You know that question you always ask kids, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Well, I always had the answer ready since I was four: Doctor.
At first it was because I was a child and every boy wants to be a baseball player, a fireman, or a doctor. I chose doctor. All of the emergency room shows and specials on Discovery helped secure that profession as something very interesting. Plus, every doctor I knew was very rich.
As I got older, the childhood fantasy continued to guide me. When I had to pick electives in high school, I had no better choices than biology, anatomy, chemistry, and other natural sciences. I went to the local college, and majored in pre-med because nothing else really jumped out at me.
But once I got into my Junior year, the classes really started to kick my ass. It was clear to me quickly that I was not going to be able to survive these classes to say nothing about how I was going to pass an entrance exam into Med School.
So what do you do? I did the only thing I could think of. I transferred into nursing. I still really liked the idea of working in a hospital and helping people, and there were plenty of technician jobs and surgeon assistants that did almost everything a doctor did. Plus, the guy to girl ratio in nursing is awesome.
At my college there were plenty of potential "Hot Nurses" and come Halloween, several of them donned the risqué-cliché outfit to rave reviews. I joined the exclusive group of females with little problem. I am not a big guy, about 5'7'' 160lbs. My name is William, but I go by Will. Those who like to point out my diminutive stature call me Billy. Most of the girls I go to class with have boyfriends who call me Billy.
My study groups are great until the boyfriends show up. The girls are all smart and beautiful, and they attract the big strong basketball and football players. I don't know the mentality of a bully because I never was one, but I guess they feel they need to humiliate me in front of their women to make sure I never become a threat. I don't get as many male nurse jokes when I'm with the girls, obviously, but if I run into any of them in the dorms or cafeteria they usually crack a joke and shove me into wall.
It is frustrating because I know I am probably in better shape than they are. I run all the time. I do push ups and sit-ups until I'm bored. I actually have to wear a backpack with books in it for push-ups and hold a book or two behind my head to do crunches. I don't dare go into the weight room with all the jocks. That's just asking to get beat up. I bet the list of sports I could beat these guys at (tennis, racquetball, volleyball, bowling, etc..) is longer than the one or two they could beat me at.
It is also frustrating to see that the jokes they make at my expense do have an impact on how my classmates view me. I have been so neutered by the jocks that my classmates treat me like one of the girls, often asking my opinion of the latest pop star or what I think of a Hollywood hunk. I didn't have a problem with girls in high school, but I guess that was because I had a 16-year-old's body. The problem in college was that I still had a 16-year-old's body.
I didn't quit, though. In fact, I found I really liked nursing. There was a hospital at our university and I got a part time job in the lab at the fertility clinic. It was a bit odd handling seamen samples at first, but after a while, fluid becomes fluid. We analyzed blood and urine too, and I was surrounded by professionals who had already heard all the jokes, so it was easy to take it seriously.
They also really liked me because they now had an easy choice for who should bring guys to the donor room. There was a 60-something nurse who had worked there before I started that had always taken the guys to the donor room. There are instruction you have to give like "Use the alcohol swap to clean the genitals" and "You need to let us know if it is a complete sample" and "We can't have any saliva in the sample" and "The visual aids are in this drawer."
I can see how the younger women in the lab could have a hard time telling these things to a guy. Me, I could fool around with the guys as I told them what they had to do. They were either very nervous about it, or they looked like they wanted to crack a joke. If they had to get instructions on how to jerk off from an attractive female it would either make them more nervous or they would say something regrettable. With me, it made everything a lot easier.
I also got a lot of different feedback from the guys than what they would likely give to a woman. I've never had to do it, but I imagine if it was a woman picking up your sample you would hand her the brown paper bag without saying a word and walk out of the clinic. With me, I always got the same response when I picked up the sample. "Dude, you got to get some better porn in there. That stuff is nasty!"
Eventually I went to find out what they were talking about. They were right. There were two magazines, and they were both from the 80's and filled with sticky pages. We had VHS tapes that were fuzzy and beaten up. No DVDs, no mags less than 20 years old.
It took me a while to have the courage to bring it up at one of our weekly lab meetings, as I was the only guy in the lab, and I didn't know what girls thought of that kind of thing. I thought they probably knew about it and kept the material crappy on purpose just to mess with the guys. But when I finally did bring it up, everyone gave me blank stares.
"Helga always took care of that," one of the older techs said. Helga was the old woman who had recently retired. That made sense. She probably picked them up when she started and never updated them.
"What do we do about it?" another asked. They looked around at each other. I could tell they didn't know the first thing about picking up porn.
"Give me $100 and I will get what you need," I volunteered.
"One hundred dollars!"
"This clinic just spent tens of thousands of dollars to update all of the recovery chairs because they were five years old. If you are going to spend that kind of money to make sure the women are comfortable, I think you can spend a fraction of that to accommodate the guys."
I didn't need to say anymore. The head tech went to go talk to one of the doctors (a guy), who then went to look at the visual aids, and I had $100 in cash five minutes later.
I actually didn't know that much about picking up porn either. With the internet, who needs to buy it anymore? I stopped into my local video store and made my way to the back room. Sure enough, half the titles were on sale for cheap. Ten dollars later I had five good DVDs. I also stopped at Wal-mart and picked up a cheap DVD player. I thought I should probably take the DVDs back to my dorm room to make sure they worked. I didn't want to deliver faulty media. I hoped my roommate would be at his study group again tonight.
With this on my mind, I made my last stop at the liquor store right next to campus. I had just turned 21, so I had been there several times already, and I knew they had a good collection of magazines. I walked inside and didn't even bother looking in the main part of the store because what I wanted was behind the counter. "Can I have Playboy, Hustler, Perfect 10, and Barely Legal," I said, probably a bit too loudly.
"Will?" I heard a familiar female voice say from behind me.
I froze. I am such an idiot. There was a liquor store on the other side of town where I knew I wouldn't run into anyone.
"Will is that you?"
I knew the voice before I turned around. It was Susan, a blonde bombshell that was probably the hottest one of my classmates. She had a picture perfect face with a swimsuit model's body. She was my height and every guy's wet dream. I had only one wish as I turned to look at her: Please be alone.
"Billy!" She wasn't.
Greg, the 6'4'' quarterback of the college's football team, who could probably throw me 50 yards, was with her. "I didn't know you could drink yet? Shouldn't they give you a couple years? Beer is a big step from breast milk."
"Greg, knock it off."
While I knew I was probably never going to score with any of my hot classmates, at least they didn't make fun of me too. I was also holding my breath because I would have expected a porn comment by now. Could it be possible that they didn't know why I was here? Maybe they didn't hear what I had asked the cashier for?
