| The very idea of having prostate cancer. You get through this life with minimal intrusion, other than the usual forty-seven year old man stuff to wake up one day diagnosed with prostate cancer. The process is one with the only point of reference being that cancer equals death. Not so these days. 1 High P.S.A. blood test results ended with several visits to a competent urologist. I had no idea what a urologist did? Now I know way too much!! The doctor and I recognized each other after years of being a shop keep and he a customer. I remember upon entering the parking lot an understated white four door compact car with a vanity license plate that read something like “WET 2 DRY”. I was more impressed that the obvious physicians car was not your usual imported SUV copy wheels seen so often in the midtown area. Repetitive pretense has always bored me. Sure enough , it was in fact his wheels and he explained the incontinent service that a urologist so often deals with. That made sense but I had yet to piss on my self without the proper invited company and appropriate rubber sheets and poppers !! Just what am I doing here?? The usual drop your drawers while he felt around my genitals for any abnormalities, none detected. While he explored, the conversation was light , and respectful, with him asking about business and my retort was, “JESUS, Doc, not now you have my cock in your hand!!” There is this unspoken respect for penis among men, straight or gay, whether it be your penis or someone else's. Have you ever noticed how personal another man takes and injurious story about the male genitalia? Or even the remote possibility of not being able to perform because of such injury to one’s cock? And another question came to mind. Just what underlying emotional agenda leads a male doctor to this field of medicine? A light smile and on to more test with a month wait and biopsy and ultra sound scheduled. After having gone through ass cancer [squamous cell carcinoma] this summer with my long time companion Bruce, and by the way being cured after chemo and radiation, neither of us could imagine a double whammy!! All would be well. A few pills, some exercise and the fright would be over... so we thought. The day of biopsy with Bruce in tow we arrived and elevated upstairs to the examination room. Several side glances later I left Bruce in the upper waiting room and was led away. Stripped from the waist down, on my back, feet in stirrups covered by one of those flimsy gowns, that never cover enough. I just know I remembered every Joan Rivers gynecology joke at that moment. It astounds me that conversation could ever be clever at this point. Being a gay man of age and experience for most everything except anal penetration, the process began. I’m just not gay back there! Oh sure a little light sensual play but that biopsy wand could have held up a clippers ship sail. My thoughts immediately went to all the so called hetero men that had to endure the same, and found some mental relaxation, that being gay did not make it any easier. The good doctor assured me it would all be over soon, and to expect eight stings similar to being snapped like a rubber band. Now mind you, these stings are four inches up my ass. The first couple of stings were bearable, but that anticipation was causing duress stress that the doc noticed and proceeded to respond to my vanity plate question. He ask what my vanity plate would read, if in fact I were to have one. I said “Oh Doc, my vanity plate would read .....I’m most uncomfortable and I have lost count!!”         |