Slutty Slut

I often joke with my friends about being a slut.  In truth, I never really felt like one, even if I was going through a period where I would have multiple sex partners.  I'm not even sure I could define the word slut- that's a whole other topic.  I don't think having many sex partners is bad at all, and when I joke with my friends I don't use the word as a put-down.  But I never felt like the negative meaning of the word.

Until a couple weeks ago.  I was sitting in my car on the top floor of a parking garage, the heat from the sun making it hard to breath.  I had known I was pregnant for about a week.  I had just had a second ultrasound and when I asked the doctor how far along I was, she said four weeks.  The second I got back to my car I pulled out my phone to check the calendar.  Four weeks.  That left two people that could have been the father.  One too many.

It had been a fun summer.  An old lover and I started hooking up again and it was nice to have a little affection here and there while I dated others.  In early August I met someone.  Someone special.  Someone that I really thought I could be with and for three weeks an intense love affair ensued.  It was wonderful to feel wanted but it died as intensely as it had started.  Communication problems, blah, blah, blah.

I found out I was pregnant a week later when I went in for a colposcopy (a cervical biopsy).  The nurse asked when my last period was and when I told her she asked if I wanted to do a pregnancy test.  I was over two weeks late, but that wasn't particularly unusual for me.  I've always been irregular.  I took the test because I was already there.

Since my last period I had had sex with both the old lover (OL) and the someone special (SS).  I knew it could be either one, but I felt like OL had a better shot.  I wasn't speaking to SS anymore and I didn't really want to call him up and say "Guess what!  I'm preggers, it might be yours, but it might not be. Fun huh?"  At least OL and I had talked about what we would do if I became pregnant.  Well, I told him what we would do and he agreed.

It didn't really hit me until the ultrasound the next week.  By then the nausea had become constant and overwhelming and my breasts felt like they were on fire all the time.  I told OL when I first found out and he reacted ok but he wasn't reliable.  Drank too much, smoked too much weed.  He had a new girlfriend.  I wanted to feel like I could call him and he'd be there for me, but I didn't feel that way.

Sitting in my car on the roof of the parking garage, I felt like a slut.  Like I was being punished for not doing things the "right" way.  I was alone, staring at the calendar on my phone, trying to remember who I had sex with when.  Four weeks.  Had sex with SS four weeks ago- with a condom- but had sex with OL a few days before that without a condom.  Slutty slut slut.  Should have been better at wearing condoms.  Made better decisions.  Four weeks.

OL came over later that night and I told him the whole thing.  What the doctor said, when I had sex with who, how God or the universe or whatever was punishing me for being a slutty slut.  He shrugged and said, "Why don't we just say it's mine."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, it doesn't really matter whose it is, I mean, you're getting an abortion. Why don't we just say it's mine."

I buried my face into his neck and he held me tight. "I just feel like such a whore."

"Whatevs, sluts are better at what they do."  He kissed my forehead and I started laughing.