The young matron released her grip on my scrotum just as quickly as she had grabbed it a minute earlier. I stood there frozen, my back against the vertical ruler in the nurses’ office, unable to take in what had happened. I watched her turn and bend over to pick up my pants from the floor. She’d demanded I strip them off earlier and I was praying she’d give them back now. But she was stretching them out, looking at them critically, ‘Do you always wear little nylon briefs as tiny as these?’ I shrugged, embarrassed to admit the influence of bodybuilder magazines such as ‘Health and Strength’, which I read avidly. As always, she seemed able to read my mind. ‘OK, so long as you remember they’re just for showing off. I hardly need to explain why.’ Putting them on the desk, she glanced back over her shoulder. ‘Off you go then.  We’re done here. Don’t keep the doctor waiting. Knock before you go in.’

I struggled to pull myself together, but another warning glance over the shoulder told me that time was up. I had to go in. Naked as I was. I tapped on the interconnecting door and entered. The scene was the same as in every school medical I’d attended for the past decade. Doctor sitting behind his desk, Matron standing nearby with a clipboard. The sight test was always first, so off I wandered in the direction of the line on the floor where you stood to read the letters.

‘No need for that’. Matron was making a note on her clipboard. ‘I doubt much has changed since last time’. The doctor had got up and collected an upright chair from near the door. He set it down in front of the desk. ‘Sit down please, Mr Thomas, there’s something we want to talk to you about.’ That really rattled me. Did I have a serious health condition, damaged heart muscle maybe, that had just come to light? And why ‘Mr’? He didn’t continue, simply sat down again behind the desk and leant back, finger tips together. Matron however planted herself on the edge of the desk, right in front of me. My chair was so close that her legs had brushed mine as she edged past to get there. Only a couple of feet away, her eyes constantly switched from my face to my groin, where my penis and testicles, heavy but flaccid, were hanging loose on the cushion. I watched her neatly lift and cross her right leg over her left, discreetly adjusting her nurse’s dress and apron so that her knees were covered. It was beautifully done, a model of innocence and modesty. But the toe of her black patent-leather court shoe was now almost resting on my pubic hair.

I looked up cautiously as she began to speak, beginning to realise she was nowhere near as old as we had all imagined. Old enough to be my mother obviously, but once she put aside her glasses I could see bewitching eyes, full lips and smooth olive skin. ‘Dr Erskine and I only work part-time at the school. We have a medical practice in central London. Specialise in helping couples who have difficulty starting a family.’ She paused momentarily, waiting for her words to sink in. Vague thoughts criss-crossed my mind, but nothing was making any sense. I regretted how I’d behaved towards the junior matron, it must all be connected somehow. ‘Infertility’, she went on (was it my imagination that her toe gave a tiny flick as she said the word?) ‘is much more common than you might think.’ A faint smile on her lips. ‘Sometimes we just recommend a change of lifestyle. Advise on the best times for sexual intercourse. Often that’s enough’.

There was something in her voice, the shaping of words like ‘sexual’ with her lips and tongue. This wasn’t the tone that ordered ‘Lights Out!’ in the junior dorms, I suddenly recognised it as the low, confidential, teasing lilt of the junior matron. Was it part of every nurse’s training to learn such different voices? Her toe was definitely tapping my pubic hair now. I felt hypnotised. I didn’t want it, but I felt myself getting hard again. On she went. ‘But sometimes there is a physical problem. The woman is infertile or the man is impotent.’ Slowly said, ‘Im-po-tent’. ‘Many couples decide to adopt. But sometimes, if the woman is fertile and desperate to have her own child, we have to consider alternative treatments. Other sources of sperm.’

‘Now wait a minute. That’s enough, this is a joke!’. I stood up, grabbed the chair back and thrust it aside, making for the door. ‘You’re just pervs, like to look at boys’ willies. Everyone knows.’ ‘Don’t you want to hear what they’ve got to say?’ The junior matron was standing in the doorway, twirling my briefs on her finger. ‘No. I don’t.’ I stepped forward. But I knew I had neither the courage nor the will to push her aside. ‘Does the thought of sperm donation embarrass you then?’ It was the senior matron this time, still sitting on the desk, legs crossed. I’d stopped in my tracks, and my face felt hot. I suppose I made some pathetic gesture, shrugging my shoulders, spreading my hands, whatever you do when you’re trying to show indifference.

Both women were still staring at me with that faint smile of theirs, but the doctor had picked up a bath robe from somewhere. ‘Put this on.’ He was holding it open, like a manservant, making it easy for me to slip my arms in. Gratefully I pulled it round me, but then suddenly found his hand on my shoulder. He was making an effort to speak ‘man to man’, or perhaps more accurately ‘father to son’. Either way it was a ploy I instinctively resented. ‘Look, I know it’s a shock. Talk of reproductive health, infertility and sperm, is embarrassing for the first time. But I’m afraid a lot of medical conditions are embarrassing. The simple truth is that some wives are desperate to have children. Every month they feel themselves ovulating, they know their egg is healthy because they’ve been tested – sorry, I know it’s difficult – and they have sexual intercourse. But nothing happens, in a couple of weeks they get their period as usual.  So they decide to be impregnated by the sperm of a man who isn’t their husband. The husband has fully accepted the decision of course, and the donor remains completely anonymous.’

The doctor had removed his hand and was now leaning against the desk beside the senior matron. Very close beside her, I noticed. I didn’t know what to say. I realised that the very act of staying in that room, when I could have left had I been really determined to do so, was a form of tacit acceptance. Leaving was getting harder and harder. They were drawing me in deeper, and my resistance was breaking down. ‘Is this because of how I behaved to Junior Matron earlier?’ I saw out of the corner of my eye that the younger woman had vanished, so now I was pleading just with the two older people at the desk. ‘I’m very, very sorry, my behaviour was right out of order, I accept that. You’ll go and report me obviously, and I’ll take whatever punishment the Head dishes out.’ The doctor sighed gently, turning to Matron. ‘Your behaviour was unacceptable’, she said, measuring her words carefully. ‘And you’re lucky that Vicky – I was astonished to hear her use a personal name – is able to look after herself. But on the other hand, we are looking for boys who are self-confident and possessed of a strong sex-drive. ‘Lusty and virile’, shall we say?’

[to be continued]