There are couple of firsts that usually take a girl completely by a surprise & that she´ll remember for the rest of her life.
The first surprise is the sudden flutter of butterflies when a girl is being kissed on the lips for the very first time. The second is the time she´s being accidentally fisted for the very first – and hopefully last – time.
My first serving of the second kind was on my very first visit to a gynaecologist at the tender age of umm.. fifteen or sixteen.
The whole thing was sort of an out-of-body experience of utter humiliation: there I was buck naked, on a table, feet on straps [ladies, you know the drill] looking down & seeing a bald head of an elder male doctor bobbing up and down with metal specs and spatulas glistening in the fluorescent lights when suddenly & without any, and I repeat: any warning the good doctor conducted quite a thorough examination of my uterus via the one place that is similar in both sexes, the big pucker, if you will.
As I was sliding and slipping out of the doctors office to the car where my parents were waiting [it was a combined first-visit- to-a-lady-doctor- &-hey-let´s-go-and-greet-your-grandma-while-we´re-at-it kind of field trip] I was sure I would never get rid of the confusion and shame that the examination left me with.
Turns out, I was right.
Isn´t it strange how the tiniest choices can set a tone for years to come. For example, if I had not gone to that doctor who told me take off all my clothes – and surprised me with his fingers – I might have not been under the impression that it is the norm, always, to go naked as a jaybird on the exam table. Then maybe, just maybe, in all of these years I might not have felt like a person of lesser value & deeply ashamed after each examination I have had ever since.
Actually, I only found out that in fact it is NOT the norm to go completely starkers about a year ago while discussing about healthcare with my friend from Texas.
I said something like I would appreciate the American modesty every now and then and would like not being always so totally ok with nudity when for example at lady doctors. And I would gladly pay a little extra for a disposal robe of some sort.
To this she said something like oh my gosh I have never heard of anyone doing that, and why oh WHY do they ask you to take off all your clothes? Only then would the err of my ways start to unravel. [ Although, come to think of it, her shock might have been a tad too dramatic as she´s no stranger to strange encounters on the steel cradle either. She told me that she too, had been surprise butt-fingered once by a very dubious Dr. Midget. Yes, that was his name.]
This left me very worried indeed, so I conducted a survey amongst my lady friends about the fact, and turns out, 9 out 11 do not go in the buff, but kind of switch between upper and lower body nudity during the examination. Only one of my friends was of the same school as I. Well, actually she does leave her ankle socks on because her toes get very cold very easily. But I guess ankle socks do not count.
Anyway, as we grow up we are led to believe that the lightning does not strike twice. I placed all my faith in that saying and after years of non-action [or at least action that was pronounced beforehand] at that front I started to relax a little bit at the appointments. That was until fate threw a certain doctor on my path. Let us call her “Rita Raines”.
The first time that I met her had actually nothing to do with, you know, downstairs. Instead I was waiting to be called in for a blood tests, and had been waiting for some time, when a door opened and this remnant of a 70s disco queen with big frizzy hair, baby blue eyeshadow and some very, very potent prescription glasses motioned me to get closer. ”Welcome, welcome” she hollered at the door and ushered me to come in. I looked around in the empty waiting room as and asked “me?” to which she replied with a somewhat irritated tone “yes, you. You. Come in.”
As I got into her room I paid attention to the lovely old furnishing – dark wood, long, white, airy muslin curtains – and I was thinking to myself that I had never, ever had my blood drawn at a such prestigious environment. I sat down, started to roll my sleeves up, when she suddenly lift her gaze from the file she had been reading and asked me how I had been doing lately. Fine, I answered, but as the look in her eyes seemed to demand more information I volunteered that I had come in for some blood tests. Upon hearing this she pulled back on her chair and asked me “you are not YOU, are you?” as if I was some evil impostor from daytime TV!
Perplexed I answered I guess am not I then and quickly retreated to the door as she chased me away from her office to the arms of a nurse trying to locate me in the lobby.
Couple of years later I made a reservation for my yearly check up at the same hospital and only requested a woman doctor rather than a man.
You can imagine the cold fist of fear that grabbed me by my insides when the door opened and “Rita Raines” called me in. Without going into painful details as to what happened after I had completely disrobed, as I trust you, my dear reader, can deduct what the grand – and surprise – finale of that examination was. I vowed there and then to only go to doctors recommended to me by friends, not famous for their delicate fingerwork. But that´s beside the point.
What is not off the mark – at least not too far off – is another wisdom we are told: third time is the charm and that everything is connected. Although am happy to report, that this time the victim of southern advances was not yours truly, but my dear friend Ms. Bobby Socks. She had made an impromptu appointment with a gynaecologist, stripped down to her birthday suit, gotten thoroughly examined, fisted & confused. I met her later the same day, and even tho this was a different medical centre she had gone to, she had only to say “I had the strangest experience at the gynaecologist today…” when I uttered: “Let me guess, Rita Raines.”
And indeed, it was.
Mademoiselle Clouseau 