Smoke and Mirrors

He told his senior at the bank that he had a sore throat and would need to see the doctor about it. He could feel his cheeks burn as he told her, but she did not remark on this, merely told him that that would be fine.

When he left her office, he found that he was shaking.

It was a gray wet day when he arrived at the doctor’s surgery.

There was no queue, and he went straight in to the doctor. Not his regular doctor, Simon was comforted to see. This was a young Pakistani, of about Simon’s age, who interrupted Simon’s stammered recitation of symptoms to ask:

“Urinating more than usual, are we?”

Simon nodded.

“Any discharge?”

Simon shook his head.

“Right ho. I’d like you to take down your trousers, if you don’t mind.”

Simon took them down. The doctor peered at his penis. “You do have a discharge, you know,” he said.

Simon did himself up again.

“Now, Mr. Powers, tell me, do you think it possible that you might have picked up from someone, a, uh, venereal disease?”

Simon shook his head vigorously. “I haven’t had sex with anyone—” he had almost said ‘anyone else’ “—in almost three years.”

“No?” The doctor obviously didn’t believe him. He smelled of exotic spices and had the whitest teeth Simon had ever seen. “Well, you have either contracted gonorrhea or NSU. Probably NSU: nonspecific urethritis. Which is less famous and less painful than gonorrhea, but it can be a bit of an old bastard to treat. You can get rid of gonorrhea with one big dose of antibiotics. Kills the bugger off . . .” He clapped his hands twice. Loudly. “Just like that.”

“You don’t know, then?”

“Which one it is? Good Lord, no. I’m not even going to try to find out. I’m sending you to a special clinic, which takes care of all of that kind of thing. I’ll give you a note to take with you.” He pulled a pad of headed notepaper from a drawer. “What is your profession, Mr. Powers?”

“I work in a bank.”

“A teller?”

“No.” He shook his head. “I’m in securities. I clerk for two assistant managers.” A thought occurred to him. “They don’t have to know about this, do they?”

The doctor looked shocked. “Good gracious, no.”

He wrote a note, in a careful, round handwriting, stating that Simon Powers, age twenty-six, had something that was probably NSU. He had a discharge. Said he had had no sex for three years. In discomfort. Please could they let him know the results of the tests. He signed it with a squiggle. Then he handed Simon a card with the address and phone number of the special clinic on it. “Here you are. This is where you go. Not to worry—happens to lots of people. See all the cards I have here? Not to worry—you’ll soon be right as rain. Phone them when you get home and make an appointment.”

Simon took the card and stood up to go.

“Don’t worry,” said the doctor. “It won’t prove difficult to treat.”

Simon nodded and tried to smile.

He opened the door to go out.

“And, at any rate, it’s nothing really nasty, like syphilis,” said the doctor.

The two elderly women sitting outside in the hallway waiting area looked up delightedly at this fortuitous overheard, and stared hungrily at Simon as he walked away.

He wished he were dead.

On the pavement outside, waiting for the bus home, Simon thought: I’ve got a venereal disease. I’ve got a venereal disease. I’ve got a venereal disease. Over and over, like a mantra.

He should toll a bell as he walked.

On the bus he tried not to get too close to his fellow passengers. He was certain they knew (couldn’t they read the plague marks on his face?); and at the same time he was ashamed he was forced to keep it a secret from them.

He got back to the flat and went straight into the bathroom, expecting to see a decayed horror-movie face, a rotting skull fuzzy with blue mold, staring back at him from the mirror. Instead, he saw a pink-cheeked bank clerk in his mid-twenties, fair-haired, perfect-skinned.

He fumbled out his penis and scrutinized it with care. It was neither a gangrenous green nor a leprous white, but looked perfectly normal, except for the slightly swollen tip and the clear discharge that lubricated the hole. He realized that his white underpants had been stained across the crotch by the leak.

Simon felt angry with himself and angrier with God for having given him a (say it) (dose of the clap) obviously meant for someone else.

He masturbated that night for the first time in four days.

He fantasized a schoolgirl in blue cotton panties who changed into a policewoman, then two policewomen, then three.

It didn’t hurt at all until he climaxed; then he felt as if someone were pushing a switchblade through the inside of his cock. As if he were ejaculating a pincushion.

He began to cry then in the darkness, but whether from the pain, or from some other reason, less easy to identify, even Simon was unsure.

That was the last time he masturbated.

The clinic was located in a dour Victorian hospital in central London. A young man in a white coat looked at Simon’s card, and took his doctor’s note, and told him to take a seat.