Something isn’t working.

From our first awkward health classes, college kids have been fed pamphlet after pamphlet on how not to get sick or pregnant from having sex.

An embarrassingly small number of us actually listened.

At what would be alarming rates if any of us gave a damn, our generation is infecting and knocking itself up because we can’t be bothered to put on a condom or a diaphragm, or we don’t want to “ruin the moment” by telling others to do so. We feel silly falling back on grade school knowledge of the dangers of acting solely on the needs of our genitals, and so we devalue the risks we take to have a good time.

Be advised: what we know and are choosing to ignore will end our party.

We have all slept through sex education classes, thrown out brochures, rationalized our actions, and now many of us are waking up to a hangover and the drips.

Hear that? It’s the world’s smallest violin playing a moonlight sonata just for your burning urethra.

Too many times we have fallen back on feeble excuses; none of them exempting us from the risks we take so lightly. If you’re too drunk, too tired, or too lazy to care about your health or the health of your partner, maybe you shouldn’t be fucking at all.

Many in serious, committed relationships avoid protection because they have built a level of trust and understanding which they think makes protection unnecessary. But the hard truth is that without testing, they’ll never know for sure. True love conquers all, they say – but it still can’t kill a virus.

Then there are those who choose sex as a lifestyle, a diversion, or a parlor trick. They foolishly assume that the men or women they are sleeping with are clean based on outward appearance. They dismiss pregnancy as though it were a dated system they’ve learned to beat, the same risk as a speeding ticket. You are playing with lives – both yours and potential ones – and, as with speeding, sooner or later even the best get caught, and everyone pays.

This is the blaring fire alarm for those who lack the sense to see themselves as the functioning adults that they are. This is not a drill. This is your life.

Go to Michael Hall. Pick up a brochure from the Wellness Center. Go online. Get informed. Stop pretending that our generation’s current sexual roulette is anything but a live fire exercise.

If nothing else, stop prolonging our collective risk because you couldn’t be bothered to use the head with the brain in it.