In a previous blog I’ve described how deeply ashamed I was of the woollen underwear my parents provided for me, and how embarrassing it was to be seen in the changing room at my prep school.

As soon as I moved up to public school, there was a new terror in store. This was the annual medical. It was done by form, in groups of five or six. Each group would miss a class and go to the medical section, which adjoined the dormitories in one of the boarding houses. The medical team comprised the school doctor, a besuited and bespectacled man in his early 50s, with the physique and commanding presence of a rugby forward;  the matron, a big-busted woman, probably of similar age and rumoured by older boys to be a ‘dyke’ who sometimes ‘helped out’ at the nearby girls’ public school; and the assistant matron, a young woman in her 20s, with shoulder-length hair held in place by a hair band (as was the fashion of the time) and a textbook ‘hourglass’ figure. Since this was the 60s, the matrons naturally wore traditional nursing uniform, with blue gingham dresses, starched white aprons, black stockings and a starched cap.

The waiting room had benches on two sides, with pegs above. Upon entry the assistant matron crossed the names off the list and told us to remove all our clothing, except for our pants. In the small room I felt even more self-conscious than in the large changing rooms, and sat huddled on the bench, arms across my bare chest. This was a boys’ boarding school, deprived of female company for weeks on end, so as the years rolled on and we entered puberty, our eyes were naturally drawn to the young matron. The most self-assured of us would exchange lascivious glances and banter. Most of us would masturbate in private afterwards, spurting jets of semen almost immediately we recalled her stocking-encased legs, full lips and the enticing curve of her bust and hips.

Eventually it was your turn to go into the assistant matron’s office. The scales were the old-fashioned sort with weights that you slid along a scale, and the young female came unnervingly close as you stood in your bare feet on the metal plate and she took the measurement. Next you stood against a vertical ruler for measuring your height, flinching as the cold steel touched your back. Telling you to stand up straight, shoulders back and chest thrust out, the matron would pause a moment before reaching up and brushing your hair with her hand as she adjusted the pointer. During that infinitesimal pause, was she appraising your physique, asking herself how close to manhood you were and whether you were developing the strength in your legs and upper body that she desired in a lover? Surely for a healthy young woman, her own body still flooded with youthful hormones, her job must have been the ultimate dream? She was responsible for assessing the physical attributes of hundreds of young males, many of them fully grown, and lusty and potent as stallions, who were presented to her virtually naked. Did her panties sometimes become so saturated with fluid leaking from her vagina that she had to change them at break time?

After measuring you and asking a few questions about your general health, the young matron directed you through an interconnecting door into the consulting room. The doctor would usually be sitting behind the desk, the matron standing with a clipboard and pen. It was her job to record the results of the examination. This was long before doctors routinely used computers. They ran through the usual tests: checking your eyesight, temperature, pulse, listening to your chest. I suppose because of all the sport we played, lung capacity and lung function seemed particularly important. The matron handed you a cylindrical device and instructed you to take a deep breath, then exhale as long and as forcefully as possible. This moved a pointer down the cylinder. The doctor and matron would study your body critically, the matron sometimes tapping you on the rib cage and exhorting you to breathe in more deeply. On one occasion the doctor barked at me to stand up straight and inflate my chest like a man.

The final test was the most terrifying: the examination of your genitalia. I cannot imagine such a thing would be permitted today. Without asking, the doctor would pull down the front of your pants, reach inside and cup your scrotum in his hand, probing your testicles with his fingers. Then lift your penis and draw back the foreskin. The matron would take an initial glance, without showing much interest – in my case at least – before  carefully recording the details as he described them. Many of the terms remain fixed in my mind: ‘Testicles immature’, ‘Penis prepubertal’, ‘Pubic hair incipient’. By the time I had become fully mature, I suppose at 16 or 17, he seemed to have found or devised a systematic method for recording genital development: ‘Testicles, penis and pubic hair all at stage 4’ (or was it 5, I can’t remember). Once he found you had reached that stage, the examination concluded with a stern admonition: ‘Refrain from masturbation. It is weakening.’

Such then was the annual medical. The experience has remained with me ever since, continuing to dent my self-esteem and colouring my sexuality.