Take Two And Call Me In The Morning
I decided to switch gynos recently because the one I’d been going to, while I liked her, was so overbooked that I always had to wait an hour and a half just to get undressed and put my sock feet in her stirrups and "scoot down" on the tissue paper. So I called my primary care doctor who referred me to a doctor at New York Methodist in my neighborhood. When I phoned to make an appointment, the doctor was booked until December and I needed to see someone sooner than that since I was overdue for a check up. The receptionist said I could come in earlier to see a different doctor in the same office, a Dr. William, which I thought was fine.
When I went for my appointment, I signed in at the front desk and then took a seat in the hallway between the waiting area and the examining. Nurses and patients and assistants passed, as did Doctors in their monogrammed lab coats. A short dark skinned man came towards me shuffling papers in a folder, calling the name of the receptionist a few feet away. I saw that the monogram on the upper right side of his coat said Dr. William. I panicked and eyed the exit signs.
My first grown up lady doctor was Dr. Tap. I’d grown accustomed to calling her Dr. Pap. I was a silly sexually active teen, and she was a 30-something motherly figure with a gentle touch and a voice like Georgette from "Mary Tyler Moore". I loved her. When I went away to college I ended up not seeing her for a couple of years and when I came back home for the summer and made an appointment for my overdue pap smear, everything was different. Her office had been unrecognizably redecorated, she was pregnant, and she didn’t remember me. I was devastated. That was the last time I saw her. Since then, I’d always had lady lady doctors, never a man. I always thought something could potentially be wrong with a male gyno who fingered random women all day, a medical degree notwithstanding. "I’m going to feel you up now. Don’t worry. I’m a doctor."
As I sat and mulled over my predicament, a nurse called me in to one of the examining rooms where the took my blood pressure and checked my height and weight. I thought about sharing my anxiety with her -- "So, uh, Dr. William’s a man…" – but then thought better of it. It was too late now. The nurse then led me into the doctor’s office for my introduction. Dr. William gave me a firm handshake and gestured for me to sit down as he slid into his big leather chair behind his desk. He was friendly and all smiles. In a thick West Indies accent he asked me routine questions about family diseases and my sexual activity, looking deep into my eyes all the while.
Moments later I was in the examining room, ass bare in a pink gown lying back on the tissue paper, staring nervously at the metal stirrups. "Okay, feet up," Dr. William directed as the nurse walked in. "And scoot down." I hate it when they say that. It’s like during final exams in high school when the teacher says, "pencils down." Except your legs are wide open and your labia is hanging out.
Dr. William sat on the stool at my feet, eye level with my action. "You’re 31?" he asked, glancing at my chart. "You’re very little. Five feet and four inches, hm?"
"Barely," I replied.
"And 106 pounds."
"Yeah."
"Mm hm."
He handed the chart to the nurse and asked her for the speculum. He peered at me over my knees. "The baby-sized one," he joked. Ha ha, I thought. I also thought, ew.
He spread me open and swabbed me and then he stood up and did the lubed up rubber-gloved two-finger prod. I stared at the ceiling and thought, he’s actually just a really butch woman considered to be the best OB-GYN in the entire country. Papers and articles and books had been written about him. Her. She even had her own TV show on The Learning Channel. Every knocked up woman across the United States was standing in line for this very doctor to bring their babies into the world.
When it was over and turned out to be relatively painless considering, I was alone again pulling my clothes back on keenly aware of the scent of KY. I laughed at myself, thinking about my first man lady doctor experience that I hadn’t even planned for. Had I known I would have at least shaved. Dr. William came back and said in his deeply accented voice, "Okay. You’re just fine." He extended his hand for me to shake it again, looked into my eyes and said, "It was a pleasure to see you." And I thought, like, see me – see me?
