Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Full Plate

My plate has been full lately, and it will continue to be for at least a few weeks. On the horizon right now is a flight to Memphis to spend Thanksgiving with my girlfriend and her family. I depart this afternoon after speech class. I think I'm masking my nervousness about meeting her mother for the very first time by being very horny and thinking about my girlfriend constantly the last few days. But I do miss her and I will be glad to see her and spend some quality time with her. The proverbial full plate should be literal on Thanksgiving, if they eat like a Southern family should. Just hope they're ready for some football. When I come back to Chicago next week, I'll walk right into some kind of competition at work to find the person who best knows the standard operating procedures. They gave me a cheat sheet to study last night, as if I don't have enough homework with three classes this semester. I'm probably leaving that at home and not taking it to Memphis. As for the classes, there's a presentation we're supposed to be giving in biology next week, but I don't have the contact information for my partners in this group project, the class didn't meet yesterday because the teacher wasn't there, and I won't be there for the Wednesday class because I won't be in the state. Don't know how we're gonna work that out. I'll have my final speech to do next week, a nine-minute rant about alcohol (yes I chose that subject on purpose). And there will be final exams in two weeks for biology and computer class, the biology one being cumulative. Somewhere in there I will have to wash my clothes and shop for groceries, and in the two weeks that I have free between classes ending and Christmas I have to shop for gifts before my girlfriend comes here for New Year's. Whew. But here's one good thing about keeping very busy: Two different people came up to me at work last week and asked if I was losing weight. I'm certainly not trying to, but it's hard to sit and overeat with three college classes and a full-time job. I just don't have the time. I know my cookies and chips miss me, but I'll have to get reacquainted after I finish accomplishing the things in my life that I want to accomplish.

Happy Thanksgiving to anyone reading this. Whether we know it or not, we all have much to be thankful for.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Planet Dre's Trip To The Free Clinic! (Pt. 2)

I walked in to the clinic and was surprised to see five other people in there. The place was like a vacated saloon last time I was there. I had to wait for a guy to figure out what he wanted from the receptionist before I was able to approach her and tell her that I was there for my test results. After taking my ID and the blue card the doctor told me to bring back with me, the receptionist told me, "You're 76. We'll call your number." She then proceeded to call number 77 thirty seconds later, and some Hispanic guy who had been there when I arrived went through the heavy door to the back. Wha?? The guy came back out almost as soon as he went in and relayed the news to someone on his cell phone, ignoring the fliers that say cell phone use is prohibited. The security guard, however, tried for a full minute to wave at the guy and get his attention in order to tell him not to use the phone. Guess he felt that walking over to him and stopping him for some reason wasn't an option. A few minutes later, my number was called by an attractive black woman in a business suit, and I followed her to the back and into an office with the word "Counselor" on the door. Here we go, I thought to myself.

She smiled the whole time as she quickly told me that everything came up negative--the chlamydia test, the gonorrhea test, the syphilis test. She placed the HIV test results in front of me and pointed to the part that said "FINAL RESULT NEGATIVE--No antibodies to HIV-1 detected." She happily informed me that I was totally clean and explained that these results do not necessarily indicate that I don't have HIV since it takes three to six months for HIV to show up on a test. "So if you've had recent contact with a possible source of HIV, you should come back for another test in April next year." She asked why I had testing done, and I explained that it wasn't a recent exposure but rather the desire to give my girlfriend peace of mind by letting her know I was clean. "And to let yourself know, right?" the counselor said. "Oh, I already knew I was clean," I replied as memories of bareback sex with "Karen," "Giselle," "Sarah," "Grace," and The Co-Worker Who Shall Remain Nameless flashed through my mind.

I asked for a copy of the STD results before I left, and after five minutes, I was on my way home. I texted my girlfriend after I left and told her "YOUR BABY IS TOTALLY CLEAN!!!" Her response was simply "YES!" Nothing more needed to be said.

