LiP | Feature | I Want Herpes

by Jenn Sutkowski
11.05.04

AKE CHARGE!” The gospel voice sings, as couples cavort in rainforests, bike down treacherous cliffs and careen through the white water in their kayaks, mouths open in effort and anticipation, gleaming muscles wet with lust.

I want herpes. No, I really do! Then I could take Valtrex and really take charge of my life! People with herpes are EXTREME! They are always doing extreme sports and they’re always coupled, ready to screw on some high cliff wall, even though “you can still spread herpes to your partner!” Now, that is really extreme.

And I want asthma too. Then I could take Advair and a camera would follow me around, morning to night, where I would really get stuff done at work, people would hand me presumably important plans rolled up in poster tubes, I would meet hot singles out at smoke-filled bars, and my life with asthma—and Advair—would be just so goddamned rewarding.

But wait! I’ve just completed my morning run! I’m the mood for something a little more Aryan. I stand stoic, blonde and blue-eyed, muscles straining against my best workout shorts and perfectly stain-free white t-shirt. A beautiful Asian woman in a little black dress flirtatiously sprays me with her beautiful but highly allergenic Asian musk (they keep it in pretty little aspirators these days) but I am immune. I have my own gorgeous aspirator, green, full of youth, full of Flonase. Air flows through my nasal passages strong and pure. My nose hairs are suddenly blonde.

And I want seasonal allergies. I would feel like a part of something bigger, you know? Then I could listen to The Who all day on This Beautiful Planet Earth and dance in communes with the best smelling most attractive hippies in existence. We’d have barbecues and smile perpetually at each other, as the world turned like a Crazy Trip, Man, around Clarinex, our Sun.

If I had osteoarthritis—and some Vioxx or Celebrex—I’d be a really good gardener. And I could run around with a big yellow dog.

And God knows I am just dying for high cholesterol. Then I could strut down the red carpet to the Grammies and know that even if beneath my Golden Globes rages a heart full of cheese and Polish sausage my waist will remain 22” tiny and my luminescent horse teeth will shine ultraviolet under the forensic team’s black light when they find me dead on the marble floor of the theater’s posh potty. Because that’s what’s so great about high cholesterol and trusty Lipitor—you’re so thin and young looking that forensics is called in because it just must be foul play for someone so perfect to be found so dead.

And if I had a lot of trouble sleeping all I need is the blissful-sounding Ambien, and I could wake up on a beautiful crisp pillow, 300-thread count Egyptian cotton, my window looking out on the multi-million-dollar-average-cost-homes on the island of Sausalito, as a basket full of yawning puppies rests peacefully in the sun of my giant picture window. This could certainly be habit forming. Bring it.

And if I had a problem with impotence all I would have to do is call the doctor and simply ASK about Viagra. Just ASK. And the next day at work I’d all of a sudden be a large virile black man. “What is different about him?” My shirts and pants are impossibly pressed by my impossibly erect penis. Imagine all the things a gal could do with a 72-hour erection!

Oh, how I want to be depressed. If I were depressed I could be so cute—an adorable soft pebble, bouncing quietly, harkening the simpler times of the pet rock. I’d have a baby bird just learning how to fly following me as I hopped merrily, over black and white flowers on a white plain, just my Zoloft and me.

And I am just dying for Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Whitney Houston’s “I’m Every Woman” springs to mind. I am all women. Blonde, redhead, brunette, silver-grey and completely flat-stomached. Thank the good sweet Lord that Zelnorm has brought us all together. I might just have to get my stomach tattooed to celebrate the sisterhood of IBS. We could have reunions in rooms that will not be smeared with our irritable feces thanks to Lord Zelnorm.

I am ready to “take charge” of my life, all right. I obviously haven’t been living life to its fullest. I’m calling my doctor right now.

Jenn Sutkowski was born in Jerz and now enjoys patio life in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She writes music and plays/sings in an eighties new wave cover band and hosts a very drunken and profane weekly karaoke night, among other things. She holds her BS in film and television from Boston University and her MLA in English and American literature and language from Harvard University.

From
LiP Magazine
[www.lipmagazine.org]

Piercing the Mass Mediocracy Since 1996.