On two separate occasions, marks have been a cause of agitation for me; condemnation and a welcome, respectively, as seen below.

On another of my brief sojourns in London , I went to a private healing centre for some colonics. Let me say straight away that this tale has nothing to do with scat or enema kinks. No, my reason for going was more straightforward than that; I was feeling uncomfortable ‘down there’ and wanted to see if the emerging fashion for natural health cures had any foundation.

I duly made an appointment and turned up early on a Saturday morning at a converted residential house a few miles south of the Thames . The London streets are fairly empty at 9am, a few double-deckers swish past on their way to the depo, the meagre atmosphere of poverty and resignation - it was Streatham if I remember rightly - temporarily suppressed by clear air and a gleam of sunshine.

On entering an upstairs surgery I was greeted by a forty-year-old woman with dusty blond hair. She spoke in a thick central European accent. She invited me to use the toilet in a nearby corridor. This was unnecessary as I had already ‘been’ - and had even spruced myself up with a little nether-regions aftershave to make a good impression. I removed my trousers - a towel was hastily added with expert unseeing - and had a nozzle inserted into my rectum on the labo. The nozzle looked like something from the Gemini space program; aluminum, lathed to a polish, tubes within tubes, a masterpiece of precision engineering. The insertion was professional too: Vaseline, a quick tweak, some constant low-key conversation to emarginate embarrassment and any reference to the actuality of what we were doing. All this I participated in willingly, for what was my therapist to know about my private life and all its predilections? And it is silly to be embarrassed at my age for an innocent medical. ‘Where are you from,’ I asked. ‘ Russia .’ My therapist surveyed me unemotionally through her pebble-lens glasses and I felt a respectful chill in my being. I vaguely thought of James Bond movies. Olga Clegg, was it?

I lay and pondered whilst curiously cool sensations fluttered in my abdomen. It was all done without seeing anything and a total absence of odour. Gradually, I felt my body lightening. The session was so successful - later in the street my brain was twinkling and I felt airy as a hollow bamboo - I booked another session by phone for some three weeks later.

On this next occasion the process was repeated; the same nozzle, the same low-key conversation. But this time I had cause for caution; hesitation even. A few days earlier I had had my bottom caned - I know not where now, for such are the vagaries of memory - and wondered what my Russian therapist would say if she saw any marks.

Wriggling like a Sicilian virgin on her wedding night, I slithered backwards onto the labo in the attempt to conceal my marks. I have reason to believe that for the first fifteen minutes I was successful, but I was rucking up the sheets, probably showing signs of suppressed panic through reflexive jerks and inhales. Yet, her demeanour remained as previously; methodical, professional, calm. But then, somewhere halfway through the proceedings, a shadow passed over her brow. Did I detect a puzzled expression? She turned and felt the temperature of the water. A few clicks emitted from a nearby glass tray; my nozzle was soon erect, held in thin rubber gloves. But on her returning to me I noticed a dour, condemning physiognomy - perish the revelation! - my colonics therapist had deduced the errant hobbies of her patient!

Not only that but severe Russian speculations were taking place concerning the true motivation for my visit. What could I say? Denying myself as an enema freak would only compound the impression. So, for the remainder of the appointment, I endured her silent condemnation in guilty silence. The Sicilian ‘virgin’s’ past had been exposed - there was no blood on the sheets, worse still, signs of a visceral incontinence. Needless to mention, I did not return for any further new-age slooshings at a later date.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On another occasion concerning marks, I had reason to attend ‘the most exclusive club in London ’. I had a peculiar sensation in my urinary tract and wanted to verify the feared conclusion: recent philanderings had provided me unwanted ‘cooties’. (The donor had perhaps been Monica of Swiss Centre fame.)

But ‘the most exclusive club in London ’ is expert at handling cooties, for it is, indeed, a venereal infections clinic. Housed in a Kafkaesque Victorian hospital near Paddington Station, shrouded in alleys and gray walls reaching up to a slate-gray sky, the clinic presents a grim facade; something reminiscent of Dante’s account of the gates of Hades (‘Abandon privacy all ye who enter here.’)

Philippino cleaners mopped desultorily on my entry near the portable yellow boards, adjusted to warn one of slipping on the wet floors. Doctors with clipboards and open white coats whirled like batmen along its slithery cream corridors. And there was a receptionist who delegated me a number - no names used in this seedy affair.

In the waiting room I sat amongst lone businessmen, depressed Jamaicans, the odd hippy; all of us studiously avoiding each other’s eyes and each pretending to be passing pharmaceuticals salesmen. The walls were adorned with government posters warning against smoking whilst pregnant, importing live animals and AIDS.

My number was called out and I went into a tiny office with a green bed. A doctor, half my age, greeted me and said, ‘Just slip your trousers down and lie on here.’ I then had my prostate massaged and answered his few questions about my sexual history. A speculum was inserted into my rectum. ‘Hmm. I see you have had your bottom caned.’ ‘Er, yes.’ He inserted a finger and pressed against my prostate. ‘Does this hurt?’ ‘No.’

On a second visit to get the results, I was called into the same office. The same young doctor examined me again and said the tests were all negative. ‘You did the right thing, mind you,’ he said, ‘one can never be too careful.’ We both shared the same lightness of relief and I asked him some questions about safe-sex and clinic statistics. ‘Have you ever been to the Raven Club in Vauxhall,’ he asked, in passing. I said I had not. ‘They have some pretty good SM evenings there.’ I brightened further, showing moderate interest. ‘Oh, yes,’ said my young doctor, ‘I go there every Friday. Perhaps, I might see you there one day.’




~~~

Copyright 2004

This story is reprinted here with the explicit permission of the author. If you would like to share it with others, please link directly to this page or contact the author for permission. It is a violation of copyright law to distribute or reprint this piece without that permission, however you may include a short quote from it, not more than 20% of the total text. Please respect the integrity of this work.