Monday, November 12, 2007

Planet Dre's Trip To The Free Clinic! (Pt. 1)

Since it was located in the heart of the hood, I expected the clinic to be dingy, infested-looking, and crowded with people who look and sound like they are on death's door. But it was not like that at all. Perhaps it was the time that I chose to go, that being midday on Halloween Wednesday. But this joint was totally empty, save for the security guard watching daytime TV, and the waiting area at least was much cleaner than I imagined it would be. The actual exam area didn't look very antiseptic. The receptionist couldn't have cared less about anything, taking a clipboard with the form and a piece of paper with the number 25 and giving it to me with the enthusiasm of a sloth. But I wasn't there for the bright sunshine and cheery faces. I was there because my girlfriend, having intimate knowledge of the carefree unprotected sex I insisted on having with every partner I've ever laid, has informed me relentlessly of her desire to learn how to please me orally since we're not going to have intercourse until marriage as well as her insistence that this oral pleasing ain't going on until I get tested. Honestly, I never had any intention of getting tested because I didn't have any symptoms of anything and because I can't mentally connect the sexual lifestyle I had to something dangerous like syphilis or HIV. It's not like I was paying $20 for a crack whore in the alley up the ass or fucking drug users or doing boys on the down low. I was just a shy guy meeting women online and hooking up. How could I catch something from that? Of course, intelligence says that it's certainly possible that one of those women did some things with others who weren't so clean and caught something even they didn't know they had and passed it on. So, since it's free and since there's a clear peace of mind that comes with the results, I had not excuse not to go get checked out. Plus, there's blow jobs as a reward in the near future. Blow jobs! Yay! I miss those.

I filled out the form and got the attention of the receptionist away from yapping with some other women long enough to take back the clipboard. "We'll call your number," she monotoned even though there was ABSOLUTELY NO ONE ELSE IN THE BUILDING. I had to chuckle at that. The ensuing fifteen minutes gave me a chance to look around at the feng shui. There was a television, about 19", sitting on a metal cart, and as noted, it was tuned to some Springer-like daytime show. Below it was a VCR with a couple of tapes whose covers looked like something straight out of an '80s ABC Afteschool Special VHS series. The titles had something to do with AIDS and STDs, but I don't remember them exactly. I wondered who would actually pop those tapes in while waiting to get tested. Sitting on the receptionist's "window" (just a wide hole cut out of the wall) were free condoms and lube, which I left for someone sexually active to take, and surrounding the window were various posters and fliers. One specifically told women to use the bathroom before the actual examination, and another specifically told men to wait to use the bathroom until after the examination. I found that very curious, but I didn't ask anyone why this policy existed. The posters were typical urges to get tested and protect yourself. Some were slightly offensive (why does the cartoon drawing of a black couple discussing getting tested feature the woman with huge hoop earrings and the guy in a hoodie holding a fucking basketball and looking away as if he's not paying attention at all?). One made absolutely no sense to me. It showed two Hindenburg-like air balloons hovering over a grassy field filled with cows. One dirigible was slightly larger than the one below it, but it looked like a photo trick where they just took a picture of the same balloon and made one pic smaller. Below the balloons but above the field of cows was the caption: "IT LOOKS BIGGER WITH A CONDOM ON." Then below the field of cows in much smaller print was: "It also protects against unwanted pregnancy, STD's, etc." I will go to my grave not understanding that poster. First of all, um, no it doesn't look bigger with a rubber on. If rubbers were that thick, there'd be even less sensation than there already is, and there's hardly any sensation now. Second, how dumb do you have to be to be fooled into thinking that a cock is bigger than it is once a rubber is applied to it? That goes for the guy and the chick he's with. "Looks like my thing grew to double the size, don't it baby?" "It sure does, my big hunk of man!" And I have no idea where the field of cows comes in. But before I could whip out my camera phone to capture this image and show it to my girlfriend, I noticed a flier that said: "NO CELL PHONES ALLOWED." Not wanting to find out if the security guard was in a good or bad mood that day, I decided to leave my phone in my pocket.

Sure enough, fifteen minues later the receptionist called me by number and motioned me through the heavy door. After a minute of standing there looking goofy, a nurse showed up and led me into a room, where she proceeded to mumble instructions to me that I nearly didn't understand. "Mubmmumfph," she said while flexing her fist. Oh, I thought, she must want me to flex my fist to get my vein to come up so she can draw blood. But after tapping my meaty arm at the inside of the elbow joint for a while, she gave up and said, "Mmfrtnneuish," while turning my hand to the backside and tapping it. Before I could totally understand what she wanted, she found the vein and in one quick motion swabbed my hand, produced a needle out of nowhere and jabbed it in. I almost didn't close my eyes before she inserted it. She took a cotton ball and held it, then told me "Holm mmem," which I took to mean "Hold this," and while I did, she applied a Band-Aid and sent me back into the waiting area. "Will there be any more shots I have to get, or is this it?" I asked. "Heh heh. Monnmkobehj," she said.

