I was 29. I was living in the Boston area, and I had made my first appointment for an annual physical since I had moved there about a year and a half earlier.
I had searched for LGBT friendly physicians in the GLMA database and at the time was following the advice I had seen in Mens Health to try to find a doctor of the same gender who was 5-10 years older than you, so that for any normal age-related stuff, they'd already have personal experience and be able to reassure you it's normal.
That landed me with a younger guy at a Fenway area clinic that specialized in gay men's health.
After checking in, a nurse took me to an exam room and told me to have a seat on the exam table. The doctor would be in shortly. No instructions to disrobe or anything.
The doctor came in, and he was in his 30s, fit and attractive, with a calming voice. He sat down and did all of the history questions. Since it was a gay men's health practice, there were sexual history questions I'd never received before, but I had very little experience, so he ended by saying that it sounded like I was pretty low risk so far. He asked if I had any other concerns before we started the exam, and I said just that I wanted to lose some weight that I had put on during the long Boston winters. He made some comment about me being young and having no underlying health reason that I couldn't work it off that summer playing golf or doing other outdoor activities. He got the blood pressure cuff and put it on my arm, over my shirt, and I was thinking that this would be like every other adult exam I'd had up to that point -- mostly talking, minimal exam, fully clothed. But then he said he'd save the height and weight for after I changed into a gown.
He handed me a fabric gown, with a blue and white pattern, and told me to take off everything including socks and underwear and put on the gown with the opening in the back, and he'd be back shortly. He pulled a curtain closed that would keep anyone who walked into the room from immediately seeing me, and left the room. I immediately knew that this would be unlike any of my recent exams, and I got fully hard as I was undressing. When I put on the gown, as I was tying it behind me, I noticed that a small wet spot had formed where the tip of my erect penis had touched the fabric. I was so embarrassed for him to see that but I sat back on the exam table with the crinkly paper and waited for him.
Fortunately, he was gone long enough that, by the time he came back in to the room, my erection had subsided, and the small wet spot had dried to where it was barely noticeable.
He first had me get on the scale, facing the wall, and I was mortified to find out I weighed even more than I thought. I actually said, "Ohmygod" when he moved that big block so far right on the old balance-type scale that it would have put me past 200 pounds. Sensing my mental anguish, he popped it back to the left a notch, and instead moved the lower block all the way to the right, where I could see that the scale wasn't yet balancing, but he kindly said, "We'll call it 199." He again said it's okay, and he was confident that I'd burn it all off that summer. He then had me step off the scale while he locked it, then had me get back on facing him. It was the first time since high school, when I was 5ft 7in, when someone actually measured my height instead of just asking me. I knew I had gotten taller even into college, because I was such a late bloomer, so I had been saying I was 5ft 9in on my driver's license and in all of those adult exams. By his measure, I was 5ft 8.5in (which I've since verified a couple more times). Being both heavier and shorter than I thought definitely would have been a boner killer if I already hadn't softened.
He then had me sit on the table again, and he proceeded with the usual stuff, starting with HEENT. When it was time to listen to my chest, he tried to pull the gown down off my shoulders, but I had tied it too tight in the back, so he untied it, and then slipped the gown off my shoulders and off my arms, letting it fall to my lap. After he had finished listening to my chest, he held the gown back up in front of me and asked me to slip my arms back into it, after which he draped it back over my shoulders. He then adjusted the back of the table down to flat, pulled out the foot platform between my legs, and asked me to scooch back on the table so that my feet were on the platform. He then slipped his hands under the side of my gown to do the abdominal exam. He seemed to be going out of his way to protect my modesty.
But then he abruptly folded the gown up to my chest, exposing my penis and testicles. I could feel the breeze of the HVAC. Immediately, memories of those pediatric exams in my teens flooded back into my mind, reminding me of how my pediatrician always would say as I was lying on the table, "time to check the plumbing," just before he'd pull my briefs down to my knees, in full view of my mother. This new doctor said, as he was putting on gloves, "before we start the genital exam, have you had any pain, swelling, tenderness, or any visible sores on your penis or testicles?" I said no, and he proceeded to roll each of my testicles between his thumb and forefinger, saying, "there's one, and there's two." He then started palpating the shaft of my penis and asked, "any trouble getting or keeping an erection?" I nervously laughed and said no, because he could see full well that I did not have any trouble, as I was stiffening rather quickly in his hands. By the time he pinched open the tip of my penis and asked, "any unusual discharge here?" I was fully erect and starting to drip. He said, "That's great, but we'll culture this just to be safe," and collected some of that clear fluid, before folding the gown back down from my chest, making a small tent over my rock hard erection. What happened after that is a bit of a blur to me, but I recall him examining my feet, because he pulled my toes forward and had me pull back, and vice-versa -- the first and last time I ever had that at an exam. There definitely was no standing exam, because I remember he pushed the foot platform back in to the table and raised the back again, before explaining to me that they were doing a voluntary study that he said the research assistant would explain to me, and I could choose to opt in or out. He said I could get dressed and wait for her.
I started to get dressed, and the erection was not going down at all. I was continuing to drip, because the wet spot on the gown was bigger than it had been earlier. Since I'm on the smaller side, I pointed my penis straight up in my underwear and hoped nobody else would notice. I finished getting dressed and waited. When the research assistant showed up, she explained that they were doing a study on MSM (men who have sex with men) and anal HPV. This was 2006, the year the FDA first approved Gardasil, and only for young women. She said if I opted in, she'd give me a swab like a long Q-tip, and she just needed me to swab it over my anus without inserting. I nervously agreed, and she gave me the swab and the collection tube and said she'd be back in a few minutes, again closing the curtain as she left. As I again lowered my pants and underpants, my erection was still raging, but I carefully followed the swab instructions, closed the swab in the collection tube, and got dressed. I sheepishly handed her the tube in its envelope when she returned a few minutes later and told me I was done for the day.
I was hard for the entire walk home, and as soon as I got to my bedroom, I immediately undressed and replayed the genital exam part using the bed sheet in lieu of a gown, and masturbated. That night, as we were getting into bed, I asked my soon-to-be husband if he was interested in hearing how my exam went, and he said sure. I then said, do you want me to show you how it went, and he said okay. I again got rock hard during the genital exam part, so he asked if that had happened during the real exam. Not knowing if I would be in trouble, I said, "kind of." I asked him if that had happened to him ever during his exams, and he said, no, never. I asked him how he avoided it, and he said the whole clinical setting was just such a turn off for him that it never was a problem. He then asked me if that always happened to me, and I told him it was my first genital exam since high school, and it had only ever happened once before, when I was 16. He clearly wasn't feeling it, but he was nice enough to masturbate with me before we turned off the lights and went to sleep.
So that's how I discovered I had a medical fetish, and that my husband absolutely did not.