Dan vs The Sexual Health Clinic

I am a man who doesn’t exist according to the usual laws of physics, no! Not me. I seem to have my own funked-up gravitational field which pulls and pulls and pulls me towards awkward situations.

It’s not even the occasional event; it seems to be the case that I am at constant risk of undue humiliation. This isn’t going to be a blog so much as a tale of warning regarding one of the worst events of my little life.

Now, before I go on, I am going to warn you that this is a personal tale, I am only sharing it with you because I know you wont tell anyone, will you?

Ok jump back a few years to 2002.

It was a sunny day, the birds were singing, the faint sound of james brown’s I feel good hummed through the air. Even the usual troglodyte folk of my home town were smiling (half witted simpleton smiles, but smiles all the same). If you have ever been to Bloxwich you will know what a rarity this is.

(In the words of bill withers) I could tell it was going to be a lovely day.

I had just gone too see spiderman with Tobey Maguire (which at the time was my favourite film based on a comic )

There was literally no way this was going to be a bad day!!

As a man, one of the most ominous calls one can ever receive is from an ex, that has been absent for a few months. You look at your phone with a mixture of confusion and intrigue. Hmmmm, why is she calling, you say to yourself?

I hovered my thumb above the red button, but curiosity got the better of my thumb, I tried to fight it, my head was begging no, but my thumb was saying yes, YES,YES!! Mr Thumb had made up its mind, and hit the green answer button.

Me: H,h, h, hello??? (I answered rather sheepish way)

THE EX: errr, hiii?? (She replied equally if not more sheepishly, this wasn’t looking good)

Now, knowing this girl pretty well, I knew that this wasn’t her usual voice. Imagine someone who is very bubbly, talkative and impossibly irrational. Now imagine that person sounding like they were afraid that Freddy kreuger, Michael Myers and Jason Vorhees were about to molest her.

ME: are you ok, you sound a bit, errrrr . .

THE EX: I sound a bit errrrrrr?

Me: well not yourself, almost like you don’t want to talk to me which is odd as you called me and generally when someone doesn’t want to talk to someone else they avoid making the effort of calling them.

THE EX: well . . . . .

At this point I was thinking something is up, I wasn’t sure what it was but the undertones of this call were screaming “hello, I am a BIG red flag!”

Sadly my brains best deductive effort was that she had been kidnapped and this is the ransom call. Which, I decided was highly unlikely.

Me: this isn’t going to be a fun call is it, its not because you are missing me?

THE EX: (still sheepish) It depends on your definition of fun

ME: whats up

THE EX: well, I , err,its well.

Me: have you been infected with stupidity (I wasn’t far off with this comment)

THE EX: Not stupidity?

Awkward silence . . . . . . . . .

Me: Err(in hopeful voice) have you got a cold? Flu, Maybe?

THE EX: No, errr, I well, its complicated,

(In my head: Please don’t be an STD notification call, please dear lord don’t let her have an STD)

THE EX WITH Chlamydia : I have an STD

In my head, I fell to my knees looked up to the heavens and with arms open wide bellowed WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!

THE EX WITH Chlamydia: Towards the end of our relationship I started seeing someone else

Me: I hate you with the fire of a thousands suns!!!! I have to go to the clinic don’t I?

THE EX WITH Chlamydia: you don’t have to . . . .

Me: I honestly don’t like you at all right now . . . …………….I have friends who have been to those places. Whenever I ask them about it they act like soldiers who are recalling horrific and painful memories from the war.

THE EX WITH Chlamydia: I am sorry, I didn’t mean to.

Me: You didn’t mean to? What it was like an accident? I am no mathematician but I think the laws of probability would agree that you tripping over and impaling yourself on his erect cock is very and I mean VERY unlikely

THE EX WITH Chlamydia: yes, well no.

Me: . . . . . . (silence, just shaking my head)

The rest of the conversation was long and fairly unfriendly, I am going to be honest, It wasn’t my finest hour, it involved talk of condoms how much I hated her and the correct spelling of the word Chlamydia.

