I love to “go to the doctor” for my yearly checkup. I show up in jeans and a t-shirt and no one has a clue who I am and so I get into the system treated just like everyone else in the waiting room, which is an interesting experience if you’ve never done it.

My doctor (and his partner) is a very busy general internist with a huge practice, including hospital patients. His office is packed and busy. I show up for my 11:30 AM appointment and sign in to join the rest of the sardines, and to read the two year old copies of Time and People magazines. But I have an iPhone so I’m watching “won’t get fooled again” by the Who (1979 version) and of course the rest of the sardines all come over to ooooh and ahhhhhh.

At 12:35 my name is called and I am escorted to a small exam room, my blood pressure is taken lying, sitting and standing, blood is drawn for the usual tests, pee in the bottle, and I am told to undress, climb into a postage sized robe-like sheath. My doctor comes in, exchanges pleasantries reminding me of Cheech & Chong…..”Hey, Bro how’s things down in the Morgue? Awwww. Dead, Man!…….Ooooh, so’s that joke, Man…..” So I get the stethoscope on the chest, the obligatory thumping, prodding, poking, peering in every orifice. Then flipped like a flapjack for the prostate exam.

Now, I must say that having a guy stick his finger up to the elbow into the posterior orifice is an enlightening and sphincter tightening experience for most males. Women are so used to this it’s greeted by boredom. “scoot your bottom down to the end, dear…..no don’t elbow up the table….scoot down this way……” But guys are definitely not acclimatized.

The pose is gleefully now known as the (PHP) Paris Hilton Position (upright fetal). The finger goes in…. the entire pelvic ecology most assuredly not accustomed to this kind of intrusion, like a hasid showing up front & center at a pentecostal rally. The doctor shifts his eyes from side to side as if to focus energy on the fingertip as it slides over the posterior prostate, putting every nerve in the entire pelvis into apoplexy. My eyes cross and I start drooling. Then stool sample and the doctor departs (without so much as a by-your-leave, I might add).

So….if anyone’s interested, I am pronounced fit. Blood pressure now 110/50 supine. 120/60 sitting. Heart rate 72. Cholesterol 160 with the HDL and LDL all in the right ballpark.