Smell My Finger

From my archives, this repeat is in response to a conversation I recently had with my friend Charlie (and a tribute to all men of a certain age).

 

So I went and had my annual physical a while back. No big deal. I’m a grown up. I’ve been going for several years now. It’s one of the few things my overpriced insurance gets right.

I’ve got a pretty good doctor. His name is B. G. Patel. He has no actual first name as far as I can tell, just B period, G period. Yeah, it’s a little weird, because I guess one initial is simply not mysterious enough. Anyway, as I’m being led through the usual poking, thumping, turning and coughing, good ‘ol BG informs me that due to my age there will be a new test added to my annual regimen. At this point he dons a rubber glove, grabs some lubricant and tells me to drop trou and bend over the examination table. 

Oh, the humanity.

Now I don’t really know what a prostate is, but I do know where it is located, and based upon BG’s latex-ed and lubed finger still motioning for me to spin around, well, it didn’t take a genius to figure out that he planned on taking the expressway to get there. And although it was crystal clear that someone was about to go spelunking while the other was about to be spelunked, and I really wasn’t interested in being on either side of that transaction, all I could focus on at that moment was the freakishly large fingers on my otherwise petite, Indian doctor.

Man, why hadn’t I noticed that before?

Okay, so I’m not a certified idiot. I knew this was coming eventually in my life, so it wasn’t a complete surprise. And since I’ve found that growing older is as much about losing all semblances of dignity and modesty as it is about gaining wisdom, I bent over and braced myself to take it like a man.

I’ll spare you most of the gory details, but suffice it to say, it was very uncomfortable. And perhaps if he wouldn’t have dimmed the lights and started humming Barry White the minute I turned around, I wouldn’t feel as violated now. But that wasn’t even the worst part.  That occurred when he was  apparently shoulder deep in my rectum (this is an estimate based upon the tapping I could feel on my molars) and said,

“Feel that?  That’s your prostate!” 

He said it with inappropriate enthusiasm, like he had just spotted our car in a crowded, holiday parking lot.  Since I honestly didn’t’ anticipate dialog during the exploration, I hoped it was a rhetorical question.  I didn’t possess the desire nor the ability to answer him.

I left my physical dazed, limping and in need of several hours of showering and/or counseling.  Unfortunately, that wasn’t to be the case.  Since I had scheduled the entire day off, I also had an afternoon appointment already set up to take my car in and get new snow tires and rims put on it.  And since it was automotive related, I pretty much got violated there, too.

All said and done, at least my diary entry was concise that evening:

“Dear Diary, today I got two rim jobs.”

m. karvinen