No-Gloves McGraw

Two weeks ago, in the warm shower, I found a lump on my testicle.

I didn't panic. I didn't think about Holly, our two boys, the many years I've spent in school without a real job, or that I still live in a tiny apartment next door to a stripper (not a very nice stripper at that). I did dry myself, I did brush my teeth and gargle Listerine, and I did get dressed. Then I called my urologist.

The receptionist, a woman who sounded fifteen, said they were booked three weeks solid. But I found a lump, I said. It's not going anywhere, she said. That's the problem, I said. Three weeks, she said. Do you want the appointment or not?

Then I panicked.

On the way to emergency room, I made a checklist: I'd buy life insurance first, then make a will, then get a dog. I'd drop out of school, take my wife to Greece for a month before starting chemo, and buy season tickets to the Red Sox—

“A lump, you say?” Dr. McGraw was old and skinny. He had hairs growing out of his nose that touched his lips. “Lance Armstrong had testicular cancer, you know. Terrible case, too. Most of us aren't strong enough to fight it like he did. You and I would be dead.” He stopped. I didn't say anything. “Anyway, let's have a look.”

I looked at him.

“Drop your pants, son.”

His hands were warm and gentle. He found the lump with little effort, nodded a few times, and made a few notes in my file. He felt the lump again. He moved my testicles between his fingers. He made more notes.

When he touched my testicles for a third time, it hit me: the doctor was not wearing gloves.

The Massage

The lump was not cancerous.

That news made me happy. With the lump out of the way, I focused on what had happened in the examination. I should have said something to Dr. McGraw, but didn't. And not because it didn't make me uncomfortable. That's just it. I had crossed the line from comfortable to uncomfortable without noticing. And what was I left with? A nice man who had held my bare testicles in his hand.

That reminded me of my friend John.

John is thirty-eight and gay. I did not always know this.

When I met John ten years ago in a class on evolution, John was as devout a Mormon as he now is gay. He didn't drink, didn't smoke, played the organ at church every Sunday, and pretended to like women.

I knew he might be gay but didn't think about it much. The fact that he was annoying had nothing to do with his sexuality. He simply spoke too loudly too often. In the end, however, he loved movies as much as I did. So our friendship worked.

One Saturday, we saw Cape Fear, The People Under the Stairs, and The Player—one right after the other. Afterward, he invited me over to his apartment for dinner. It was his turn to cook for me.

He fixed pasta with fresh avocado and peppers and served Hostess cupcakes for dessert. At some point during the dinner, I complained of a pain in my lower back. I'd had to carry my girlfriend's new mattress up two flights of stairs the day before and had twisted something.

“I'll rub your back,” he said.

“It's fine,” I said.

“Oh, come on,” he said.

So he rubbed my back.

It felt good, too. Only when I found myself lying on his bed, facedown, John straddling my back, did I think twice. Of course it was too late now. Telling him how I felt would have been more uncomfortable than telling him that I had to work early.

He never offered to rub my back again, and I never brought it up.

Years later, I told my wife. She got that worried look like when I drink a little too much wine at someone else's house and begin to talk about sex. It was that look that made me decide never to tell her this next story.

Swimming with Strippers

I worked at a bank during my first year at the University of Utah. I had come out of high school charged up about making as much money as possible, and a bank seemed like the perfect place to start. Four weeks into my new eight-to-five schedule, I knew I'd been wrong.

The reason I quit the bank, however, had less to do with the grind and more to do with Glenn.

Glenn, from the gas station next door, would come for change every morning, and we loved to bitch about the forty-hour workweek. One day, after Glenn had left, Barbara the branch manager heckled me.

“He likes you, you know.”

“I like him, too,” I said.

“But he likes you.”

I have to say I only kind of understood her. I don't like to admit it now, but there it is: I'd only lived in Salt Lake City for a few months, and I guess growing up in small, mostly Mormon Cedar City can leave one a little on the naïve side.

A few days later, Glenn approached me at the window.

“I moved into a new place downtown, and I'm breaking it in with a party on Friday,” he said. “Here's an invitation.”

Despite Barbara's snickering, I was excited. My weekends weren't brimming with activity, and the prospect of a party (with people and alcohol) struck me as the perfect thing to do that weekend.

I opened the invitation after he left and noted nothing strange about the invitation itself until I turned it over. It read, “You'll need this secret phrase to get into the party: ‘Because Glenn asked you.'”

Barbara looked over my shoulder. I could smell her butter pecan-flavored coffee breath.

“What?” I said. “It's only a party.”

“Oh, it's a party all right,” she said. “Just don't say I didn't warn you.”

“He doesn't like me.”

“Fine. Go to the party.”

“I will,” I said. “You know you shouldn't judge people like that. It's not right.”

“Just go to the party.”

*****

“Because Glenn asked you.”

The door opened.

“He's here!”

People came at me from every direction: shaking my hand, patting me on the back, telling me how great it was to meet me, that I was welcome.

From my left, someone asked me what I wanted to drink. Gin and tonic, I said. From my right, someone else handed me a gin and tonic with a generous wedge of lime. I drank it down, and someone behind me handed me another one. There was dance music in the background, a gin and tonic in my hand, and then finally, there was Glenn.

