A Tick on my Dick

Jake Morrison had always believed that the universe communicated through irony, and the universe, it seemed, had a particularly twisted sense of humor when it came to his genitalia.

It was a Tuesday, specifically, the kind of Tuesday that felt like a Monday that had overstayed its welcome. Jake sat in the urgent care waiting room, pants suspiciously baggy, trying to maintain some dignity while sitting on what had to be the least comfortable plastic chair in modern medical history. The fluorescent lights hummed with the enthusiasm of a dying wasp, and somewhere in the distance, a child was having an existential crisis about a Band-Aid.

In his hand, Jake clutched the plastic cup of his own urine. Standard procedure, they’d said. He really tried not to think about how he’d arrived at this particular moment in his thirty-two years of existence.

Three days earlier, he’d been living what he considered the dream. Jake was a commercial real estate broker in Portland, Oregon, which meant he spent his days convincing tech startups that they absolutely needed exposed brick and artisanal coffee stations in their open-floor plans. He had a loft in the Pearl District with exposed ductwork he didn’t understand, a subscription to three different meal-kit services he never used, and a carefully curated roster of casual relationships that ensured he never had to eat breakfast alone or confront his own emotional limitations.

Jake was, by his own estimation and the estimation of several women’s magazines he’d read in dentists’ offices, a “catch.” He was six-foot-one, maintained a gym membership he actually used (four times a month, but still), and had mastered the art of the text message that was flirty without being threatening, interested without being desperate. He was, in the modern parlance, “good at being single.”

Which was why, when he woke up three days ago with what he initially thought was an unfortunate ingrown hair in a very unfortunate location, he hadn’t panicked. He’d examined the small red bump with the clinical detachment of a man who had, in his college years, survived both a staph infection from a hot tub and a brief, ill-advised relationship with a woman who collected porcelain dolls. This was nothing. This was a temporary inconvenience.

By Sunday, the “ingrown hair” had developed a tiny black center and a halo of red that seemed to be expanding with the determination of a military campaign.

By Monday morning, Jake had made the mistake of googling “black dot on penis” and had subsequently spent forty-five minutes hyperventilating into a paper bag while his Alexa played ocean sounds.

Now, here he was, waiting for a nurse practitioner named Brenda, according to the whiteboard of shame, to confirm what WebMD had already convinced him was either Lyme disease, flesh-eating bacteria, or the first documented case of penile alien abduction.

“Jacob Morrison?”

Brenda was sixty, had the build of a former shot-putter, and wore reading glasses on a chain that suggested she’d seen things in her career that no human should witness. Jake stood, cup in hand, and followed her to Examination Room 3, which featured a poster about the importance of fiber and a window that looked directly into a parking lot where someone was having an animated argument with a seagull.

“So,” Brenda said, snapping on a latex glove with the casual menace of a mob enforcer. “What seems to be the problem?”

Jake hesitated. He had rehearsed this speech in the car. He had practiced it in the shower. He had even considered writing it down. But now, facing Brenda’s clinical detachment, he felt the words evaporate.

“I have... an attachment.”

“An attachment?”

“Yes. On my... person. My private person.”

Brenda didn’t blink. “Sir, I’ve been doing this for thirty-four years. I’ve removed a lightbulb from a place lightbulbs shouldn’t go. I’ve stitched up wounds from objects I didn’t know could be weaponized. You can say ‘penis.’”

“There’s a tick,” Jake blurted. “On my dick. A tick on my dick.”

Brenda nodded, as if this were the most reasonable thing she’d heard all day. “How long has it been attached?”

“That’s... that’s the thing. I don’t know exactly. I noticed it three days ago, but it might have been there longer? I went camping two weeks ago. With friends. Well, not friends, exactly. More like... people I know through my friend Marcus. We went to Bend. There was a lake. There was whiskey. There was a decision to sleep under the stars instead of in the rental because someone said something about ‘authentic experiences’ and I was trying to impress this woman—”

“Sir,” Brenda interrupted. “The tick.”

“Right. Yes. The tick.”

Jake lowered his pants with the solemnity of a man preparing for execution. Brenda leaned in, adjusted her glasses, and made a sound that was somewhere between a hum and a sigh.

“Well,” she said. “That’s definitely a tick.”

“I know it’s a tick. I need it not to be a tick. Can you make it not be a tick?”

“I can remove it,” Brenda said, opening a drawer and producing instruments that looked better suited to medieval warfare than modern medicine. “But I’m going to need to test it for Lyme disease. And given the location, we should probably test you for other things as well. Standard procedure.”

“Other things?”

“STIs, sir. When there’s inflammation in the genital region, we like to be thorough.”

Jake felt his stomach drop into his shoes. “But I use protection. Always. I’m very careful. I’m practically a poster child for responsible casual sex.”

