The Waiting Room

Published March 27, 2007

By Elias Altman

I am sitting in the waiting room thinking that I have an STD. Or I should say STI. “Sexually Transmitted Infections” is a broader term than “Sexually Transmitted Diseases” – I learned this in my Human Biology class.
There’s a framed hay-field landscape hanging on the wall. It looks like a low-budget reproduction of a poorly-imitated Van Gogh. It’s no better and no worse than the art that adorns all clinics. But didn’t Van Gogh have an STD? I mean an STI. I think he died of syphilis.
The chairs in the room are arranged against three walls and then there’s a small island of chairs in the middle. For some reason, I always seem to sit in the island. Islands sound nice, but they’re not when they are located in a waiting room. I always regret it.
“He’s probably got gonorrhea,” one of the others might say about me.
“No, looks like a classic case of Hepatitis C,” the other one would answer.
I never think that I have an STI – I won’t have any bumps, lesions, pains, scabs, crabs or warts –I merely like to get tested every year just in case. But somehow, just being in the waiting room, even without the nagging memory of a “close call,” I feel that I must have some awful infection.
“Well, it did hurt when I peed that one time,” I might say to myself sitting in the waiting room. I start to sweat.
Then, the nurse calls my name. She leads me down the corridor. This is where the real walks of shame happen. It’s not walking home the night after a drunken hook-up, it’s the three-month later walk back to the waiting room when you’ve just found out you have Chlamydia.
I am alone in the little room. There are brochures on wall-racks that talk about Alcohol, Heroin, Asthma and STIs. Great. The doctor always comes in when I least expect him: after I decide he’s definitely not coming, but before I get up and leave angrily.
My doctor has soothing grandfatherly white hair, and then he starts asking me questions about anal sex. He says “We’ll take some samples,” but that he will also do a “manual check.” That’s a nice way of putting it, I think. And then, every doctor tells you to do it in a different way: “Ok, son, down with your slacks” or “Drop them to your ankles.” It always feels like a shootout.
There is some running joke that guys get erections at times like these, but his hands move around my genitals like he were rummaging through an old drawer.
We chat about whatever sporting event is current. We’re just a couple of guys talking, I tell myself. But, this is when I think he’ll say, “Wow, it looks pretty bad down here. How did you miss this?” Doctors are the only ones who can tell you that you’ve won something when it’s not a prize.
I can pull up my pants now. No hernias either, he might add reassuringly. Once that’s over, pissing in a cup is a piece of cake. It takes a week or two for the piss results to come back. The corridor never seems as long on the way out.
I forget about the whole thing: the sweating, the prying eyes, the cold hands, the dread. Then, I’ll get a phone call from the doctor when I least expect it – it’s just like doctors to do that. All negative? OK. Then, I’ll breathe deeply and think to myself: I knew I never had an STD, I mean an STI.

Print This Article

Comments