"You've acted on it?"
I didn't want to get into the whole story of Guy and me in the hotel -- in the sterile setting of the surgery it would have sounded too far-fetched and implausible that such a thing could have happened accidentally -- so I told him simply that I'd had "an experience" with another man which I'd found highly arousing.
"And since then, you've started wondering what it would be like to repeat what you experienced?"
"Very much so," I nodded. "I've actually found it difficult to think about anything else."
"Did you ever do anything like this with your wife or any other woman? Did you ever even fantasize about such a thing?"
I shook my head. "No, never. It wouldn't be something that would interest me at all. With women, I've always practiced straightforward vaginal sex, at least when it was offered to me."
He nodded, throwing me a smile and a shrug which I took to mean I wasn't the only one who had experienced such unwillingness in the bedroom.
He said, "You said you might like to move onto anal intercourse with another man...?"
"Perhaps at some point."
"So what about a relationship with a man? An emotional as well as sexual relationship?"
"No!" I said, realising immediately I had sounded rather too emphatic. Calming my voice, I went on: "I don't want that at all. I still want a woman in my life -- that hasn't changed -- I just want..."
"Sex with a man as well?"
"Yes," I agreed. "Just occasionally, maybe. But it's clearly something which attracts me..."
James thought for a moment and then seemed to come to a decision about what to do.
"While it's not unusual for a man of your age to discover a side to his sexuality which he wasn't previously aware of, I'd like to examine you -- if that's okay -- to rule out any physiological reasons for what you're currently experiencing."
"Yeah... I was hoping you'd do that. You mean hormonal changes, that kind of stuff?"
"Exactly," he said with a comforting smile. Like this was all perfectly normal. Like all guys my age go through a phase of wanting to lick each other's butts.
"Could you undress, please?" he asked. "I'll need you naked in a moment, but for now you can keep on your underwear."
"Oh..."
I hadn't realised that he'd want me to strip completely. It was suddenly obvious that he'd want to check my balls for abnormalities: why hadn't that occurred to me?
"It's okay," he said, with a reassuring air. "I'll just need you undressed for a moment or so."
"Sorry," I spluttered, standing up. "I'm... er... not really that comfortable about people seeing me naked."
"No-one will come in here," he said calmly. "No-one can see through the windows. You have complete privacy in here."
I nodded, taking off my jacket. "Yeah, okay. Sorry. It's just a thing I have."
As I undressed, I thought back to a school medical I'd had in my teens in the nurse's office, a room not much bigger than this one. Like this room, it had smelt vaguely of latex and disinfectant, and like today there had been a tingling coldness to the air which had made undressing seem even more unpleasant than it might otherwise have been.
For some reason, probably due to some cost-cutting drive, that year they were doing medicals in small groups and so four of us boys had been herded into the small office together. We'd been told to strip to our 'pants', as they called the white saggy standard-issue school shop briefs we all wore in those days, and had lined up in front of the local authority doctor who had looked even more cheerless about being there than we had.
I remember glancing at the other boys -- none of whom I really knew because our year-group had been sorted alphabetically rather than by class -- and noticing that I, as usual, had by far the most prominent bulge in my underwear. The boy at the end of the line had been a big lad with a growth of hair across his chest, and yet even his underpants showed only the smallest suggestion of what was contained inside.
Here we go again, I thought.
I knew the drill; everyone did. We were going to be asked to strip so he could check our balls, and everyone was going to look at how big my penis was, just like they always did.
The three of them would have willies like their little fingers, while mine, even in its limpest state, would hang halfway down to my knees looking as thick as my forearm. They'd have bollocks like wrinkled walnuts, while mine would stick out, blown up to the size of a pair of over-ripe plums. They'd have only a modest fuzz of hair down there, while my pubes would burst forth like some dense, tangled undergrowth from my belly button down past my scrotum.
As I'd stood there in front of the school doctor, I'd felt deeply ashamed. I knew that my genitals had grown disproportionately larger than the other boys because I masturbated so often whereas they were able to resist their urges. After all, what other explanation could there be?
Every morning, as I got dressed in my bedroom, it was getting progressively worse. I was finding it more and more difficult to pack myself into my underwear, struggling to get the flimsy gusset of my briefs to contain my testicles and penis -- ideally together -- in a way which wasn't too uncomfortable. It was becoming more and more of a challenge to close the fly of my school trousers over my unsightly bulge and I'd had to endure the embarrassment of asking my mother to replace my zip, not just once but twice. And in the classroom, during lessons, I was having to ask to leave the room to adjust myself every time I could feel I was beginning to develop an erection.
And yet, in spite of the obvious effect it was having on me, try as I might, I simply couldn't stop playing with myself.
Each night in my bed, no matter how ardently I forced myself to think of other things, my penis would slowly stiffen under the bedclothes, steadily lengthening and thickening until it had outgrown its foreskin and its pink exposed head would dribble clear liquid inside my pyjamas. Whatever I then chose to do -- whichever strategy I tried to use against it -- the outcome was always the same. Within minutes my hand would be working at full speed underneath the tent I'd made with my bedsheets, my pyjamas would be hitched down around my thighs, a film of sweat would be forming on my forehead and a guilty smile would be slowly broadening on my mouth.
I knew full well what I was doing -- my mother and brother had warned me of it often enough -- and that only 'bad boys' shared my forbidden pleasures. I'd heard all about such bad boys, for many years, oblivious that I would one day secretly share their company. Bad boys started out as good boys, just like I had, but when their peckers started growing hard, they'd find themselves unable to stop rubbing them.
Soon those boys had rubbed themselves so much that their genitals had grown, like mine, too big to for their underwear. Soon their balls were so swollen with their seed that they would chafe, like mine, against their thighs. Soon they had sprouted so much hair down there that it had spread, like mine, right up into their bum cracks.
I knew full well that every time I masturbated, my organ would grow a little bit bigger. That every time I released my seed by my own hand, my balls would refill to be that little bit plumper. And that the more I gratified myself in such a way, the more hair I would grow down there as a way of telling the world how dirty I was.
And yet, I simply couldn't stop. In every other respect, I regarded myself as a good boy. I tried hard at school, did well in my exams and fulfilled all of my chores around the house. I steered clear of girls and was respectful to my elders. I even ate all my greens. On top of that, though, I liked to rub my penis whenever it got hard -- which it very often did -- and that, by some cruel decree, seemed to be all that mattered.
So here I was in my school medical, alongside three lads I didn't even know, when the inevitable happened: "Right, boys. Take off your pants, please."
And so we did. We yanked them down and stepped out of them, all cringing with embarrassment. I blushed when I realised my briefs had a noticeable stiff patch on them from when I'd nipped to the boys' toilets during Maths and had taken the opportunity of finding an empty cubicle (and having forgotten about the medical) to quietly attend to myself. Glancing at the other lads, though, I saw that their underwear was -- for a variety of other reasons -- a lot worse for wear than mine and had felt that rare combination of relief and disgust.
