I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t to be told to strip right off the bat.

The form I’d received in the mail had said the drug test procedure could take up to 6 hours, to arrive as early as possible and to drink exactly one 8 oz glass of water an hour before the appointment. I wondered what poor sap took 6 hours to take a piss, or perhaps the letter was referring to possible wait times at the office. I made sure I got here early. They called me right in after I turned in the form at the desk. Lucky me, I suppose.

I mean, I’d submitted to drug tests before, and I knew how it went. You empty your pockets, go into the little bathroom with the sink handles taped, lest someone is stupid enough to try to water down their sample. Even if they did, the temperature would be measured afterwards. Pissing in a plastic cup and handing it to a stranger wasn’t exactly my ideal afternoon, but I could handle it.

I was a bit confused when the female aide asked me to remove my clothes, including bra and underwear. I complied slowly, trying not to dwell on my exposure, to pretend I was somewhere else. She gave me a plastic bin with my name to put all my belongings in. When I had finished, she asked me to raise my arms, lift up one boob at a time, and looked in my mouth with a flashlight. If I was trying to smuggle clean urine in here, did she really think I’d hide it under my tongue? But I was too frightened to say no, feeling very vulnerable being so exposed to her. That, and I had a hunch what came next.

“Spread your legs apart, please.” She was already pulling latex gloves out of a box.

I gave this woman a lot of credit, she was very matter-of-fact without being harsh, and it was that alone that gave me the courage to comply.

She spread my lips with two fingers and shined the light up there. I fought the impulse to snap my legs shut and lunge for my t-shirt. I wondered how much longer this was going to take; I hadn’t peed at all yet that morning to make sure I’d be able to go. I didn’t want to risk getting stage fright – no one wants to do the walk of shame back to the waiting room with an empty cup. But there was no danger of that today, my bladder was starting to ache a little.

“Now turn around and spread your cheeks.”

“Really?” I squeaked, trying to sound indignant but I’m sure it just came off as pathetic. This wasn’t some kind of rehab program, it was just supposed to be a screening for my job! I’d never smoked so much as a cigarette in my life!

“That’s policy,” the woman explained. “You’d be shocked where people will hide things.”

Reluctantly, I bent over a little and reached around to spread my buttocks. I felt her finger prod around my anus, shining the light up there, but thankfully there was no penetration.

“There’s just one last thing,” the aide said as I stood up. “No, stay right where you are.”

I awkwardly resumed my position. I looked over my shoulder to see her grabbing something out of a drawer.

“So, when you give a sample, we need make sure it is the same temperature as your body,” she explained. “If it doesn’t match, that’s usually an indication that the sample was passed earlier, perhaps by someone else, and brought here secretly.

I already knew this, so I had no idea where she was going, or why I was still leaned over with my cheeks spread.

“What we need to do now is get a measurement of your core body temp, to use as a comparison. I’m going to be taking that rectally.”

Before I could even protest I felt a cold, invasive poke up my bum, which made me jump. “Hold still, please,” she said. Easy for her to say, when she didn’t have a cold glass rod protruding from her little bottom. I wondered if a lot of patients threw a fit about this, and that’s why she’d done it so swiftly.

After what seemed like ages, she slid the thermometer out again, leaving my bum feeling oddly empty and sticky from the Vaseline. She typed the result into her tablet.

“Alright, you’re all set,” the woman said. She walked over to a door at the other side of the room, opposite the door we’d come in. “She’s all set,” the woman said. “Grab her a medium gown.”

I was then directed to the hallway and handed a gown by a woman in scrubs waiting outside, and hastily put it on. It tied in the back, so it took a bit of fumbling to get it arranged properly.

“Are you able to provide your first specimen?” she asked me.

“What?” asked before I could process what she said. I immediately realized what she’d meant but I was so nervous I was getting flustered.

“Can you give your urine sample now? Do you feel the urge to pee?”

“Yes,” I said, blushing.

She led me to a single-occupancy restroom. Now, this was more like what I expected. I’d never been strip-searched to ensure I wasn’t trying to swap samples, and the rectal thermometer had been a cold shock that I hoped never to endure again. But maybe the worst was over.

