Doctors and Nurses

by

Evelyn Carroll

 

It was the boy next door who taught me how to touch myself.

He was called Sean. I'd loved him since I was a little girl. He used to let me play with his toy soldiers when we were both younger. His mother let me have a photograph of him once. I have it here. His hair is very black in it. He looks sulky, like a pop star, with his wavy, slightly long hair. I am looking at it now, remembering him, remembering this young him and his older self.

Of course, he was older than me, so I had no hope of showing him off to my friends as a boyfriend. He ignored me mostly, except when he invited me to his house to watch TV or play or talk.

The game started without me noticing. It's hard to remember exactly how or when we started doing that. My memory plays tricks. I think it must have started something like this ─ one day when his mother was out.

'Why don't we play doctors and nurses? I can be the doctor and you can be a young woman with an unexplained pain . . . here.' He laid his hand on my abdomen.

I didn't want to play such a stupid, childish game but I liked it when he touched me so gently and stared into my eyes like that. I wanted him to kiss me but didn't dare ask or offer.

'Lie down on the bed, Nurse Buxton. Yes, here.'

He pushed me down and lifted my legs onto his narrow bed.

'Now, where's the pain?'

'Can't we do something else, Sean?'

'I'm Doctor Sean. Now, does it hurt here?'

He was rubbing his hand over my chest. 'No,' I said, halfway between a no-don't-touch-me-there and a no-that feels-nice.

'Here, perhaps?' His thumbs pressed into my tummy, near the hip bones. It hurt.

'Ouch,' I said.

'I see. Well, I'm going to have to give you a thorough examination. Take off your dress.'

'No,' I said, but he was already unbuttoning it down the front.

'Don't, Sean.'

'Don't be silly, Nurse Buxton. I'm a doctor. I've seen it all before.'

I wondered if he had. Had he taken a girl's clothes off before? I knew he had had a girlfriend last year. Her name was Wendy. She had rich parents. I'd never met her but I hated her.

He was touching my chest again.

'No pain here then. I think we better have a look down here.'

Again, he was touching my tummy. His thumbs hooked under the elastic of my underwear.

'I didn't know anything could be so beautiful,' he said.

My knickers were down and he was staring at my bare private parts. I froze with fear and embarrassment. Before I could protest, he had pulled them off completely. 'Beautiful,' he repeated.

His hands parted my legs. I tried to resist but he coaxed me with doctorly phrases like 'How can I examine you properly if you won't relax?'

His hands parted my private lips then. They started to massage me.

'Don't,' I said quietly. 'Don't.' But it felt nice.

After about fifteen minutes, he said 'Has the pain gone now?'

'Yes,' I said.

'I've got a pain now, Nurse. Will you examine me?'

He lay down beside me and guided my hand to the front of his trousers. I knew what he meant. He pulled his spear out and pressed it into my reluctant hand. It was warm.

'Rub it like this,' he said, demonstrating the movement by holding my hand in his.

Half of me was fascinated. I'd never seen one before, much less touched. It was soft and hard at the same time and covered in prominent veins: at once very ugly and strangely beautiful. And so warm.

'Can you go faster?'

'Faster?'

'Yes. Like this.' His hand covered mine again and speeded up my reluctant massage.

'Oh yes,' he sighed, 'that's it. Oh, that's so good, so . . . Yes! Yes! Like that.'

I felt a glow of satisfaction at being able to please him so much. He pulled me into a kiss. He had never kissed me before. I had made him want to kiss me.

Only when our kiss ended did I notice the wetness on my tummy. Yuck! I wanted to wash. 'What have you done?' I said accusingly.

'It's all right. It didn't go inside you. I'll get a tissue.'

Yuck, though. Yuck, yuck, yuck.

Why did I come back two days later? Why did I do that? Why did I let him examine me again? This time he asked me to put it in my mouth. I refused of course. He took all his clothes off that time. His spear was threatening. He touched my private parts with it and I thought for a moment that he was going to force it inside. But he didn't. He just rubbed it between my legs until it squirted all over my tummy again. Yuck!

The next time I came round to Sean's house, his mother was at home. She was in the kitchen. Sean sat in the armchair and I sat on the floor next to him. The room was dark apart from the flicker of the TV screen. A nature programme. I let him touch me between the legs as we watched the lions and listened to the stupid anthropomorphic commentary. His finger slid under my briefs and massaged the front of my sex. That was the first time I really noticed how wet he made me.

It became a routine. Sean, me and the television in the living room. His mother in the kitchen. His finger making me wet and making me feel very nice. Only occasionally were we alone at his house. Then he would undress me and touch me and make me touch him until he squirted that white stuff.

I knew enough about boys to know that he wanted to put it in me but I didn't think he would force me. After all, he hadn't forced me to put it in my mouth, although he kept asking. I kept hoping that, now we had been so intimate, he would ask me out on a date.

                           *****

One afternoon, when we were playing doctors and nurses, Sean started pretending that we were medical students. 'Now, Miss Buxton, this thing you're holding is called the penis. If you touch it, it gets hard because blood rushes to it. Similarly, this little thing will swell up if massaged.' He was fingering me in the usual way. 'It's called the clitoris. And just behind it is a hole called the vagina.'

His finger pressed into me. He had never done that before.

