98 Wounds by Justin Chin

even one that was unintended?
    If they need your diseased body to maintain their livelihood, to justify their salaries, to fuel their grant applications, can you trust that they’ll tell you the truth?

    * * *
    He said:
    I think this is a matter of moral statement than a public health one. Or even a rational one. (picks up the pamphlet and reads) The risk for STDs is directly related to the number of sex partners you have: The more sex partners, the greater the risk of contracting it. Having more sex with fewer partners reduces your risk of getting STDs. Let’s look at it this way: If I have sex with 200 men, absolutely dirty sex with 200 men, each of whom do not have syphilis, would the risk still be greater than if I had sex with just one guy who has syphilis?
    She said:
    Sir, you’re being difficult. Now tell me the names of those 200 men.

    * * *
    I’m a great believer of lying in one’s journal. It’s the one place where you can lie with impunity. If you suspect anyone is going to read your journals, you should lie even more spectacularly. Just make sure it’s plausible. I’m not a journal type of guy. I have notebooks, I take notes, even though the half-life of my handwriting is about 14 hours. But as far as a journal diary where daily or every few days I’d record what happened to me, and my feelings and thoughts about it, that’s not for me. Don’t have the discipline, don’t have the bother, don’t got the don’t got. Reading someone else’s journal is an odd enterprise. Even if you have the person’s permission or, say, the person is dead and his journals are in a box somewhere and you are given access to it.
    The immediate sense right off the bat is that you shouldn’t, that you’re somehow betraying a trust, invading a private boundary. That sense is quickly and easily chucked to the side by your salacious curiosity. Oh, what morbid and titillating secrets will you find? What ghoulish confessions will be revealed? The answer to that, almost always, is none. Nada. Not a damn thing.
    It’s go to work, come home, what I had for lunch, for dinner, what I need to do for work, for home, for self-improvement. Maybe Mom and Dad are visiting, I go on vacation and this is what I saw and Wow! Look at what I saw. I spy cute guy who doesn’t know I’m alive. Someone asks me out on date, I go. Didn’t work out. I ask someone out on date, Yay! He says yes! All atwitter date night. Didn’t work out. I love my pets. I like my friends. This is my reaction to what is happening politically in my time, it’s middle of the road, bootstraps and acculturation. If partnered, this is what my husband did, this is what pissed me off, this is what I did, this is our argument, these are our apologies and making up, and then the motherfucker did this again, argue argue, make up make up, I love him so much, go on vacation together, come home and break up. I miss him, I hate him, I love him but not in love with him, and these are the lessons I have learned.
    And then there’ll be all the entries where therapy sessions are recounted. Holy fuck, how much therapy can one person go through? My therapist said this. I am trying my therapist’s suggestions. Putting into practice what I learned in therapy. I have therapy tomorrow, in two days, in two hours. My therapist said this. My therapist said that.
    If, after the 8 th journal, you’re still whining about the same crap, you’re either doing it wrong or you’re a hopeless little turd. Or your therapist is.
    The one who is having sexual relations with his therapist is unlikely to journal about it, because his therapist has likely convinced him not to, hence disposing of evidence, and also because he’s too fucked up and too busy fucking up his life to take time out to journal. The slut’s not journaling either. He’s busy slutting. He is collecting pubes from each of his