The nurse put a sort of plastic hat mechanism across the toilet seat and instructed me to sit and lift up my gown at least to my belly button.

“I need to be able to observe the stream of urine leave your body,” she explained. “I promise you don’t have to be uncomfortable, I do this every day. You can empty the entire contents of your bladder into the receptacle whenever you are ready.”

Suddenly I was thankful that I hadn’t urinated all morning. My face was turning red, I could feel it in my ears. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to pee in front of her, and somehow even more afraid that I would. How humiliating!

For a long moment I waited, wondering if it was going to come out. Finally, I dribbled a little into the plastic receptacle. Another long pause. Finally, I managed to relax enough to let my bladder go, and release what I’d been holding all morning. I was horrified by the sound it made as it hit the clear plastic, and the fact that this stranger was hearing it too.

I emptied my bladder completely as instructed.

“You may wipe yourself, but throw the paper in the garbage can,” the woman said. I did so, then stood up.

While I stood there in my gown, the woman picked up the pan of my urine and carefully read the volume measurement on the side of the container, then dipped a temperature strip in it. She picked up a tablet just like the aide’s and typed in how much I had peed and the temperature.

Then, to my confusion and horror, she dumped my urine into the toilet and flushed. And after all that hoopla to make sure it was mine?

She raised an eyebrow at me. “Didn’t you read the form your employer sent to you? We take cheating very seriously here,” she explained. “Due to a rising number of patients using catheters to introduce clean urine to their bladders, we require two specimens, only the latter of which will be tested.”

She opened the bathroom door and beckoned one of the aides in the hall. It was the same person who had strip-searched me and taken my temperature.

“Her first specimen was within temperature range. Go ahead and take her to a dry room.”

I didn’t know what that meant, but at this point I was still reeling from what I had just been told. As we walked through a series of short hallways, I was trying to think of the least embarrassing ways to phrase my questions.

“This is called a dry room,” the aide said, directing me into a little room with a hospital bed, a table and a TV. “Obviously called that because they have no access to any running water or other people, which prevents cheating. You will be required to stay here for four hours, but you are permitted to stay up to eight if you don’t feel ready to produce your second specimen. You may have up to four glasses of water during that time – any more, and we may end up with a specimen that is too dilute.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I whispered. I thought this was going to take a half an hour, tops.

“Please do not protest,” she said. “Would you like one of your glasses of water now?”

“I guess,” I pulled my gown further over my knees and tentatively sat on the edge of the bed.

When the aide returned, I thought she might hand me the water and leave, but she stood right next to me as I gulped it down. When I was finished, she took the glass away with her. God forbid somebody save some of their drinking water and somehow find a way to dilute their piss with it while the nurse was watching. These people were way more serious than necessary.

I sat awkwardly in the room, trying not to think about what I had done or what I was waiting for. Bending over for a thermometer in my bum, or the sound of my pee dribbling into the container in front of the nurse. The "dry room" had huge glass windows that took up most of the wall, so everyone walking by couId see me waiting my turn to offer up a sample of my urine again. I turned the TV on, hoping for a distraction. After about an hour, I requested another glass of water, and chugged it as fast as I could.

I was starting to feel the effects of the first one already, so I tried to ask, “Um, I think I could possibly…provide my, uh, specimen now,” I stammered.

“It’s necessary to wait the full four hours,” was her reply, before she left again with the second glass.

I got more and more nervous as I waited. I drank a third glass of water. I thought about lifting up my gown and peeing in front of a nurse again and I wanted to call her back and demand to leave. I mean, they couldn’t legally keep me here. But I knew noncompliance was treated in the same manner as a positive drug test, and I didn’t want trouble at work.

“Four hours is now over, do you feel able to give your sample?” the aide asked.

I hesitated for a minute. The urge had come and gone a few times in the last hour. That must mean I could do it if I tried. I nodded slowly.

“Ok, perfect,” she said. “Just lie down on your stomach first, please.”

I already knew where this road led, and this time I was ready before she was.