“Mm-hmm,” Brenda said, not looking up from her preparation. “And when was your last sexual encounter?”

Jake thought back. “Saturday night. No, Sunday morning. Technically both. There was a woman. Sarah. She’s... we’re friends. Sort of. Friends who sleep together. But not like, serious. We’re not dating. We have an arrangement.”

“An arrangement,” Brenda repeated.

“Yes. Friends with benefits. Very modern. Very consensual. Very... frequent, actually. But always safe. Always.”

Brenda looked up at him over her glasses. “And does Sarah know you’re here?”

“No. Why would she? We’re not... we don’t tell each other things like this. That’s not part of the arrangement. The arrangement is specifically designed to avoid telling each other things like this.”

“Uh-huh,” Brenda said. “Well, Mr. Morrison, I’m going to remove this tick now. It’s going to hurt. Then I’m going to send it to the lab. Results in three to five days. In the meantime, I’m prescribing doxycycline as a precautionary measure. It’s going to make you nauseous, sensitive to sunlight, and absolutely unable to drink alcohol. You’ll also want to inform any sexual partners from the past three months that they may have been exposed to Lyme disease if this tick is infected.”

“But I don’t know if it is.”

“Exactly. Which is why you need to tell them.”

Jake stared at the ceiling while Brenda worked. The fluorescent lights hummed their death song. Somewhere in the distance, the child had moved on from the Band-Aid crisis to what sounded like a fundamental disagreement about the nature of existence itself.

The procedure was quick but memorably unpleasant. When it was over, Brenda deposited the tick—now officially the most intimate companion Jake had ever had—into a small plastic container.

“One more thing,” she said, writing on her clipboard. “The STI panel. Given the... arrangement you described, and the fact that you’re here for a genital issue, I strongly recommend we run full tests. HIV, syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia, herpes, HPV. The works.”

“Is that necessary?”

Brenda set down her pen. “Mr. Morrison, I’ve seen thirty-two-year-old men in here with antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea because they thought ‘friends with benefits’ meant ‘immune to microbiology.’ I’ve treated women who contracted HPV from partners who ‘always used protection’ except for that one time when they were drunk, or high, or ‘just really into the moment.’ I’ve watched people destroy their fertility, their relationships, and their peace of mind because they thought casual meant consequence-free. So yes, I think it’s necessary. Not because I think you’re irresponsible, but because I think you’re human. And humans are very good at lying to themselves about risk when there’s orgasms involved.”

Jake was silent. The words hit harder than he’d expected.

“Fine,” he said quietly. “Run the tests.”

Three hours later, Jake sat in his car in the urgent care parking lot, staring at his phone. The sun was setting over Portland, painting the sky in colors that seemed aggressively optimistic given his circumstances. He had a bottle of doxycycline in his pocket, a pamphlet about Lyme disease on his passenger seat, and a notification that his test results would be available in two to three business days.

He needed to call Sarah.

Not because of the STI tests—those would take time—but because of the Lyme disease possibility. Because Brenda had made him realize that his “arrangement” wasn’t as consequence-free as he’d pretended. Because for two years, he’d been sleeping with a woman he couldn’t define, couldn’t commit to, and apparently, couldn’t even keep safe from potential tick-borne illnesses.

Sarah was, objectively, the best thing in Jake’s life that he refused to acknowledge. They’d met at a mutual friend’s birthday party three years ago. She was a landscape architect who specialized in urban green spaces, which meant she actually understood the difference between native and invasive species in a way that made Jake feel both impressed and slightly inadequate. She was five-foot-six, had the kind of curly hair that seemed to operate on its own agenda, and possessed a laugh that sounded like she was surprised by her own amusement.

They’d slept together for the first time six months after meeting, both of them fresh from breakups, both of them adamant that they weren’t ready for anything serious. The sex had been electric, desperate, hungry, the kind of physical connection that made Jake think that maybe, just maybe, he should reconsider his stance on emotional availability. But they’d both been scared, and so they’d made a deal: friends, with benefits, no strings, no expectations, no morning-after awkwardness.

That had been two years ago.

In that time, Jake had watched Sarah design a park that won a city award. He’d helped her move apartments twice. They’d attended three weddings together as each other’s “plus ones,” always explaining to relatives that no, they weren’t dating, yes, they were just friends, isn’t modern friendship complicated? They’d celebrated her thirtieth birthday at a karaoke bar where she’d sung “Total Eclipse of the Heart” with such commitment that Jake had fallen a little bit in love with her, right there, in the glow of the disco ball.

But he’d never said anything. Because that wasn’t the arrangement.

