Hold the Mayo

After the nubbin was removed, I continued to have pain on my right testicle. I started to see a series of physicians who were baffled by my situation. They prescribed antibiotics, injected numbing medications directly into my testicle with very large needles, told me to take warm baths and wear a jock strap all the time. It got to the point where my frustration became theirs so, in typical pass the buck fashion, my internist suggested a trip to the Mayo Clinic.
Although my father worked as a fleet service clerk for American Airlines and had an unlimited supply of stand-by plane tickets, we drove to Rochester, Minnesota. My parent’s had been divorced for a little less than two years and were casually dating each other. The three of us endured the six-hour trip together in my father’s Ford Probe. We shared a single room and dined in the hotel restaurant for each meal of the two-day trip. We were together in cramped quarters. The closest we had been with one another in a very long time.
At the Clinic, I was able to undergo my examinations without my parents hovering over me. I was relieved to get a few moments of time to myself when a nurse came into the room to examine me.
“My name is Nurse Johnson. You can call me Betty.” Betty looked like she was in her mid-fifties. She had short brown hair and was very thin and athletic looking. “Doctor will be here in a few minutes, but I have to examine you first.”
Back home, male physicians conducted all of my examinations. Whenever a nurse was with me, it was always just to ask questions, never to actually touch me.
“Lie back down on the table and raise your gown for me if you will,” Betty instructed.
I did as I was told and she began checking me for where I was in pain.
“Does it hurt here?” she asked.
“Uh-huh,” I replied.
“How about here?”
“Yep!”
The procedure continued for several minutes. My responses where short and grunted for two reasons: one was because I was in pain from all of the manipulation of my testicles and the other was because I was trying to concentrate on something else other than what was actually going on. Although I didn’t find Betty very sexually appealing, she was a woman and she was fondling my package. Don’t get hard . . . don’t get hard . . . think about something else . . .
It was torture and just before she told me she was done, I couldn’t take it anymore. My mind slipped and I started to get an erection. I didn’t know what to do.
The immature nine year-old in me, who spent all that time watching porn, expected Nurse Johnson to tell me not to worry about it, that she was flattered by my gesture. She would tell me that many of her patients reacted the same way but that there was something about me she liked. She would start to undress and cue the porn music.
The embarrassed 20 year-old apologized and turned red.
Betty stopped what she was doing, jotted a few notes down on her clipboard and looked at me. “You can sit up now,” she said. She gathered all of her things and opened the door. Before she closed it, she looked directly at me, paused and smiled. “Doctor will be right in,” she said, “and you won’t have anything to worry about.” Her eyes looked down toward my penis and she closed the door. I was sure I heard Nurse Betty Johnson laughing when the doctor came in and instructed me to bend over, for my first and very thorough, prostate exam.