“I hardly think—would my temperature really have changed in four hours? I don’t have a fever.”

“On your stomach,” she repeated, already brandishing a vaseline-coated thermometer.

Reluctantly I lied down onto my side, still looking up at her. “I mean…you could take it in my mouth, or—”

“A core body temperature is the most similar to the internal temperature of the bladder. Your test will be marked incomplete and noncompliant if you don’t cooperate. It won’t hurt.”

I already knew it wouldn’t hurt, but dear god, it was embarrassing. I rolled onto my stomach with an air of nervous defeat. I felt her lift up the back of my gown, and spread my cheeks. Then there was a moment’s pause. I squirmed involuntarily, knowing her eyes were on my rosebud.

I tried not to tense up, I really did, but my anus flinched from the sudden cold and my whole body squirmed again. I was glad she didn’t comment on my reaction to the uncomfortable intrusion. I knew she was looking at my sphincter clinging tightly to the slick rod, probably aware of how titillating and simultaneously horrifying the experience of being invaded in my private hole was.

I swear she twisted it a little as she pulled the thermometer out of my bum. She let me get up while she entered the result into my file, then I was finally led back to the bathroom.

This time there was no plastic receptacle on the toilet. The aide handed me over to the nurse from before, who instructed me to sit down on the toilet and raise my gown again.

“First, you’ll need to take this wipe and clean the area around your urethra,” she said matter-of-factly. I did so.

She handed me a sterile specimen cup. “Urinate first into the toilet, then move this cup into the stream. I need to be able to watch the stream leave your body and enter the cup, so you’ll need to squat over the toilet.”

I took the cup and held it awkwardly out of the way, angled and ready for when I would need it. Then I closed my eyes, imagined myself alone in my bathroom at home, and tried to…pee.

Nothing was coming. I took a deep breath. Imagining wasn’t working, I couldn’t forget this strangers eyes on my most private parts. Squatting was awkward and unfamiliar too, and I wished that I could sit down.

I waited.

Ten or so minutes must have passed, and the nurse finally picked up the tablet to check my chart.

“You’re still permitted one glass of water. Would you like to go back to the room and try again after drinking some more?”

“No,” I said at once. I didn’t need the humiliation of being paraded through the halls again, let alone have another thermometer stuck in my bottom.

The knowledge that she was getting impatient somehow made it even harder. Finally, I managed to trickle a little stream into the toilet. I let it go for a while, then slipped the cup underneath to begin collecting the urine. The stream slowed to a dribble and stopped.

I glanced down. There was barely a quarter inch in the bottom of the cup.

“A sample of at least 100ml is required,” the nurse said bracingly. Are you sure you are ready?”

“Positive,” I said through my teeth. No way, I was going to get this over with. Somehow, the intense shame associated with bathroom functions was lighting a fire in my gut. I mean, not that I liked this, but…well, the thought of masturbating to this memory suddenly struck.

That wasn’t going to help me relax my muscles either, so I tried to ignore my arousal. The nurse was still looking intently at me, and well, I knew that was her job but it was still hard not to feel judged. Sorry lady, I can’t pee on command.

A little more urine came out, and I moved to catch it in the cup. Encouraged, I was able to produce another little stream. Like before, the echo of the pee hitting the plastic cup was like audible proof of my embarrassment. Once I had started I found it was easier to keep going.

Finally the liquid in the cup splashed up to the 100ml line. I tried to stop the flow, but ended up dribbling for a few extra seconds before I could regain control. I screwed the cap onto the cup and handed it over.

The nurse thanked me and pulled out a roll of white stickers, and placed one over the edge of the lid, so that it would have to be broken in order to tamper with the sample.

“You need to write your initials to verify that this is your sample, and that I sealed it in your presence,” she said, handing me a pen. I took the warm cup of urine into my hands and scribbled my name on it.

“Thank you, you are free to go. You can turn in your gown and receive your clothes back in the intake room.

It was all I could do not to take off at a run. But somehow, this experience resonated with me. As awful as it was to live through, the memory would make me feel excited for years to come.