And now, sitting in his car with a potential Lyme disease diagnosis and the weight of his own cowardice pressing down on his chest, Jake realized that the arrangement had been a lie from the start. Not a malicious lie, but a lie nonetheless, the kind of lie you tell yourself because the truth is too terrifying to face.

He picked up his phone and called her.

She answered on the third ring, her voice warm and distracted. “Hey, you. I’m in the middle of a rendering for the Morrison project. Can I call you back?”

“No,” Jake said, and his voice cracked slightly. “No, I need to talk to you. In person. Tonight.”

There was a pause. When Sarah spoke again, the warmth had cooled into concern. “Jake? What’s wrong?”

“I went to the doctor. There’s... there’s something I need to tell you. Something I should have told you before. About us. About what we’re doing. About a tick.”

“A tick?”

“On my dick, Sarah. There was a tick on my dick. And I might have Lyme disease. And I might have other things, I don’t know yet, but I realized that I’ve been pretending that what we have doesn’t matter, and it does matter, because if I have something, you could have something, and even if I don’t, I’ve been treating you like you’re disposable when you’re the least disposable person in my life, and I....”

“Jake,” Sarah interrupted, her voice steady. “Breathe. Where are you?”

“Urgent care. On Hawthorne.”

“Stay there. I’m coming to get you.”

“You don’t have to....”

“Jake Morrison, if you move from that parking lot, I will hunt you down and remove something from your body with less gentleness than that tick. Do you understand?”

Jake laughed, and it came out wet and broken. “Yeah. I understand.”

“Good. I’m twenty minutes away.”

She hung up. Jake sat in the gathering dark, watching the seagull in the parking lot win its argument with the human, and realized that for the first time in two years, he had no idea what was going to happen next. The arrangement was broken. The truth was out, or at least the beginning of it.

And somewhere between the fear of Lyme disease and the terror of actual intimacy, Jake Morrison felt something he hadn’t expected: relief.

Sarah pulled up eighteen minutes later in her beat-up Subaru, the backseat filled with plant samples and architectural plans. She got out of the car wearing yoga pants and an oversized sweatshirt, her hair piled in a messy bun, no makeup, and Jake thought she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

She walked up to him, stopped three feet away, and crossed her arms.

“Show me,” she said.

“What?”

“The bite. Show me.”

“Sarah, it’s on my...”

“I’ve seen your penis, Jake. I’ve seen it in daylight, in darkness, in the shower, and that one memorable time in the back of Marcus’s van at Coachella. Show me the bite.”

Jake hesitated, then lowered his pants slightly, showing the red mark where Brenda had extracted the tick.

Sarah leaned in, her expression clinical and concerned, and Jake felt the absurdity of the moment wash over him. Here he was, pants down in a parking lot, showing his genitals to a woman who was technically not his girlfriend, while a seagull watched with obvious judgment.

“It’s not angry,” Sarah said. “That’s good. No ring, no bullseye yet. When did you notice it?”

“Three days ago.”

“And you’re just now telling me?”

“I thought it was an ingrown hair.”

Sarah looked up at him, and her eyes were bright with something that wasn’t quite anger but was definitely related to it. “Two years, Jake. Two years of sleeping together, of spending weekends together, of being each other’s dates to weddings and funerals and that terrible open mic night where Tyler tried stand-up. And you didn’t think to tell me you might have a tick-borne illness?”

“I didn’t think...”

“That’s the problem,” Sarah said, her voice rising. “You didn’t think. Because thinking would require acknowledging that what we have is real, that it has consequences, that I’m not just some convenient body you can use when you’re lonely and ignore when you’re not. You want to know why I’m upset? It’s not because you might have Lyme disease. It’s because you only called me when you were scared, when you needed something, when the reality of your body forced you to acknowledge that actions have repercussions.”

Jake felt the words like physical blows. “Sarah, I....”

“And another thing,” she continued, stepping closer. “If you have an STI, I swear to God, Jake, I will end you. Not because STIs are shameful, they’re not, they’re just infections, but because if you’ve been sleeping with other people and not telling me, if you’ve been putting me at risk without my consent, that’s not just careless, that’s cruel.”

“I haven’t,” Jake said quickly. “Sarah, I swear. There hasn’t been anyone else. Not since we started. I know we said we could see other people, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. Because you’re right, this is real, and I’ve been too scared to admit it, but there hasn’t been anyone else. Just you. Just this. Just this thing I don’t know how to name.”

Sarah stopped. The anger drained from her face, replaced by something softer and more dangerous: hope.

“Say that again,” she whispered.

“There hasn’t been anyone else. Just you.”

“No. The other part.”