About ten minutes later, my number was called again, and my swollen hand and I wandered behind the heavy door again. An older Asian woman, 50s or 60s, in a torn white doctor's smock waved me to the back. Once I got back there, I looked at the four or five offices that sat empty and stood there for a full two minutes assuming the doctor would show up and lead me to the exam room. When she didn't, I walked back to the front and interrupted her munching on a candy bar and chatting with the receptionist to ask exactly where the fuck she wanted me to go. "Oh, I'm sorry, Room 6," she said laughing.

Not long after I entered Room 6, the doctor entered, sans candy bar. The following is made even funnier to you the reader (but not me the victim) by knowing that I had absolutely no idea what an STD exam consisted of since I'd never had one. I honestly thought the blood that had been drawn was the extent of it and that the doctor was just going to chat with me and get information on my sexual history and stuff. She sat down at her desk and spent five minutes asking me questions about my sexual history and stuff, all but one or two of which were answered by me, "Nope." No drug use, no sex with men, no previous STDs, nothing that would add risk factors to my situation. She stopped at one point, looked up at me, and in all seriousness asked, "Why are you here?" I said, "To get tested for STDs and HIV. I have had unprotected sex before." "When was the last time?" she asked. "About two years ago," I answered. She laughed and went to the end of the list of options for that question, the last option stating, "> 2 mos." "I guess that's more than two months, huh?" she snickered. I nervously smiled.

At the end of the interrogation, she asked me to sit on the examining table. I had to ask her a couple of times what she said because my brain wasn't ready for that. But I only sat there for maybe 30 seconds while she washed her hands and put on clear gloves. Then she told me to stand up and pull down my pants and underwear. I obliged. She briefly explained that she was going to feel for abnormalities like lumps and whatnot before she gently grabbed my sac, pushed up my overlapping belly and looked at my pubic hairs, and not-so-gently pulled back my foreskin and felt my limp penis. Once that was over, I started to bend down and pull my pants back up but was stopped dead in my tracks by the doctor producing a long metal needle-looking device. I couldn't get a word of protest out of my mouth before she said, "Relax, take deep breaths, don't anticipate pain." Then, even swifter than the nurse drew blood, she stuck this object inside my dickhole, took a sample of whatever lives inside my dickhole, and took it out. "Good job," she said as I attempted to breathe. I'm so glad that didn't last very long, because that pain was one of the most intense sensations I've ever felt, and I couldn't have taken more than that split second without fainting and dropping to the floor. It wasn't helped by the fact that, again, I had absolutely no clue what was about to happen. If I could have been a little prepared, it might not have been so traumatic, but then again, maybe this is how the clinic chooses to take the sample because too many guys were getting the yips and not holding still during this procedure in anticipation of it.

In any event, I sat in the waiting area numb, wide-eyed and disbelieving of what just happened. The doc told me to wait for my number to be called again, or else I would have torn out of there like a bat out of hell. I didn't know what I was waiting for. Keeping you in the dark seemed to be the standard operating procedure here. I did snap out of my trance long enough to notice someone actually come into the clinic to get her results, which strangely enough, relieved me because if what just happened to me wasn't supposed to happen, then nobody would be returning. Or something like that. Ten minutes later, number 25 was called yet again, and I returned to the scene of the crime, Office 6. The doc in rapid fire explained that all of my preliminary tests came up totally clean, that I was to return in two weeks with ID and a blue card she gave me to get my full results, and to "go home. Go trick-or-treating." I smiled because when you're told that you seem to have a clean bill of health, you're supposed to smile. But I actually was somewhat irritated by having to go through all of that to be told I'm clean. I already knew I was clean when I walked in there.

I had to wade through a bunch of kids at the front door when I left who started trick-or-treating early. The clinic has its blinds down and no signs anywhere, so I wondered if those kids even knew whose door they were knocking on or if they just wanted candy from somewhere, anywhere. The first thing I did when I left was text my girlfriend and tell her, "I just got straight-up violated on this STD test. (The doctor) gave better hand than 'Karen,' and I was going to move out of state with her!" But that was just a dig at Karen. In reality, it didn't feel good at all, it wasn't fun, and I now have even more incentive to never stick my cock in anything other than my virgin girlfriend ever again.

Pt. 2 to come this Wednesday.