HIV testing site. For other STDs as well as more info on HIV & emergency contraception, my favorite resource is good old Planned Parenthood. And yes, even men can be seen there! )
Picture courtesy of Some-e-Cards
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