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Poetry
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DAYS OF ITCHING JOCK by K.M. Dersley
Negotiating the '60s and '70s without totally keeping yourself to yourself would normally have meant enduring at least the ravages and inconveniences of Clap. The worst I'd had though was what magazines referred to as pruritus and the Beach Boys called "jock itch". You just organized some soap and water and a change of shorts. Ever since the plague was bruited though, every rash and blood blister has seemed significant. It's true that in Europe at least, if you're straight, don't touch injected drugs and are not so unfortunate as to require infusions of Factor 8, you're likely to be in the clear. Everybody knows the HIV bug can lie low for ten years or more however, and one of my old girlfriends had had a husband in Vietnam who'd shacked up with one of the local hostesses. That could be an eye-hole of opportunity for the virus. Another girl was, before me, a virgin apart from a holiday romance. But that fling had been a fast-talking charmer from Glasgow, city of razors and needles. Therefore an itchy pipe was nothing to sneer at. The GP said the summer heat had made all sorts of bugs proliferate and minor bladder infections were common. He scribbled a prescription for Trimethorprim. "Finish the course." I'd have preferred that he'd taken a urine sample, or asked about any sexual routes germs could have taken in storming the Bastille, but was happy to get off light. When the itch persisted as the last of the tablets approached though, a meeting in the street with a former working colleague who'd been similarly cursed once or twice put me onto Clinic Eleven. No longer the STD Clinic—Sexually Transmitted Diseases—it was now angled towards the promotion of Sexual Health. Never mind appointments or GPs, said Rick, just show up and they'll check it all out. He thought Colchester or Norwich would be a better idea though, or somewhere more distant still, but time and train fares decreed otherwise. So, soon it was pants down and a swab like a burning needle investigating. Then a fellow in a white coat came along and took a small syringeful of blood from the crook of my right arm. After that they could tell me nothing, and there were two weeks of brooding to look forward to while they did the analyzing. It didn't help that as I left three nurses, one an old friend from my days as an Orderly, for some reason sat there together outside the room like the Fates. I did wonder what a nest of bunglers that clinic might be. The numbers on the slips of paper I had to hand to my two contacts didn't tally with my own card but were close enough to show that they should. This meant a phone call: It was the number on the card that was wrong. (How near had I been to getting someone else's test results?) After two weeks I went back. Gave the card in. They sorted out a folder of notes which were taken to the office of the bluff doctor who resembled a pork butcher or C.S. Lewis. He smiled and offered a seat, then began talking about warts, assuming that they'd cleared up. I said I hadn't noticed any warts. "But when you came here two months ago—" "Two weeks, not two months." "What's your name, then?" They'd given him the wrong notes. Much laughter and out he went to return with, presumably, the right folder and the news that my test results had been "Excellent". A pork butcher never looked so handsome. Later on I bumped into the family doctor, who was under the impression that his pills had down the trick. While talking it occurred to me that for a few weeks I'd been wearing a scruffy pair of trousers from Oxfam without underwear because of the heat. "That's what it was then," He grinned. "Some old chap, itchy foreskin, none too careful. Always boil second hand trousers before wearing them. Confucius say. Ha ha ha!" What I'd had a glimpse of though, in that sterile room back there at the hospital, was enough to make you give up forever the pleasure of riding "Bareback". After this I'd get a body-sized sheath with a pair of goggles—and probably ear plugs too. |
K.M Dersley: UK poet, story & article writer. Book of poems, Fugitive Days, published 1998 by Redbeck Press Bradford. Book of stories and articles, Sketches by Derz, printed 2001 by Appliance Books. Many poems and stories in mags. Since June last year has run the Ragged Edge website, which now includes guest writers. |
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