Prior to committing to the job in Cambodia, I had not seen a medical professional in a number of years. That number was three. I would have been content to maintain that streak, but malaria is a recurring disease and, as such, not exactly the greatest notch to carve in one’s adventure belt.

I manned up for the trip to Brigham and Women’s Hospital, strolled into the health clinic and sat patiently while I was given injections to ward of Japanese Encephalitis and Tetanus. This was all a big deal for me given the number of times various nurses have been forced to either restrain or console me during my various encounters with hypodermic needles. Oddly, I find that I try harder to seem tough around male nurses. It isn’t that I think women are too insightful to fall for that sort of stuff—they clearly aren’t. Maybe the whole thing has to do with my anxiety at playing the role of the bottom, letting myself be penetrated; I’m also the guy who voluntarily moved to the edge of the Castro so maybe not. One way or another, I got my shots and a TB test—the doctor asked if I like Motley Crue.

The next day I went to see my doctor, who we’ll call Bruce because it’s his name. Bruce is a lovely muttonchopped individual with an incomparable ability to make wearing socks with his birkenstocks look kind of cool. Needless to say, he does not believe in prescribing medicine for much of anything. When asked him if he might prescribe Cipro he politely turned me down, then offered the name of a book on organic eating in the third world. After he checked my junk, he showed me pictures from his trip to rural Ethiopia. It was like a wonderful date played in reverse, provided, of course, that wonderful date started at a blood drive.

Seeing the dentist was less lovely. My dentist, who boldly rocks a wiry mustache and soul patch combination in keeping with the ridiculous facial hair theme, is the nicest funniest sadist I’ve ever known. You have to enjoy the pain of other’s to become a dentist. This is fact. I know this because I just got to see the look on my dentist’s face as he drilled his way halfway through no less than four of my teeth. Had he shot me up with a local? Absolutely. Are his tools a Dick Cheney style choose your own adventure? You betcha.

I took the T home. I couldn’t feel have my face so I drooled a little here and there. Loosing control of one’s fluids—urine, spit, snot—is incredibly embarrassing. The peculiar exception is blood. If I was drooling blood (this may have happened) I would have looked tough instead of handicapped. We can accept blood, the stuff of life, but not the more transparent liquids, the stuff of day to day living.