Dr. R, My baby doctor — A sweet-smelling woman who exists for me now only as the vaguest milky memory. Her office was somewhere on the South Side of Chicago.
Dr. F. — The family doctor till I was 21. A thick man from Eastern Europe, maybe Romania. His even thicker accent made me shiver whenever he said “deep breath” while pressing cold metal to my chest. His office moved three or four times over the years, but the Norman Rockwell posters always made the trip, so my memories of the different locations have merged into one murky mess. His powerful fat old hands poked me for information, which he scribbled into a folder hanging on the consultation room door.
Dr. R. — The other family doctor, F’s partner. A guy with a dark, impossibly symmetrical beard and doe-like eyelashes framing two of the bulgingest peepers I’ve ever seen.
Dr. O. — Recommended by a guy I dated a few times in grad school who was just as taken with Dr. O’s looks as I was. Bambi was the name of the doctor’s nurse and receptionist who happened also to be his wife. Their office was at Rockaway Beach, Brooklyn, at the very end of the L line, the death train. Jim and I once compared notes on how not to get an erection when our doctor examined our balls.
The doctor at the Gay and Lesbian Community Center — I went to this little clinic in the back of the center to ask for a routine STD screening. Everyone else was there for HIV complications, and the doctor seemed almost annoyed to find that I had an unrelated question, especially when I turned out to be negative even for gonorrhea.
Health Insurance Place of Greater New York — When I enrolled in the HMO program, my doctor became a blur of papers, files, corridors, waiting rooms, numbers. I vaguely remember a young Asian man, an old Jewish man with a beard (who said bad backs were hereditary), and a blond woman who collected urine specimens. The office was on 23rd Street and Second Avenue. When I first tried enrolling in the plan, I received a letter saying I was rejected on the basis of my history of STDs. This must have been a routine letter they sent to all single male applicants living in certain New York zip codes. I wrote back, “No, I never had an STD,” and they accepted my check.
National Health Insurance of Great Britain — I only saw the doctor once to establish my relationship with the London bureaucracy. He was Indian, and that’s all I remember apart from the store-front waiting room just two minutes walk from my flat. He gave me a tetanus shot which made my whole arm swell alarmingly and put me out of service for a week with a sneezy British flu.
Dr. S. — A quiet old woman who posed delicate questions about bodily functions and sexual practices with no embarrassment (and almost no interest) in a neutral, clinical language. Her office was located in an historic SF medical building on Nob Hill with built-in wooden cabinets and counters. I suspected her of having a wild sex life with the mousy secretary who’d worked for her for years or maybe even decades.
Blue Shield of California — When I obtained the final shot in a series of Hepatitis B vaccines from Dr. S., I had to fight with some anonymous guy in some claims office in some remote county in California who told me I couldn’t go around sleeping with whomever I wanted then have the insurance company pick up the tab. I explained that treating Hepatitis B was probably going to cost them a lot more than vaccinating against it and that they’d have to pay for that. They eventually picked up the tab.
Dr. B. — His office was in one of those typical six-story intricate Parisian apartment buildings with sculpted facades, black grillwork, and hardwood floors. Paul had found him through the Gay Doctors of Paris organization. When I told him what was bugging me, he moved the pen around a lot. He prescribed vaccines, creams, ointments, pain pills, sleeping pills, and so on. I don’t think he ever uttered a word about diet, exercise, or anything remotely related to prevention. Very French.
In subsequent revisions of Doctor Line I should add my dentists, eye doctors, and specialists, as well as the nurses who pulled tissue paper over countless examination tables along with the instruments they sterilized. Anonymous STD and HIV test centers could be noted in an adjoining Clinic Line.