when you wad up your clothes and place them on the chair, they’ll fall to the ground and the nurse will tell everyone in the office how hideous they were. Same goes for bras. It’s best to wear a good one, not the kind I have where the underwires poke through the material.
A crazy nurse friend of mine told me, “We don’t want the women to think we’re staring at their Coochie Snorchers so we kind of gaze around the room and often our eyes fall on their undergarments wadded up in a chair or on the floor. It’s flat-out scary what some of them dare to wear. Nasty, girl. Pure-T nasty.”
I knew this was what happened in some doctors’ offices, so that is why one should always go for broke and wear the good stuff on Pap smear, Anal Jab, Drape-’n-Scrape days.
When this brand-new doctor finally came in to examine me, he didn’t even bother to start off with a warm-up question…such as, “Nice weather we’re having, isn’t it?” No, sirree. He just dove right in, so to speak. “How’s your health been? Anything unusual? Any pain with intercourse?”
Intercourse! Now that’s a word for you. Why do they all say intercourse? It’s as gross as calling my love contraption a VAGINA. Intercourse could mean a number of things ranging from communication to talking and disclosing information.
I was lying upside down as he cranked the chair so my possum was getting closer and closer to his bifocaled eyeballs. Hard to answer questions when one’s vagomatic is rising and legs are spreading.
“Pain with what, did you say?”
“Intercourse. Sexual intercourse.”
“Oh,” I said, trying to press my knees together so he couldn’t see my snorchie cooter or whatever that nurse friend of mine calls it. “I don’t have that. I’d much rather just blow the man’s whistle from time to time. Doesn’t take near as long and frees me up for all my shows like Grey’s Anatomy and American Idol .”
I felt really PMSy and have been begging a doctor in another practice to yank out my uterus for years, but she said there’s nothing but trouble ahead if she did such a thing, and my mama, of course, had to agree and say what she always says, “You’ll grow a beard and a bumper crop of testicles…maybe a starter penis, too.”
She thinks whiskers and a deep voice will lead the way to the rudimentary penis should I have my lady parts tossed in the incinerator, where I’m convinced they belong and I’m hoping this doctor will agree.
“I’ve had four periods in six weeks,” I say, trying to let him know things have gone to seed. He said nothing. “That’s a lot of money for Tampax I could be spending on alphahydroxy creams with grapeseed extract, you hear?”
He continued with his exam as I lay there wondering how to tell him I needed the surgery.
“How often would you say you are enjoying relations with your husband?” the doctor asked again as I suddenly felt his fingers dive in for the kill.
“Ouch! Don’t you think you could have at least bought me a drink first?” I asked, trying to be funny. He did NOT laugh, just poked harder, probably noticing dust bunnies, cobwebs and a few brown recluses. I hear they like dark, undisturbed places.
“Sex? Are you referring to sex when you say ‘relations’ and ‘intercourse’?”
“Yes, that is the terminology we use here.”
“I entertain him on occasion, but, truth is, it hurts. Painful it is, indeed. It hurts especially on the nights he forgets to thank me for the fine dinner I made or the days when all he does is grouch and complain. And that, my dear doctor, is why the man isn’t getting any. You know what ‘getting any’ means?”
“I assume it—”
“That’s right. He isn’t enjoying this fine source of intercourse. No nookie. No hump-de-dump. No—”
He shut me up with the noise of instrument preparation and was silent for a while, then said he was going to insert this and that and hoped it was warm because they sure try hard to heat things up a bit before going spelunking. He didn’t say spelunking, of course, because he had the wit of a nit, which is the egg of a louse, which would be singular for lice.
“There are new products and creams, even hormones that will help increase your—”
“No thanks. Once a year is fine. Christmas wouldn’t be as special without our annual Sealy celebration. We’re just at that age and stage in a marriage.”
The doctor was silent and probing. Then the most embarrassing thing of all happened, just when I thought I’d escaped it. He must have used his digging and scraping of cervical walls as think time, rolling my name around in his head, finding it familiar and wondering where he’d heard it. I’ve been around for twenty years in this town writing several columns a week. I knew it was coming. It always does while their heads are halfway in the birth canal fighting spiders, fallen bladders and whatnots.
“You wouldn’t happen to be the Susan Reinhardt who writes those stories in the paper, would you?”
Oh, no. What does one do? Admit that, yes, as you are viewing my cornucopia of feminine charms and noticing it hasn’t been waxed or groomed for summer activity, I am indeed the writer at the paper. Or I could say, “No, but I know her. She’s really nice and lots of fun.”
“You look just like that woman in the paper.” His head was still in my hoo-ha. Great, my face looks like a Coochie Snorcher.
“WHAT!!!!!” I screamed as his index finger the size of a bratwurst enters my virgin Arschlach (anus) and I cannot help the evil that froths from my mouth.
“I sure hope THIS isn’t the picture you’re referring to,” I said, trying to cross my legs so he’d get the idea, though, in truth, it might be better looking than the one the paper is currently running.
I wondered if the man had even seen my face. He’d done nothing north of the border since he entered the room. “I like your hair,” he says, and I am wondering if he’s talking about the many new and controversial hairdos the paper has run or the hair he’s currently viewing? I wanted to get out of there. FAST.
With gadgets and digits occupying nearly every orifice, he proceeded to tell me how much he enjoyed the piece I wrote about the woman who was using a Porta-John when the forklift came by and scooped the booth into the air and carted her down the road a few miles.
“I loved the part how you described her trying to open the door and seeing all the cars whizzing by, no pun intended.” Great, suddenly he gets a personality. I preferred him as a louse egg. There’s nothing worse than a gynecologist who talks ONLY when he’s down THERE and not directly to your face. I just want them to examine parts I’d rather not know I have, proclaim them healthy, write up prescriptions for Wellbutrin and tranquilizers and send me home all squishy from the K-Y jelly. Or, in this case, I wanted him to say my uterus was not functioning properly and needed immediate removal and incineration.
My mother, prim and proper and very Baptist, always gloats after her annual visit with her gynecologist. She has never let any man but my father view her snorchie, and I’m highly doubtful he’s ever come as close to that view as her gyno.
“Dr. Whiteside said I have a youthful and healthy vagina,” Mama beamed. “Says it’s one of the best he’s ever seen for a 68-year-old woman, or any