. . . . . . . . . flashforward to the day of my appointment

I was sat in the waiting room, nearly catatonic, rueing the day I met the fucking whore (she wasn’t an actual whore though, I was just annoyed). I looked across, the boy sitting opposite me was maybe 18 and belonged on Jeremy Kyle. He had too much gel in his hair, a la coste tracksuit on and his feet were sheathed in timberlands boots. He looked almost proud to be there, like this little trip was symbolic of him becoming a man. He was slumped in his chair, legs akimbo like a black-country Russell brand. He didn’t have a care in the world, even with the knowledge that some sort of evil entity was crawling through his genitalia.

He was called in . . . . . .

20 minutes later, a different boy walked out ( I don’t mean literally, like he had morphed into a totally different human being, oh no, that would just be silly, I speak in regards to his demeanour). Gone was the bravado and machismo of the man wearing an overpriced tracki and a kilo of gell on his under-developed cranium. He looked like he had been mugged and gang raped by very large men. What did they do to him in there, did they break him down like what occurred to Alex in a clock-work orange? I looked again and could see that his bottom lip was trembling.

I laughed to myself, (heheheheehehehe) not so cocky now are ya fucko! Heheheheeh, what a dick!

Then I remembered I had to go in next. SHIT

I sat down and a surly nurse eyed me up.

Nurse: take of your trousersMe: errr, off, off? Nurse: well I just need to be able to get to the areaMe: (I sighed, and with the saddest expression a man has every made I replied) ok.

Nurse: pants too,

Me: what, really, even the pants?

Nurse: (Smug smile + nod)

I sat there feeling very uncomfortable and watched as she put the rubber gloves on. I could tell by the way she did this, that I didn’t like her.

the next twenty minutes were a bit of a blur all I can tell you is I winced a LOT, contorted my arms into all sorts of obscure shapes (I kinda looked like a man who was about to turn into a werewolf), while at the same time mumbling to myself like the joker in the dark knight film, all while the most aggressive nurse in the world went absolutely ape-shit on flaccid cock. By the end of the ordeal my penis had shrunk to the point where it had practically retracted into my body, like a turtle head.

They say the greatest gift in the world is laughter. This may be subjective, but for me the greatest gift in the world was receiving the information that I wasn’t infected with Chlamydia .

The moral of this story, is perhaps one of two things

1. firstly, there is no such thing as too careful when it comes to prophylactic protection.

2. Aviod sleeping with harlots!

Dan B vs The Demon Barber

I have been told that whenever documenting an event, it is important to state your own POV before hand, this way, the reader is aware of any bias the writer may have.

So therefore, it is appropriate for me to inform you that I am not a big fan of the barbers/ hair stylists. I am not sure where this dislike came from or when it started.

My first memory of it is in 1988, I decided to grow a mullet, the haircut that’s ‘business at the front, but party at the back (http://www.wridefamily.com/wp-content/mullet.jpg). I told my mom that this was because I wanted to look like Riggs (Mel Gibson) from lethal weapon, but in actual fact I hated going to the barbers. I decided against the mullet after weeks of torment at school, instead of looking like Riggs I actually resembled keith chegwin (from cheggars plays pop).

My second major attempt at rebellion came some years later when home hair fashioned kits become popular. My mom, with the best intentions stated she would cut my hair. With the thrill off finally escaping the terror of the unforgiving scissors I naively agreed. After twenty minutes she was done, and my expectations of looking like johny bravo were dashed, I looked like a survivor from a concentration camp.

…With these two events I finally accepted that the barbers were a necessary evil.

For twelve years I have lived with this belief, until today when I met a person who I am going to respectfully name clipper–armed-torturous-evil-bitch.

I arrived at the stylists about 2ish, there was a small queue so I decided to read the witty and insightful ‘true’ stories in FHM magazine. On a side note, I should highlight that until now I believed witty stories were clever and humorous anecdotes. FHM defines ‘witty’ stories as tales involving drunken one night stands which generally include the phrases “I did her even though she was a minger” and “she looked like a hippo so I did her from behind”, not my definition of wit but to each there own, anywho, I digress.

