Love At First Blight

It all started, as so many of my best and worst decisions do, with a very large man and very little warning.

Let’s call him James. Because that was his name. James was big. Big like a retired rugby player who still emotionally processes things by clenching his jaw and chopping wood. The kind of man who doesn’t talk during sex, just groans like he’s trying to lift a car off a trapped child.

Anyway, we had a thing going. Casual. Intense. Enthusiastic. And on this particular night, I had one clear mission: get on my knees and make the mountain crumble.

Which I did. Spectacularly.
Until the surprise finale.

Now, I’ve taken my share of enthusiastic shots to the face. It’s an occupational hazard in the freelance blowjob economy. But this one? This one came with Olympic force. It bypassed cheek, skipped jaw, and landed squarely in my left eye like it had been guided by a cursed GPS.

I yelped. I flinched. I blinked furiously as James panted above me, utterly delighted.

“Did I get you?” he asked, grinning.

“In the soul,” I replied, blindly reaching for a towel that didn’t exist.

I rinsed. I laughed. We went about our business. These things happen, I thought.

But Reader, something had happened.

Two mornings later, I woke up with an eye that felt... spicy. Not red. Not puffy. Just weird. Like my eyeball was doing its own breathplay scene without consent.

By day four, the weird became worrisome. My left eye had adopted a permanent squint and was producing a discharge best described as “emphatic.” I looked like a man trying to seduce a security camera.

Still, I soldiered on.

Until I turned up to naval muster with what could only be described as porno pinkeye.

“Thornwell,” my commanding officer said, “what’s wrong with your face?”

I said nothing. Just saluted. With my good eye.

By week two, my eye had officially entered the “haunted” phase.

It wept. It itched. It swelled with the quiet rage of a man who only just realised that the “heating” lube he used was actually Deep Heat. (But that’s another issue.) I was applying drops, warm compresses, even prayers. Nothing worked.

Friends started avoiding my left side. My eye was so inflamed, I began unconsciously tilting my head like a Victorian orphan asking for more porridge.

Still, I persisted. I was a man. A soldier. I could power through this minor ocular trauma. Right?

Wrong.

The final straw came when I caught my own reflection at the gym. My left eye nearly closed, rimmed in purple. I froze. I couldn’t pretend this was a bruise from a dumbbell slip. It was a battlefield souvenir from my own misadventure. I looked like someone who’d lost a thumb war to a dick. Which, in fairness, I had…

So, I went to a GP.

She glanced at my eye, hummed thoughtfully, and gave me standard antibiotic drops. I thanked her, used them religiously, and watched as my eye continued to look like it had fought a bee.

Next came the optometrist. He peered into my eye with that terrible forehead contraption, paused, and said:

“This is... not bacterial. You should see a specialist.”

A specialist.
For an eye.
That had been nutted in.

I made the appointment. I told myself it was probably just conjunctivitis with ambition.

The ophthalmologist was calm. Professional. He did all the tests, all the lights, asked me when the symptoms began.

I paused… Two weeks ago, to the night. The night James delivered his biblical load of protein and treachery.

The doctor peered back into the microscope, then said:
“Have you been sexually active recently?”

I made a face. “Why do you ask?”

He paused. Took off his glasses. Folded his arms.

“You have ocular chlamydia.”

I wish I could tell you I was shocked.
I wish I could say I didn’t immediately picture James’s satisfied face and my single blinking eye.
I wish I hadn’t said, out loud, “Oh… That tracks.”

The doctor handed me a script.
Not just for eye drops.
For full-blown STI treatment.
Like the kind you’d get after an extremely irresponsible music festival in Berlin.

So, there I was. Script in hand. Diagnosis accepted. Retinas full of regret.

The specialist had confirmed it: I had eye chlamydia. Not the kind you catch from a sketchy sharehouse threesome. No. Mine was artisanal. Boutique. Hand-delivered via orgasm and a reckless lack of aim.

But now came the worst part.

The pharmacist.

You think it’s humiliating to catch an STI in your eye? Try explaining it, with eye contact, to a man whose only sin is wearing a name badge and showing up for work.

I wandered into the chemist like a man on trial. Sunglasses on indoors. Hood up. Hunched over. I looked less like a patient and more like a failed supervillain whose evil plan had backfired directly into his cornea.

I slid the prescription across the counter.
He looked at it.
Then looked at me.
Then back at it.

“Hmm.”

That hum? That wasn’t curiosity. That was judgment wrapped in politeness.

He typed something. Paused. Looked again.
His eyebrow twitched.

“Bit of an... unusual combo here,” he said, smiling with the enthusiasm of a man who has just been gifted gossip and front-row seats. “You saw an eye doctor, right?”

“Yep,” I replied, too quickly. “Weird infection. Got it from, uh, swimming. Lake bacteria.”

He didn’t blink.
(Unlike me. I was blinking furiously. Because of course it still stung.)

He handed me the box.

“This isn’t normally prescribed for the eye, just so you know.”

Oh, I knew.

I grabbed the meds, gave him my best I-will-tip-you-$500-if-you-never-speak-of-this look, and left.

At home, I stared down the little foil packets like they owed me money.

Because nothing says “you’ve made some choices” quite like swallowing STI medication to treat your eye because a man came on your face with the kind of aim that belongs on a Wii Sports leaderboard.

In conclusion:

Always check what’s in the tube.
Don’t assume lube glows red.
And if he’s about to blow….
Close your damn eyes.

Rowan Thornwell’s Hilarious Sexual Misadventures, Oops! I Came… Volume One! OUT NOW!