“Welcome to my new place,” he said. “Come sit down.”

When I sat down, it became clear to me for the first time: there were no women at the party. It didn't bother me, however. It wasn't about sexuality for me. I knew I wasn't gay. Then it occurred to me that everybody else at the party, especially Glenn, thought differently.

Glenn introduced me to Carl a tall bodybuilder, to Rhett a computer programmer, to Bobby a skateboard designer, and to Mike a writer. Then Glenn excused himself and went into the kitchen.

“So how long have you and Glenn been dating?” Mike said.

“I'm sorry?”

“Oh, I wondered how long you and Glenn have been seeing each other.”

“We're not seeing each other,” I said. “We work together.”

“I'm sorry,” Mike said, “I was under the impression that—”

I was on my way to the kitchen.

Glenn anticipated my reaction. “I didn't tell them we were dating,” he said.

“Why did he say that, then?”

“I do like you, though.” Glenn put his hand on my shoulder.

“I'm sorry?”

“Do you want to go out sometime?”

“But I'm not gay,” I said.

“You're not?” Glenn said.

“No, I'm not.”

“Oh,” Glenn said.

“Oh?”

“I thought we could go swimming sometime,” he said. “Do you like to swim?”

“No, I don't like to swim,” I said. “I'm sorry, Glenn. But I have to go.”

*****

It wasn't because Glenn was gay. It was because he thought I was gay. It was because he told Rhett, Mike, Carl, and Bobby that I was gay. That's what bothered me. I'd often wondered if I were, but assumed I wasn't. That is to say, sexuality to me didn't seem clearly delineated except at the moment of sexual contact. Everything else about being gay or straight seemed arbitrary. I didn't want to have sex with Glenn, but at the same time, I liked him. What did that mean? The question had simply never come up before. I had dated only girls up to that point and then suddenly, I had the chance to date a guy. What's more, the guy thought I was gay enough to invite me to a party with his friends who agreed with him.

*****

So I did what every straight young man would do in this situation: I left the party and went to a strip club. I set out to reinforce my heterosexuality by paying a woman to take off her clothing.

I picked the Paradise Palace—over the railroad tracks and down from the homeless shelter—which featured a neon sign with pearly gates and a halo in the midst of clouds. At the door, a man with a wooden leg checked my ID, then led me into a room with a single chair in the middle. No sooner had I sat down when woman after woman filed into the room and formed what seemed like a police lineup in front of me.

The twelve women didn't look at me; they had a way of looking at everything in the room but me. The man limped in and looked at me for a moment.

“Well?” he said.

“Well,” I said.

“Which one will it be?”

“It doesn't really matter—”

“It's your money. Now choose.”

I didn't want to choose. They all looked so similarly different at that moment that I couldn't choose. I could feel tension between them and me grow the more I breathed. I felt that I had been placed in an unfair situation. I looked at the twelve women and tried to separate them out one from another. I considered the one with the red hair and white spandex, then the blonde in black, and then the woman with a mole on her left cheek. I chose the mole.

*****

Star led me into a small room—five-feet wide, twelve-feet long—divided in two by a large window. I sat on a love seat in my half, and she jumped up on the platform in hers.

“I've got Lionel Richie, Guns N' Roses, or Celine Dion. What'll it be?”

“Doesn't matter.”

“It's your money.”

“Lionel Richie.”

Then she danced.

As she danced, she removed her clothing. The way she did it isn't important. We've all seen it done in a movie or on television—it's exactly what you'd expect it to be, nothing more, maybe less.

So she danced until she was naked, while I sat on the love seat and watched. My thoughts drifted back to Glenn and the party, and then I wanted to tell her what had happened. I didn't want to see her naked; I wanted to talk. After all, it was my money.

But she spoke first.

“What's wrong?” She had stopped dancing; Lionel Richie had stopped singing.

“Well, it all started when I went to this party—”

“No, I mean aren't you going to relieve yourself?”

All at once I understood: the loveseat, the Vaseline, the tissues, and the naked woman.

“I most certainly am not,” I said.

“Then why did you come here?”

“I wanted to talk to someone.”

“You came to the wrong place then.” She was out the door in less than four seconds flat.

*****

On Monday, I showed up for work late. Instead of stopping at my teller window, I stopped at Barbara's desk. She started to tell me with a smile how Glenn had been there, how anxious he was to see me, but I dropped my cashbox key and nametag on her desk, and she stopped.

“I see,” she said.

“Good,” I said.

*****

The problem with moments like the one with No-Gloves McGraw is not that they happen. It's that we expect ourselves to prevent them—that when they do happen we are in some way responsible. This is false.

Dr. McGraw did his job. If the no-gloves exam bothered me, I should have talked to him about it then instead of writing about it now. John meant no harm with the massage, and I should have been flattered when Glenn thought I was gay.

And yet, these stories make me uncomfortable. Writing this didn't help either. In fact, I feel worse now than I did before. I feel like I should explain it all away, tell you that I've made it up as part of some elaborate rhetorical strategy destined to make the world a better place.

But I won't do that. I'll let the facts speak for themselves. I'll trust that you too have had an ungloved testicular exam, a massage gone too far, or a stripper who won't “just talk” with you. And that will make me feel better.

A little, anyway.