OH DOCTOR

In 1968 when I was thirteen and my father was in Viet Nam, I finally got someone to listen to me and realize that I might actually have a heart problem. I went into tachycardia in gym class one day and the coach told me I couldn’t participate until I had a letter from a doctor telling him it was OK. My mother took me to the Army hospital at Fort Hood, but they couldn’t find anything wrong, so they scheduled an appointment for me at Brooks Army Medical Center in San Antonio. The second Saturday in December my mother and grandmother drove me down there and checked me in, they couldn’t stay because my sister Stacy was less that a month old.

The hospital was new to me I’d never been in one before, so I was nervous. My brother Danny had been in the hospital at least three times that I could remember, but I’d never been to anything other than an emergency room and that was usually with him. Since it was the weekend things were pretty quite and the guys I was on the ward with were military, so they just thought I was a young enlisted kid. They were shocked to find I was only thirteen because I was so tall for my age. I remember the guy in the next bed was in there because he’d been struck by lightening while trimming hedges on the base. He was OK, but they just wanted him in there to make sure he hadn’t suffered any heart damage. The next day was Sunday and for some reason the doctor who was assigned to me decided to come in and start my paperwork and physical exam. Who was I to question his tactics? In fact it made me feel better that all the offices were empty because I really didn’t like the idea of a whole bunch of people seeing me naked. Back then they didn’t require two people in the room, so it was just him and me. His name was Dr. Anderson, he was in his late twenties and very attractive and he said he was from Beverly Hills. I asked, “Are you related to the Anderson’s in Merced, California? They used to trim our poodle.” “No.” he said. After asking me all sorts of questions about my heart, like when I first noticed it and what seemed to cause it to beat rapidly, he told me to take off all my clothes and put them on a chair. No gown, no pajamas, no nothing, he wanted me stark naked lying on the examination table.

You remember how it is when you’re thirteen everything embarrasses you. Since I was fully developed and shaving I was ahead of most of the boys in my class. It was something he seemed intrigued with as well. As he was examining my genitals the questions started. “Have you noticed the other boys in your gym class?” “Yes.” I said cautiously. “Are their penis’s as large as yours?” I didn’t want him to think I looked, but I said, “Most of them aren’t, maybe one other guy is.” He did the turn your head and cough routine and then left the room to get a tube of KY. I was scared to death when he had me bend over and stuck his finger up my ass, but I was trying to act as grown up as possible. Then he had me lie back down and took my pulse on my wrist and then placed his hand on my groin as if he were feeling my pulse there as well. Then he asked me, “Do you ever have any wet dreams?” I was mortified, as a bed wetter until the age of twelve I was deeply ashamed of it and didn’t want to admit it to anyone, but I said, “I used to wet the bed, but I stopped that when I was twelve.” He said, “That’s not what I mean, do you have any sexual dreams and ejaculate in your sleep?” “No.” I said. He then asked me, “What makes you sexually aroused, when do you get an erection?” I couldn’t tell him looking at the men’s underwear ads in the Sears catalogue, so I said, “While watching TV.” “What shows do you get aroused watching?” He asked. Well, I didn’t want to tell him it was while watching the cute guys in tight bell bottoms on “American Bandstand, so I said something stupid like, “The Munster’s.” “Who gets you aroused on The Munster’s?” he said. “Uh, I don’t know” I said. I was starting to get very uncomfortable, but I was getting an erection in spite of it. He stroked it a few times and pre cum was oozing out the head, so he took a tissue and wiped it off. “What do you think about when you masturbate?” He asked. I quickly lied and said, “I don’t do that.” For some reason I was standing up in front of him by that time and he was sitting on one of those stools with rollers. He handed me the tissue, slid the stool back a couple feet and said, “Here, milk that down for me.” I stroked my dick a few times and then handed him the tissue. I wanted to go ahead and jack off, but he was a doctor and I didn’t realize that every teenage boy did it, so I didn’t want to be some freak. I guess he realized I wasn’t going to perform for him so he told me to get dressed.

I was in there about a week and they miss diagnosed me as having PAT, or paroxysmal atrial tachycardia. It wasn’t until I was thirty two that they found out I actually had WPW, or Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome which can result in sudden death, that all my operations started. When he’d make his rounds during the week with a nurse he’d pull back the covers on my bed and hold my penis through the fly in my pajamas. I guess he was making it look like he was taking my pulse with an artery or something, but he’d hold me until I got hard.

On the drive home I was reading the medical chart they gave me to give to the doctors at Fort Hood and he’d written, “The patient is an obese, over anxious thirteen year old male…” I had to ask my mother what obese meant and she said, “Fat.” It hurt my feelings, but years later as an adult I realized he was covering his ass with the “over anxious” part in case I told someone what had gone on. I hadn’t been examined, I’d been molested.