In a previous blog I described a typical annual medical at my public school. However, there was one exceptional occasion that introduced me both to the realities of male/female sexual relations and to a type of men’s underwear that was much sexier than the ubiquitous Y Fronts.

I was nearly 14 and at the threshold of puberty, having already become well versed in the mechanics of reproduction from my mother’s medical textbooks. Girls increasingly fascinated me, though my only source of pleasure was newspapers and magazines, and I had not yet ejaculated. My medical had been postponed because I had had flu, so I was the only boy from my form on that particular day. When I entered the waiting room, I was the only one there. Moments later, another boy came in. He was much older, 17 or 18, and I recognised him as a prefect and back-row forward in the school rugby XV. This was the first time I had been in close proximity to a fully grown male. As he removed his shirt and tie, and stepped out of his trousers, I marvelled at his powerful hairy legs and his deep muscular chest covered with mats of thick hair that almost hid his nipples. Most awesome of all was that instead of Y Fronts he wore skimpy nylon briefs, royal blue in colour. The shapes of his fully developed penis and testicles were clearly visible, the unlined pouch of what in effect were a bodybuilder’s posing trunks, sagging under their weight. Noticing my sly look, he grinned, but I could tell he was tense and on edge. Rather than sit huddled up as the rest of us would do, he fidgeted restlessly, pumping his pectorals with a few press-ups against the bench and wandering up to the door to the assistant matron’s office. His briefs were so skimpy that they hardly covered the huge gluteal muscles that powered his body in the scrum.

Eventually the office door opened. The young matron read out his name, making him the first to go in for weighing and subsequent examination by the doctor and senior matron. He appeared to be fiddling with his clothes on the peg above the bench when his name was called. As he turned round, I saw with shock that his penis was thick and hard. Shamelessly he stuffed it into the tiny briefs as best he could, and strode with a swagger the few paces to the office. I could see the young matron’s eyes widen at the glimpse of his erection, then linger on his hairy torso and bulging trunks as he approached her. I could see too in her face a look that I had never seen previously, a strange mixture of fear and desire. Being so utterly ignorant of women, it would be many years before I recognised this look as the natural female response to a male whom she feared would overpower and impregnate her but whom at the same time she desperately desired.

As usual during the medicals, the office door stayed open. The young matron was standing just inside. Immediately on entering the youth put his arm round her waist. She flinched and tried to push him away, her small hand on his massive pectoral. He merely dropped his hand lower, reaching under her blue dress, lifting the hem and pushing his fingers between her thighs. She was wearing black tights over white panties. He seemed to be whispering something to her, but her expression was hidden from me. Another shove and she managed to break free. The last I saw was her closing the door and him stepping onto the scales.

Cautiously I listened at the door. But there was nothing to hear, just the questions about his general health. Then a ‘Come in’ from the doctor to signal the start of the second stage of the medical. Eventually the assistant’s office door re-opened and the prefect emerged. He came straight across to me, squatting down inches in front of me as I cowered on the bench. ‘Don’t you ever tell anyone about what you saw. Nothing. Ever. She’s my girlfriend. Do you understand?’ I suppose I nodded but I barely took in what he was saying. I was mesmerised by – and still remember perfectly today – the image of virility before me: the handsome face with piercing eyes and once-broken nose, the thickly muscled hairy legs, of which one knee was grinding into mine, and the thin blue nylon pouch suspended between his thighs that contained the procreative apparatus the young woman both desired and feared.

My own medical was normal, as if nothing had happened. In later times, as I learnt more about sexual relations, I began to wonder how the pieces fitted together. Was she really his girlfriend? Prefects were allowed to leave the school premises, so perhaps she took him to a hotel or her flat, where he would fuck her senseless? Perhaps she met other boys whom she desired and let them fuck her too? And what about the doctor and matron? Were they oblivious to what was going on next door, and did they make any comment on the boy’s obvious erection? Perhaps the doctor had behaved in a similar way when he himself had been in the sixth form, so turning a blind eye or even encouraging the behaviour as a natural manifestation of masculinity. Or perhaps he was a voyeur, who enjoyed watching a sexual assault by a near-naked male on a young woman. I shall never know.