It was the winter of 2001. Three months after the September 11th attacks. One month after my layoff from my job at a fallen dot.com services company. The one that made me a millionaire on paper for 15 minutes and eventually caused me to lose almost $20k of my own money. A few months, I can’t remember how many, after Tom Green from MTV found that he had testicular cancer and had to have a ball removed. And one week after meeting a new, hot girl, who quickly became my girlfriend. I decided to go to the doctor to get a physical, overall checkup, and blood tests done - as one does when one gets a new girlfriend.

I went to see a new doctor - I hadn’t been to see one in years because I had not been sick at all and had no reason to go. The guy I chose came very highly recommended, by a gay friend of mine. He specialized in blood work and infectious diseases, and was described as “a young, handsome, gay man.” I was nervous for many reasons.

Anyway, he turned out to be a nice guy and a great doctor. He examined me thoroughly, but I was apprehensive when he made me strip all the way down to naked. It was cold and I was nervous, thinking about my blood on its way to be tested for HIV and a of this gay doctor examining my Adonis-like body. You can imagine. My penis was non-existent. It was embarrassing. Not because I wanted the doctor to be attracted to me, but because it is always embarrassing to be naked with a tiny penis. Anyway, it got worse when, after telling me lay down, he began to, very thoroughly, examine my testicles. He spent a particularly long time there, long enough that the thought of gay molestation came across my mind more than once. It turned out that one fear was replaced with another when he told me that he felt some “abnormality.” He said that there was something out of the ordinary inside there. He wasn’t amused when I suggested it might be the rest of my penis. He was talking about specialists and “probably nothing”ings, while I could only think of Tom Green.

The specialist was an older, professional, straight, Urologist. He made me feel much better. He said that he wasn’t exactly sure what the other was feeling, but to be perfectly sure, “we” would go for a sonogram. Now I am not sure what part of “him” eventually found itself inside that sonogram lab, but it certainly wasn’t his balls.

A week or so later, January 15th, 2002, to be exact, I found myself in a waiting room of a local sonogram lab, surrounded by pregnant woman, and not a single other man.

When it was finally my turn, I followed an attractive Puerto Rican nurse into the examination room. I was given a thin cotton gown to wear, “backwards,” meaning opening up front. The nurse left while I changed, and I waited for an older, uglier, nurse to enter to perform the examination. It didn’t happen, the attractive nurse returned an told me to get comfortable on the table. I was nervous, but this time because I thought I might have the opposite penis problem as before. I hopped up there, and the longer I waited for her to prepare the machine, and the gel, yes the gel, the more excited I was getting. I have to admit, I had “bloodflow.” She gave me a paper thing, with a square cut out, and told me to pull my testicles through the square. I did as I was told, and held on to the rest of the package for dear life. She gently applied the ice cold gel, telling me that “it might be cold,” and again, it wasn’t bad. Then she rubbed the hand scanner all over my junk, and I watched the screen in awe, as the inner workings of my baby factory were revealed. She rolled and poked and pulled and prodded, searching for some type of growth or discoloration or alien within. She found nothing. Eventually a doctor came in. I guess she was just the welcoming wagon. He rolled and poked and pulled and prodded, searching for some type of growth or discoloration or alien within, as my nervousness came back and my penis shrank again. Eventually it was over. The doctor said he could see nothing wrong, and that the original doctor most likely reacted to “dense vascularity,” a term of which I am particularly proud. It means I have more veins and tunnels transmitting my sperm where it needs to go.

Anyway, we were done. I was OK, and the cute nurse began “cleaning me up.” I was hoping for a happy ending, but I thought that might be pushing my luck, so I asked for a picture instead.

I said, “You know, you could just print out one of those pictures for me, couldn’t you?”

She responded, “Sir, those pictures are generally only for babies.”

My dry, serious response, “Those are my babies. Now print them out.”

She laughed, and hit print.

And, without further ado, the only official sonogram ever taken of my testicles…