I know that this is going to come as something of a shock to you all, but I am not the paragon of self-assured sexual suavité that my posts suggest. My transformation into a cologne-wearing thriller of women’s senses did not, so to speak, come about until my mid-twenties. This was principally because I’m Roman Catholic (or, if you believe P, because I still chose my own clothes in those days). That is not to say that I had not explored some of the earlier bases. Indeed the near obsessional care with which Catholics define the line between sex and non-sex is legendary and exposes Bill Clinton for the pathetic amateur he is in this regard. Nevertheless, until P accepted my proposal of marriage, I was, even on the most prudish definition, a virgin. No doubt the Church would have preferred me to wait a little longer still but you have to bear in mind that P used to wear tartan hotpants, was an unbeliever and had set our engagement to last a year.
Gentleman as I aspire to be I draw a veil over the act itself and I pick up the narrative the following day. I am in my basement office and the colleague with whom I share the room is asking me if I am ok. I tell him I am fine but in fact I am experiencing a powerful itch in an “intimate area”. It is that which has caused me to writhe about in my chair in a manner which is distracting him from a difficult legal issue. On the pretext of making some tea I make for the nearest loo. An examination of my plumbing yielded immediate results. I (or rather it) was covered in nasty looking purple lesions. My wail rang out across the Temple gardens and thence out over the Thames. I had an immediate word in God’s ear. I explained that whilst I appreciated his sense of humour surely this was disproportionate punishment even from a deity inclined to smite a man for spilling his seed upon the ground. I became steadily gripped by the sort of panic that only a man who thinks he is about to have his penis fall clean off ever truly experiences.
I went straight from the loo to the STD clinic of my local hospital in the East End of London. For those of you unfamiliar with London’s moral geography, the East End is one of the more colourful areas. The clinic was dingey; its window panes yellowed with diesel particulates. I took a ticket from the dispenser and then a hard plastic seat and began a wait. English people love a good wait and the National Health Service, considerately, provides some of the longest and best. You have plenty of time to observe and be observed by those around you. Sat opposite me was a Bangladeshi man in his 50s with a white beard. His left hand was rhythmically scratching at the front of his trousers. He caught my eye, winked and nodded. Most of the others in the queue appeared to be the kind of men and women for whom a dose of the clap represented a professional hazard. They sighed with boredom and leafed through magazines that were older than their parents.
When I reached the front of the queue I was greeted cheerily by a man who (until I started blogging) was the campest person I had ever encountered. I warmed to him instantly. He took me to a cubicle defined by curtains and said “Ok – let’s see the little feller”. He seemed to have sized me up with a glance. “Hmm” he said when presented with the evidence “we’ll need to run some tests!” He made it sound like the most enormous fun. He cocked his head to one side, straightened his lips and said “I think we should do an AIDs test – would you like a little counselling first?”. I said I thought I would be fine and he ticked a box with a merrily exaggerated gesture. “You can always get some before the result” he said reassuringly.
I had just begun to think that this was nowhere near as bad as I had feared when he produced “the Thing”. The Thing was a plastic handle from which sprung a length of thin wire which had been bent at its tip into a small loop. I immediately had a flashback to primary school where an older boy had tortured a group of us with a story of a medical procedure that involved inserting a thing up your thing and scraping something out. That storied thing plainly was “the Thing”. My new friend looked apologetic, whistled distractedly and did his thing. The whole sex thing did not seem to be working out in quite the way I had hoped. I shuffled back to my seat to await the results feeling very sorry for myself and resentful towards the Lord Almighty who I imagined was grimly enjoying it all.
I was summoned to the doctor’s consulting room. I was met by a woman my age. I was uncomfortably concerned that I had met her at University but she showed no signs of recognising me. She began by saying “This is a teaching hospital I have some students with me, I’m sure you don’t mind”. Sat by her desk were two women wearing hijabs and white lab coats. All I could see of their faces were their eyes. “Show me your penis” commanded the doctor. The two students leant forward so as to get a clear view. The doctor grabbed my private parts with a latex-gloved hands, tugged them about in a dismissive way and then sat back and sighed. The doctor seemed angry: angry at me.
“I have lost count of the number of times I have had to tell people like you …” she began. Like me? 26 year old Catholic sexual neophytes?
“… to wear a condom. Your behaviour is utterly irresponsible.” Two pairs of eyes glowered disapprovingly at me from behind their veil. The injustice of it all poked at me.
“How many partners have you had?”
“Look, I’ve had sex exactly once and, while I appreciate your advice, it is going to be difficult for my fiancee to conceive the children we are planning (oh the irony!) if I use a condom”.
I could tell that having only one notch on the bedstead was not a proud boast in the STD clinic. The doctor’s gaze was flashing from her former contempt to pity and back like a set of police lights. She settled on contemptuous pity. “You have Thrush”.
I could tell this was supposed to be informative but it meant nothing to me. “You mean like the bird?” I asked weakly. The two students exchanged a glance. I’m giving you a prescription for Canestan. It’ll be gone in a day. I took the chit from her hand. “Don’t let me see you back here again” she chided. Frankly, I was in no mood to buy a season ticket. I just wanted to get out of there as soon as humanly possible. However, something in her gaze told me I should tuck my penis back into my pants first.
