For years I felt like I was alone in the world with this, that it was super-weird and I’d never tell anyone. I’m super-secret about it in real life still, and it would take a lot of trust in a partner to share how this does it for me. But hey, this forum? I love it already and I’m finally going to crack my own shell and share all this.
I remember going to the doctor when I was like 4 or 5, and not wanting to be touched, but part of me was curious about the stethoscope, and my mum told me that my sister was brave enough to pull up her shirt and let the doctor listen to her heartbeat, so that made me brave enough too, even though the thing was so cold. I kinda liked it, I thought it was the being brave part but later I realised different.
When I was 6 and my sister was in hospital I remember watching a doctor examining a slightly older boy about 10 in the bed opposite with a stethoscope and thinking he must be brave as well then - he didn’t look nervous at all, he just took really deep breaths and I loved the sound, and enjoyed watching the doctor listen in different places. I didn’t know at the time why I sometimes got erections or even what they were, but I got one then, and I was really nervous about anyone else seeing the bulge in my pants because I knew from an early age you were meant to keep that kind of stuff to yourself, but I couldn’t stop watching. I knew I was supposed to keep this feeling super-secret and never wanted to play doctor with anyone.
I used to get a cough quite a lot as a kid, and part of me dreaded going to the doctor because my mum would end up seeing how the stethoscope excited me, but I still had to go, and I remember the first time I had my shirt completely off and the doctor listened to deep breaths all over my chest, it sent me into some kind of excitement I didn’t get from anything else. It took a little persuasion to get me to co-operate, like I wanted to pretend I wasn't secretly excited, but once I did I enjoyed it, and in an odd way coughing was actually fun if there was someone listening to it.
I never wanted to play doctor with any of my friends because it felt like it was always boys I wanted to play it with. Looking back I think I knew I was gay from an early age and that was part of how I discovered it, but I didn’t really know what it was, couldn’t talk about it and didn’t want to anyway, because it felt like my favourite secret. I used to love any book where someone went to the doctor, and I used to imagine going myself, again and again, wishing I had a real stethoscope instead of my hand over my heart or putting something cold on my chest.
When I went back to the same doctor at about nine because my family thought I had asthma (which in the end I didn’t, just bad hay fever) I was really disappointed that all he got me to do was that test where you blow into the tube for your lung strength, and gave me one to take home for a couple of weeks. Why didn’t he listen to my breathing when that’s what I was having trouble with? Or at least test me for allergies. I wish I’d just said ‘Don’t you wanna use the stethoscope on me anymore?’ but I wasn’t that kind of kid.
Never mind though. About a year later, I had to go to hospital for an operation and my mum told me I had to go and see the doctor a couple of weeks before I went in, some kind of pre-visit. I thought it was just to talk about what was going to happen, but when he asked me to take my clothes off it seemed really weird, even though I didn’t mind. I thought he would only maybe look at the part of me they were operating on, but he got me to take off everything apart from my underpants and sit on a stool. He was really friendly and talked to me like my comfort mattered, and I thought he looked really young to be a doctor as well, like maybe just finished university or something. He looked in my mouth and ears and eyes and then did this tap-tap thing all down my chest, I had no idea what it was for but I wondered if that was instead of using a stethoscope. I hoped it wasn’t.
When he picked up his black stethoscope with the silver end, I was instantly excited, and when he put it on my bare chest over my heart I pitched a tent like no other I’d ever had. I don’t remember my heart actually beating faster, but I was well into in the excitement zone. I didn’t care my mum was watching this time, because I’d heard getting that feeling was normal by then anyway, just maybe not like this.
I wasn’t even sick, and the doctor was listening to my chest? It was so awesome! So unexpected and so totally real, better than all the times I’d imagined it. I loved how cold the stethoscope was, and how bare all my skin felt, and how the doctor kept tapping and then listening again. He listened all over but didn’t get me to take deep breaths, and I didn’t know how he could hear me breathing when I couldn’t even hear it myself, but figured the stethoscope must be such a neat bit of kit that of course he could hear. I wish I’d taken deep breaths anyway, looking back on it.
The real irony here: I wasn’t bothered when he had to look at my what-not, and that’s never done it for me even as a teenager or an grown up. I discovered it was all about the stethoscope that day. It’s probably my favourite childhood memory, and how many people would admit to that?
Couple of weeks later lying in my bed in the hospital, I got the same thing when the anaesthetist did his rounds and asked to examine me, lying down this time, except when he asked me to sit up to listen to my back. I thought those guys were just the ones who knocked you out while you had the operation, but this one was cool because he wanted to use a stethoscope on me as well. Like he wanted to make extra sure my body would wake up from what he was going to do to me!
I discovered masturbating as a teenager by thinking about a cute guy going to the doctor and getting his breathing listened to. It was the first time I came and it’s like I’ve been chasing it ever since by using that first fetish I discovered I had, and I still like the comfort of it, remembering how great everything was when I was that kid going for his hospital check-up before I knew what the world was really like. If I do say so myself, I was quite a cute kid and I’ve always hoped that doctor liked me (in a completely innocent way) as much as I liked my physical. Was always disappointed that as a teenager I just never had to be examined that way, I always had to imagine it, although maybe that’s a good thing considering how I might have embarrassed myself.
It’s been my favourite comfort memory for most of my life and I still use auscultation in all sorts of fantasy scenarios to help me get off. I’ve never asked a partner to help me out on this one because I feel it works best if I have a younger ‘play-age’ which I feel really awkward about except when I keep it to myself. Ageing it up works too - I’m physically fit and quite often think of the ‘sports physical’ fantasy in an older body. Wish we had them in the UK! And I’ve met cute guys I’d love to try all this with if only I had the courage, but sometimes it’s still more of a memory-comfort thing and I think it only works if I keep it to myself.
When I was that kid I also wanted to be a doctor because of my fascination with how I liked being checked out, but later I knew I couldn’t, it would just be too embarrassing if I found I couldn’t keep control of myself (and I was never that smart with science anyway). Going to the doctor now isn’t a problem and I’ve never had anything awkward happen, I’m quite a mature and serious guy in real life now I’m grown up and I kind of know how to manage myself, even if the smell of medical places always helps evoke those memories for me. It’s almost a shame I really don’t get sick much at all now!
Thanks for reading all that if you got through it and hope you enjoyed it.