Walking back to my dorm, I surreptitiously rubbed my balls through my pocket. I could still feel the dry smoothness of Julie’s gloves where she had touched me. That evening, sitting in front of my laptop an email popped into my inbox. It’s subject was Health Screening. Making sure none of my roommates were paying attention, I opened it.

Thanks for participating in our campus health screening this week! The Healthy Campus Alliance (HCA) can only provide these health screenings because of our generous donors at the campus book store, the cooperation of the University Health Center, and the hard work of our volunteers!

They were recruiting volunteer health screeners. If I wanted to get someone from the health center all I had to do was fill out an application and show up at their club office for the session for training and free pizza, presumably not at the same time. I remembered Julie, her hands. I felt my heart beating faster. Did I really want to go through with this? I imagined sitting on that stool in the tent, right next to that box of gloves, examining some stranger.

On Friday night I pushed open the door to the HCA club office. “Eric!” I jumped. Julie stood up from the desk where she was processing applications. “I’m so glad you came! I was wondering if you would.”

“Yeah, I’m here” I said, somewhat lamely looking around the room. Julie looked great. She was wearing the same tight polo she had on during the exam, its color making her hair look even redder than it was.

“I’ll take that,” she said, tugging the application out of my hand. The room was full of people, mostly people in the club, wearing similar polos, and other people, who looked like new volunteers. I saw a couple of other dudes, but most of the people there were women. I guess the recruitment email had been right about guys not taking their health seriously. Julie showed me to a seat, made sure I got some pizza, and disappeared back to the desk.

Next, we listened to a nurse from the campus health center talk about how important preventative medicine was, and explain what kinds of things we could and couldn’t screen for, and what sorts of things we had to tell the people we were screening. We watched videos of some of the exams, and the nurse explained to us what to do. A few people were taking notes. After that, we split into groups to start practicing.

My group was lead by Michelle, an Asian student with a slight build and intense black glasses. Other than me there was Olivia, who had long brown hair, and Stephanie, who was blond. Julie wasn’t in my group. “Aaand lucky us, we get Eric!” said Michelle. “This will be good, it’s usually so hard to find guys to join this club. We spent the rest of the evening learning how to give eye tests, check hearing, and measure blood pressure.

We had to wear gloves whenever we performed a screening, even for practice. When my turn came, I pulled on a pair of purple nitrile gloves, and checked Olivia’s blood pressure. It was weirdly intimate, holding her arm as I pulled on the cuff. Our eyes met a couple times, and we both looked away quickly.

“Ok, that just about does it,” said Michelle. “Everyone meet back here tomorrow. We’ll be in the same groups but we’ll be doing”, she looked at me significantly, “skin checks.”

The next day the office looked different. Large partitions had been set up, blocking off cubicles for each group. Peering around the corner of one, I saw a folding exam table, a wastebasket, and the same rolling cabinet with it’s box of gloves from the tent. We spent some time talking about what suspicious moles looked like, and then went to a cubicle with our groups.

“Ok” said Michelle, “let’s all draw straws for who gets to have their moles checked.” ‘Gets to’ seemed like a strange way of putting it. Michelle held out four straws and she, Olivia, Stephanie, and I all took one. I swallowed. Mine was the shortest. Michelle smiled. “Lucky is, girls, ok let’s practice what we learned. Eric, you’ll be the patient, and Olivia and Stephanie you can be the screeners. I’ll help, but for right now I’ll mostly be observing. Now ladies, what’s the first thing we need to do?”

Stephanie and Olivia both moved forward. Stephanie recited the lines we’d been taught explaining the exam, then Olivia explained the skin check. “We’re going to be looking for any kind of suspicious moles or other marks on your skin. To do that, we’re going to look at your skin, and also manually check for any bumps or raised moles. Do you have any questions?”

“No”. I shook my head. It looked like I was going to be naked in front of strangers for a second time this week.