I am second in line, I watch as a skinny man with a highlighted ostentatious haircut walks past me and sits in the chair. I overhear him asking for “a trim on the top, faded at the sides with tufts at the back” It seemed a bit complicated to me but in my day a short back and sides with a streak of bril cream was the height of fashion. 8 minutes later I watched the same man leave with the kind of facial expression reserved for funerals and victims of date rape. I look up at his hair and “a trim on the top, faded at the sides with tufts at the back” seemed to resemble a grade 3 all over.

Next, I hear a word that will forever send chills down my spine, “Next”! With dread I stood up and starting stepping towards the stylist. I see a short pot bellied ‘lady’ with greasy hair and some kind of rare form of gout present on both cheeks. I look around to see if any other customers wants to go up before me, but sadly no such luck. One even mustered a sympathetic smile; he must have known what kind of horror was waiting in store for me.

I sit down, and start to wonder why this person chose the vocation of hair dressing; She looks really pissed, not drunk, but just really unhappy. She is more interested in reading txts from her phone than the customer (me), which for me is the opposite of professional. Without taking her eyes of the phone she grunts “what do you want” her tone was that of a disgruntled teenager who has been summoned to the office by a teacher. With a genuine quizzical confusion I whimper “haircut?”, she looks at me, unimpressed.

Her expression, that of a frown, “what do you usually ‘av?” I answer “Clippered at the sides , bit longer on top, longer in the middle, like a baby Mohawk”

She puts the apron around my throat and with a garrotting action nearly chokes me .

She then orders me to “go down”. “Pardon?”, I ask, what does she want, is she asking me to philash her? Lye on the floor? BEG for mercy?

(Me):When you say go down?

(Clipper–armed-torturous-evil-bitch );“You are tall, I need to reach the top of your ‘ead, go down!”

Did she want my spinal column to shrink, maybe Have a few vertebrae removed? I scooch forward so my back is really curved. I feel like I am going to get a kyphosed posture, Really I am feeling genuine discomfort at this point. Then I realise it’s a pneumatic chair, she can press the peddle and it will go down instantly. Why does she hate me so much? Bitch!

She then springs into action, she is clipping, cutting, aggressively combing. She has a crazy look in her eyes and seem at this point to resemble a frenzied serial killer rather than a stylist. I am filled, at this point with a trifector of unpleasant emotions; fear that she is gonna hack off my ears, depression due to my back pain, and a rekindled fear of barbers/stylists.

She is furious yet silent, I look in the mirror and catch her icy stare through narrowed eyes, if ever I had a nemesis, she is it. I am like batman, she is joker, I am doctor who, she is Davros the darlick. I am Orvil she is cuddles the monkey. She grabs a water squirter, still looking at me through cold lifeless slits of eyes. She starts spraying the back of my head, then randomly moves to my side and squirts that shit in my eye, I want to say WTF??!?!?!!? Whats wrong with you, crazy? Want to disarm her and give her a taste of her own medicine. But I m stricken with fear, she has sharp objects in her hands and she clearly isn’t afraid to use them. I sit there still like Jeff goldblum in Jurassic park trying not to be noticed by the T-REX.

The rest of the event continues in silence, fuelled with equal mixes of her hate and my totally obedience.

She grabs a mirror shows me the back of my head, looks at me as if wanting my gratitude. I want to say “impressive, no lasting physical scars”, but she is still armed and I want to leave, I manage to raise an eyebrow, give her a wry smile and say “well done”

I pay, I leave and I want to cry!

I take one final look at my head, I remember saying “baby Mohawk”, apparently she thought “fuck you customer, I cut what I want!”

To be honest, she didn’t do a bad job, aside from me asking for a mini Mohawk and getting a buzz cut.

I end on a diplomatic note, I am going to say that her customer service, manners, ability to take direction were not my cup of tea . . . . This is because I don’t like pieces of shit in my cup of tea!!!