Virgin(90)

She stared at me and took off her glasses. “Excuse me?”

“It’s just, well, on your computer last time I was here, it said that I was a virgin. And I’m not now. I’ve had sex. So I was wondering if you could update my records?” I asked. “Please?”

She furrowed her brow. “I will update your records, yes,” she said. “I tend to do that after I’ve seen a patient. If you go off and do your samples, I’ll finish my paperwork.”

She wasn’t going to do it in front of me. Typical. Maybe she was going to write SLUT or SEXUALLY VOLATILE.

“Okay,” I said with a small sigh, resigned to my new fate as a fallen woman. People were automatically going to assume I had HIV and write things about me behind my back. I picked up the brown envelope and plastic pot and walked off forlornly to the loo.



Right. I just had to hold the pot under my vagina and catch the urine as it came out of me. Except when it trickled out in a pretty solid flow, it went everywhere but into the pot. Bugger. I paused mid-flow, taking a deep breath. Damn. I moved my damp fingers, adjusting the pot. Okay, good, this time the pee was filling it up but . . . oh no, it was overflowing. Onto my hand. And my bracelet.

I gagged as I withdrew my hand and finished peeing. I quickly cleaned myself and pulled my pants up with the dry hand and flushed the loo. The pot was now soaking wet on the outside and the paper label was peeling off. My name was smudged and there was blue ink all over my hands.

I screwed the lid on and washed my hands in the sink. With a shrug I decided I might as well wash the pot too. I didn’t want the poor nurses to have to touch my pee, and the label had pretty much dissolved.

Now for the chlamydia test. I opened the pack and a test tube fell out onto my lap. It had an oversized cotton bud inside. I felt a twinge of panic. This looked complicated. There was a mini-instructions leaflet in there too. I opened it up and looked at the diagram. Right, I had to take the cotton bud out and make sure it didn’t touch anything but the insides of my VJ. Simple.

I unscrewed the tube and took out the long stick. I pulled my pants down again and crouched by the sink. Slowly, I inserted the long white stick into my vagina. It tingled as it pushed in, and I felt my thigh muscles start to wobble under the weight of my body.

I reached for the instructions, trying not to lose my balance. Okay, it said to rub the stick around. I rubbed it around in circular motions. Suddenly my thighs collapsed and I fell onto the floor. I lay on my back, my legs and pants hovering in the air, with a long white stick poking up out of my vagina like a surrendering peace flag.

Wincing in pain, I got back up slowly, trying not to disturb the stick. I stood upright and began pulling it out. It broke in half. Fuck. I was holding half a white stick in my hand. The cotton bud bit was still in there. I flung the broken stick to the side and put two fingers into my vagina to feel around. I breathed a sigh of relief. I could feel the end of the stick. Gently, I eased it out and inserted it into the test tube.

I put the lid on and screwed it shut. I took a look at the instructions. It read “put stick back into tube, and then break off.” I’d just done it in the wrong order. I breathed a sigh of relief, pulled my pants back up and washed my hands. With soap. Twice.

I handed the nurse my urine sample and chlamydia stick. She took them from me gingerly, clearly noticing that the pee pot’s label had disintegrated.

“I’m just going to take a blood sample from you,” she said. “Can I have your right arm, please?”

“Sure,” I said, taking my cardigan off and sticking my arm out. I turned it upside down so she wouldn’t notice how hairy my forearm was.

She took my arm into her hand and turned it over.

“Okay, you’re just going to feel a tiny prick,” she said as she jabbed her huge syringe into the most sensitive part of my arm—the inner elbow.

“OW,” I screamed as pain soared up my arm. She rolled her eyes at me, tutting. The bitch. Clearly no one had ever done this to her.

I turned away as the blood filled the syringe and she stuck a lump of cotton over my arm. I rubbed the sore spot tenderly. I’d better not have HIV after this.

“There we go. You’re all done now. We’ll send you your test results next week. Thanks for coming.” She started to open the door for me.

“Sorry, I just have a quick question,” I said nervously. “You know those, erm, condoms outside? In the box by the water cooler? Are they, um, free?”

She sighed wearily. “Take as many as you want.”

I obliged. Sex with Jack hadn’t been particularly enjoyable but now that my first time was over, I couldn’t wait to start shagging my way to multiple orgasms. Safe sex, here I come.