“Ok then,” said Olivia “if I could just have you take your clothes off, we’ll get started.” Somehow this was worse than with Julie. At least then there had been only one other person, and I hadn’t known her. I watched as the three girls pulled out gloves and started putting them on. “Eric?” Michelle was looking over at me, “your clothes?” I blushed. There was nothing else for it. I pulled my shirt off over my head, and stepped out of my pants, leaving only my black boxer-briefs. “You can leave those on for now,” Olivia said brightly.

The exam began. First Olivia then Stephanie took turns parting my hair and looking at my scalp. Then they slowly examined my face, even behind my ears. “I’m just looking for any raised moles,” Olivia said, running her gloved hands over my neck and shoulders. Stephanie asked me to lie on my back and minutely examined my chest, running her hands over my stomach and abdomen. Once she called Michelle over to ask about a slightly raised mole just above my waistline, but Michelle said it was fine. Olivia then asked me to lie on my stomach, and checked my back. “Ok, legs next” she said. I could hear the crinkle of her gloves as she began running her hands over my calves, up to my thighs, right to the line of my underwear.

“Roll over for me,” she said, then repeated the procedure. I blushed, watching her hands climb closer and closer to my crotch. I wondered if everyone could tell my heart was pounding. Her hands actually felt really good. The only saving grace was that I was too nervous to get hard. Quite the opposite, the room was cold and everything was pulled up between my legs. Olivia looked at Michelle, who nodded. “Ok the for the last part I’m going to ask you to take off your underwear. Skin cancer can happen anywhere on the body, so it’s important for us to have a look.”

I blushed even deeper. With the three women looking down at me, I raised my hips a little, and pulled off my underwear. “I can take that!” Stephanie met my eyes as she accepted my balled up underwear and set it on top of my other clothes.

“Ok then, let’s get started.” Olivia had me spread my legs and pulled my heels up into the frog leg position. I was totally exposed. Looking down, I could see that my junk was still shrunken and tight from the nerves and cold. I wished I could move it a little, make it look a little better. Stephanie and Michelle’s eyes were fixed on my crotch. “Ok then,” repeated Olivia. “Same as before I’m going to closely examine your skin visually while also manually checking for any raised areas.”

She started with my thighs again, slowly moving her fingers up and into the crevice between my legs and my groin. Then she and Stephanie gingerly took turns parting my pubic hair to check for hidden moles. As Olivia pushed my pubis, the back of her hand gently brushed my penis. I blushed again. Suddenly, I felt it move a little. I was getting hard.

“Just going to move this out of the way…” Olivia cupped my scrotum, puling it up so she could look under at my perineum. My penis was starting to pulse. “Michelle, is this ok?” Both Michelle and Stephanie leaned in.

“Hmmm,” said Michelle. From my angle I couldn’t see exactly what was going in, but I heard her snap on a glove. “Here let me feel if it’s raised” Michelle very gently cupped my balls, while with her other finger rubbed and stretched a patch of skin right next to my perineum. Stephanie was looking at Michelle's fingers, while Olivia was looking at my cock. It was now fully erect.

“Don’t worry, Eric” said Michelle. “Nurse?” The health center nurse who was supervising things came around the corner of the cubicle. “We have what might be a suspicious mole here.” The nurse, a younger woman, maybe in her early thirties, pulled on some gloves.

“Don’t worry, we see this all the time,” she said, nodding at my penis. “It’s perfectly normal.” Could today get any worse? The nurse pulled up my scrotum and pushed all around the area. Now everyone was looking either at my mole, my anus, or my penis.

“This is fine” said the nurse, stripping off her gloves. “Not a problem. But if you see something like that on someone you’re screening just remind them to come see us.” The girls also all took their gloves off, and gave me some privacy to get dressed.

As we left the office Julie caught up with me. “Olivia was telling me you guys had a bit of excitement.” Was she referencing my boner, or the mole? “Glad it wasn’t anything to worry about though. Hey, by the way you guys are going to be partners for your first health screenings at the end of the week. You should have enough practice by then.”