Jake took a breath. The parking lot lights hummed. The seagull had moved on to new conflicts. And Jake Morrison, thirty-two years old, commercial real estate broker, commitment-phobe, and owner of one recently deticked penis, looked at the woman he’d been sleeping with for two years and said the truest thing he’d ever said:

“I don’t know how to name this. I don’t know what we are. But I know I don’t want it to be an arrangement anymore. I want it to be real. I want you to be my girlfriend, Sarah. I want to be your boyfriend. I want to tell you when I have ticks on my genitals and I want you to care because you love me, not because you’re worried about your own health, even though you should also be worried about your own health, because that’s important, but also because you love me. Do you love me? Because I think I love you. I think I’ve loved you since you sang ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ and I was too stupid to realize it.”

Sarah stared at him. Then, slowly, she started to laugh.

“You idiot,” she said. “You absolute, complete, total idiot.”

“Is that a yes?”

“It’s a ‘we need to talk about this somewhere that isn’t an urgent care parking lot.’ It’s a ‘you need to get in my car and let me take you home and feed you soup because doxycycline on an empty stomach is a nightmare.’ It’s a ‘we have a lot to figure out and it’s not going to be easy and you have to get tested for everything and I mean everything, Jake, including emotional availability, which is going to be harder than any blood test.’”

“But?”

Sarah stepped forward, took his face in her hands, and kissed him. It wasn’t a passionate kiss, it was a claiming, a declaration, a promise.

“But,” she whispered against his mouth, “it’s also a yes. I’ve loved you since you helped me carry that stupid IKEA dresser up three flights of stairs and didn’t complain once. I’ve loved you through two years of pretending we were casual. I’ve loved you in silence because I thought that’s what you wanted. So yes, Jake. Yes, I’ll be your girlfriend. Yes, we’ll figure this out. But first, you’re going to tell me everything about this tick, and then you’re going to tell me about every sexual partner you’ve ever had, and then, God help me, we’re going to have the most adult conversation of our lives.”

Jake kissed her back, and in that kiss was two years of missed opportunities, two years of pretending, two years of fear. And something else, something new: the terrifying, exhilarating freedom of being known.

They drove to Sarah’s apartment in silence, her hand resting on his thigh, his fingers tracing patterns on her wrist. The city lights of Portland blurred past, and Jake thought about consequences—how they arrived whether you invited them or not, how they changed everything, how they could be terrifying and liberating in the same breath.

Sarah’s apartment was on the third floor of a converted Victorian, filled with plants and books and the organized chaos of a creative life. She made Jake sit on the couch while she heated soup, and he watched her move through the kitchen with the efficiency of someone who had spent years learning to take care of herself.

“Okay,” she said, bringing two bowls to the coffee table. “Start from the beginning. The camping trip. And don’t leave anything out.”

Jake told her everything. The lake, the whiskey, the decision to sleep under the stars, the woman he’d been trying to impress—Claire, a friend of Marcus’s sister, beautiful and unavailable and completely uninterested in him. He told her about noticing the bump, about the Google search, about Brenda and her thirty-four years of seeing things no human should witness.

Then he told her about the STI tests, and the fear, and the realization that he’d been living in a fantasy where actions didn’t have repercussions.

“I’ve been stupid,” he concluded. “Not just about the tick. About us. About everything.”

Sarah stirred her soup, not looking at him. “Do you know why I agreed to the arrangement?”

“Because you weren’t ready for something serious?”

“No. Because I thought it was the only way to have you. I thought if I demanded more, you’d run. And I wanted you enough that I was willing to take less than I deserved. That’s on me, too. We built this thing together, this fragile house of cards, and we both pretended it was sturdy enough to live in.”

“So what do we do now?”

Sarah finally looked up, and her eyes were wet but determined. “We build something real. Something with walls and a foundation. Something that can handle ticks and STI tests and bad days and boring days and all the unsexy realities of actual intimacy. But Jake? It’s going to be hard. Real relationships are hard. They require showing up when you don’t want to, telling the truth when it’s uncomfortable, and staying when every instinct says to run.”

“I don’t know if I can do that,” Jake admitted.

“I don’t either,” Sarah said. “But I know I want to try. With you.”

They ate their soup in the warm quiet of her apartment, and Jake felt the doxycycline settle in his stomach like a promise of healing. Outside, Portland continued its rainy, complicated existence, and somewhere in a lab across town, a tick was being analyzed for disease.

Tomorrow, there would be test results and difficult conversations. There would be the revelation of past partners and the negotiation of new boundaries. There would be the terrifying work of merging two lives that had been carefully kept separate.

But tonight, there was soup, and Sarah’s hand in his, and the beginning of something that might, if they were brave enough, become love.

Jake fell asleep on Sarah’s couch, her head on his shoulder, her breathing steady and sure. And for the first time in years, he didn’t dream of escape. He dreamed of attachment, real, complicated, permanent attachment, and woke with the sunrise, ready to face the consequences of being alive.