You Know You're 21

I recently had a check up with a doctor, no real issue, nothing scary. Except it wasn’t Dr Fitzpatrick, my childhood doctor, who had seen me through chicken pox, gastric enteritis and man flu. The bastard was taking a break in the Bahamas. Not that this bothered me at the time. I was being foisted onto Dr Ward, a Lady Doctor. This didn’t seem like a problem; It’s not as if I had misread the dose for viagra and was now sporting an angry pocket snake, and neither had I ‘accidentally’ plugged my rear end with a rubber bath duck, or any similarly embarrassing incident.

A lady doctor? Of course I’ll see her. As it happened, Dr Ward was an attractive, soft-spoken woman. She went through the routine professionally, and I’d like to think, with some enjoyment. You see, I thought I spotted a glint in her eye that suggested she liked what she saw. Of course I wasn’t going to try anything, I’ve spoken before about my ineptitude with women. I’m like a charmingly bumbling Hugh Grant, but without the charm. I felt safe in the knowledge that nothing could happen between us. I’m a young man and she an older woman, but I took pleasure in imagining a mutual admiration for one another. I felt my heart race as she held my arm firmly and took my pulse. “A little irregular,” she remarked, with a secret smile, as if she was all too aware of the source of its excitement. Fuck me, I thought, mentally willing her to straddle me. I became worried that a telling tent might form, but pocket snake remained calm and philosophical on the whole matter.

“Ok, if you’d like to take your top off…” I did as I was told, hoping she’d follow it up with “And now you’re trousers…and now you’re pants…and now – no, leave the socks on.” Enjoy, I thought, trying not to make it obvious that I was flexing. I searched her face, trying to distinguish any signs of the moral turmoil that she faced within – Surely I couldn’t, not here. It would be so unprofessional!

I almost thought I saw something; a slight blush, a parting of the lips, the involuntary dilation of the eyes. Yes! I thought, Yes, take me now! To hell with the consequences! To hell with your house-husband and his collection of WWII model planes, to hell with shepherd’s pie! And just as suddenly as it appeared, it was gone. So quick you could have missed it. So quick you doubted it was there at all. Oh, but it was there all right. However fleeting. Only now her pupils had narrowed to cat’s eyes. Her mouth; wired shut, and her complexion was pale; sickly, even.

She then moved swiftly behind me, and began tapping at various points on my back. Her hands now felt cold, and ‘knuckly’. My body responded in turn and began to goosepimple. My nipples hardening into corners. It seemed only moments before that her hands were warm, and radiated with a sensual healing. Where once she treated me in a gentle but professional manner, her approach was now rough and impatient. I felt like Oliver Twist being checked over by a Victorian nun. I felt the shame of my desire, and the desire itself diminishing.

The sexual tension that couldn’t have been cut with a knife could now be swiped by a baguette. What had happened? What had changed? I tried to play over in my mind the exact point at which the alluring smile malformed into a disdainful lip curl. Playing it back again and again like an obsessed detective whose been let off the force because the case is getting in the way of his life. There! What was that? Johnson, get over here! It looks like we got our man. And there it was: the eyes, spotting something. Something they didn’t like, about the level of my midriff, and the rest of her face reacting, closing off.

I looked down to see what could have been so offensive, so pivotal to the affections of a trained doctor. A person who’s familiar with some of the most grotesque and sickening ailments of the human condition. What I saw shook me to the core: a spec of fluff, collected in the recess of my bellybutton. Ok, it was more like a wad, but I was confused. How could this have accumulated here? I had showered that morning. What distressed me even more was the colour. Blue! How was this possible? I don’t own any clothes that are blue, and nor had I given a naked-belly-hug to a pile of blue linen.

Not a day before my 21st had I ever experienced this phenomenon. Now each day begins with an apprehensive rummage that has become as routine as brushing my teeth. Are adult bellybuttons adhesive? Or does some sort of cotton bee try to pollinate it overnight, its mature form resembling a fleshy flower?