Since I turned 18 I have been renting porno videos and DVDs to masturbate to.

After getting a DVD with a greasy fingerprint on it, I have become paranoid that I could catch some venereal disease from bodily fluids that may be on the tape or DVD from the previous renter. Are porno tapes and DVDs safe to rent? Should I be careful not to touch myself after handling a tape or DVD?

It won't kill you to wash your hands after handling a rented tape or DVD – adult or otherwise – or touching any surface that other people have recently touched, such as doorknobs, store countertops, or handles and railings in public-transportation vehicles. Doing so may reduce your exposure to things like cold and flu viruses, not necessarily sexually transmitted diseases (which tend to be, after all, sexually transmitted). Yet at the same time you need to be sensible about it; those prone to expressing obessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) can easily become fixated on hygiene, and a certain amount of exposure to foreign pathogens is actually good for the human immune system. How careful you want to be is up to you. Your paranoia may actually be an expression of what I call "internalized pornophobia": Society still tells us erotic materials are not mainstream and are the domain of deviants and creeps, and perhaps you don't want to contact someone else's fingerprint on a DVD because you want to avoid any contact with "them." Just an idea.