When my name is called, I stand up too fast and immediately regret it.
The doctor looks at me in the calm, professional way of someone who has already seen whatever nonsense I’m about to bring into her room and survived it.
“Have a seat,” she says.
I sit. Carefully. With dignity. Or at least an attempt at it.
“So,” she begins, tapping something into her computer. “What can I help you with today?”
This is the moment. The moment where I say the words like a functional adult.
I open my mouth.
Nothing comes out. I wish I had asked for a male doctor. But then getting judged by another man didn’t sit well with my male ego either.
“I’ve been having a bit of a… situation.”
She nods encouragingly. “What sort of situation?”
I glance at the door, then at the floor, then at a diagram of the human digestive system on the wall.
“It’s… intermittent,” I say.
“Intermittent pain?”
“No.”
“Discomfort?”
“Also no.”
She waits. Patient. Silent. Unflinching. This woman has clearly built a career on letting men talk themselves into corners.
“It’s more of a reliability issue,” I say eventually.
She types something. “Reliability of…?”
I inhale. Exhale. “My downstairs.”
She looks up. “Your genitals?”
I wince. “When you say it like that, yes.”
She smiles, kind but not amused. “Are you experiencing difficulty achieving or maintaining an erection?”
There it is. Clean. Clinical. No judgement.
I nod, relieved and mortified all at once. “Yes. That. The… achieving part. Occasionally the maintaining, but mostly the achieving. Or rather, the not achieving. Except when I’m asleep it seems.”
She blinks once, then nods again. “How long has this been going on?”
“A few weeks.”
“And how often does it happen?”
I hesitate. “Every time it matters.”
That earns me a pause. Not a bad one. Just a brief moment where she assesses me like a puzzle she’s already half solved.
