After the accident, I spent an entire month in the hospital, mostly in bed. Finally when I had recovered enough strength to walk down the corridor and back with no assistance, they discharged me to a rehab facility. It was way out of town and had just opened up the previous month. It was small, but very nice. I was the first patient. There was just an administrative assistant and one physical therapist, Anne, who lived on the campus. She began my rehab right away.

After taking my history and giving me a cursory physical exam, she had me put on shorts and a T-shirt and report to the training room to meet her.

“Mark, your gluteal muscles are where we need to focus. You’ve lost a lot of muscle mass there. That’s going to be our focus.”

She tormented me with a brutal routine of strength training over the following month. She had me do such intense sets of squats, my butt was almost too sore to sit down on most rest days. She could tell that I was uncomfortable, and would comment that a “sore bottom” was a sign of a good workout. She told me we needed to start massages on the rest days to quicken the pace of my recovery. The next day, I reported to the massage room and waited for her. When she saw me in my usual workout attire, she shook her head in disapproval, “You need to strip down for this, Mark. Underwear off too. I need to assess and massage your gluteal muscles.”

I waited for her to step out, but she just put her things down on the desk and waited until I sheepishly stripped down in front of her. She pointed to the massage table and I hopped up.

“On your tummy for me.”

I turned over with my naked bottom facing up at her. She pumped massage oil into her hands as she surveyed my flesh.

“I can see your butt has rounded out since you arrived. Your pert cheeks are getting some meat back on them.”

With that, she took her hands, which were dripping with excess oil, and put one firmly on each of my cheeks and began to knead. I could feel the excess oil run into my crack and down over my anus, perineum then onto my balls. She paused and put her hands between my knees and separated my legs. I closed my eyes as embarrassment rushed over me as I felt sure now she could see all of what I wanted to be hidden — my anus, and my balls. She continued to knead me, producing a mixture of pleasure and pain as she firmly pressed into my sore ass muscles. With her thumbs in my cleft, she would alternatively push my buttocks together and then separate them wider with her thumbs. She went on like this for a few minutes, but then stopped suddenly, “Hmmm. Mark, I can’t help but notice your little bottom hole looks irritated and sore. That’s a telltale sign of your stools being too hard. I need to check inside you.”

My audible gasp betrayed my panic at hearing her say this. “Wa wa .. Why? I don’t think you need to do that. I’m fine!”

“Oh, I definitely need to check inside there. I was a nurse before studying physical therapy. I have seen a lot of bottoms in my career, and I can recognize this problem right away. If we don’t get things sorted it, its going to interfere with your recovery. Have you ever had a finger in your bottom before?”

“No!”

“Come to think of it, you actually have. I read it in your chart. You had a rectal exam when you arrived at the hospital, but you were probably so out of it that you don’t remember. It’s right here in your chart.”

Anne was opening documents on her laptop as she told me this.

“Dr Lipman did one and she commented in her notes that she found you to have a very tight sphincter tone and a substantial amount of stool in your rectum. That may have been an early sign that you are prone to this sort of thing. Well, I doubt you’re going to forget the exam I’m about to give you.”