'Ow!'

'Does it hurt?'

'A bit.'

'Does this hurt?' He started reciprocating his finger inside me and I felt another finger trying to gain entrance. Suddenly, I flooded. I could feel juices from deep inside me drenching his fingers. I could smell myself. I wanted him to kiss me. He rolled on top of me, his thing pressing at my entrance.

'Can I put it in you, Susan?'

'No,' I screamed, pushing him away and jumping up from his bed in terror.

'I'm sorry,' he said.

I sat down and put my arm round him, taking his spear in my other hand. He had stopped. Bless him. In a fit of gratitude, I suppose, I bent down and took it in my mouth for the first time. I had thought it would taste of wee, but it didn't. I had made him squirt so often that I knew the preliminary signs. I watched in close-up as he pumped jets of white goo onto his flat stomach.

'That was fantastic,' he said.

He was touching me again. Down there. Touching my clitoris. Circling it. Flicking at it. I felt my vagina flood with fluid again but, this time, something was different. It was pulsing somehow. Pulsing inside me as if it would blow up like a balloon. My stomach muscles seemed to be contracting in time with the pulses.

'What's happening,' I said, in panic.

Sean took his hand away. 'What's the matter?'

I wanted his hand back. 'I've got this weird pain.'

'Pain?'

'Yes, like my tummy's getting a cramp but different.'

'I'll stop then.'

'No. Don't.'

'But . . .'

'It's gone now.'

He touched me again. The feeling had gone. Eventually, he stopped.

'Please,' I said.

'What?'

'Don't stop.'

'I'm tired. Shall we watch telly?'

I pulled his hand back between my legs. I wanted his touch so badly. I tried to make his penis hard with my other hand but it wasn't working. Had he stopped liking me?

'You do it,' he said.

'What?'

'I'll show you.' He took my hand away from his soft penis and guided my index finger to my clitoris.

'I can't,' I protested.

He persisted until my finger seemed to find its own rhythm. He let go and sat up, watching me touch myself in that dirty way ─ smiling. I could see his spear getting rigid again. Then the same feelings came back: pulsing, contracting, waves of panic, waves of ─ oh my god, oh my god . . .

I couldn't stop it. It happened like an earthquake. I could hear myself screaming, as if from another room.

'I think you came,' he said.

'Came?'

'Came. Had an orgasm. It's like when I shoot.'

'Shoot?'

'Yeah, when spunk comes out of my dick; the white stuff.'

'Oh.'

'What did it feel like?'

'I don't know. Weird. Frightening. Nice. But I feel sort of empty.'

'I could help with that,' he said, trying to roll on top of me.

'No,' I protested. I knew about babies and that white stuff. I told him so.

'I could get some contraceptives,' he said.

'No,' I said. 'Don't.'

That night, in bed, I did it to myself again. I felt very dirty but I couldn't help it. I had to.

                           *****

Deep down, I knew that I shouldn't see Sean any more. I knew that he would put it in me and that I would be marked as a slag then. It was bad enough what we had already done. I had even put his thing in my mouth once. Yuck! I should stop touching myself every night too. But I couldn't stop. The feeling of release was fantastic. I just had to. I dreaded getting caught by my parents. It was almost impossible not to cry out aloud sometimes. The first time, I told my dad that I had had a nightmare, when he came into my room to see what the noise was. Some nightmare!

Sean kept inviting me round but I was too scared. I knew what he wanted to do. Then Sean's mother asked me to visit. I couldn't think of an excuse, so I agreed. At least she would be there. I tried to stay with her in the kitchen, but old habits die hard. Before long I was sitting on the floor next to Sean, watching a soap opera. His arm trailed between my thighs. His fingers eased under the cotton, touching my clitoris.

His mum came rushing in when I came.

'What's the matter?' she said.

Sean had whipped his hand away just in time.

I could hardly pant, less speak. 'It's OK. I just had a sort of panic attack,' I lied. 'I'd better be going.'

'Would you like a nice cup of tea?'

'No thanks. I'll go. Thanks.'

Sean looked as if he could explode. He was trying to cover the bulge in his trousers with his hands.

'Come on, Sean,' said Mrs P, 'the least you can do is see Susan to the door.'

I knew that if he stood up it would show. I laughed at the thought. 'It's all right Mrs P, I know the way.'

'Thanks,' said Sean surlily.

He cornered me on the way home one afternoon. I asked my friends to wait for me while I spoke to him.

'Have you been avoiding me?'

'No.'

'Come round then.'

'I'm busy.'

'Please.'

'No.'

'I miss you.'

'You only want one thing.'

'I want you.'

Then he kissed me. Right there in the street. Right in front of my friends. I felt good.

'I've got a stethoscope,' he said.

'I don't want to do that any more.' It was a lie. My knickers were already damp.

'Please, Susan. I love you.'

Three little words. Just enough to dissolve a poor girl's resolution.

'OK. When?'

'Sunday. Mum's out with her new beau.'

'OK.'

                           *****

He stripped me as soon as I arrived. He hadn't been joking about the stethoscope. He listened earnestly to my chest. I found myself wishing that my breasts were bigger or ─ to be more accurate ─ existed. He gradually moved the suction cup down towards my groin. He parted my legs and, for the first time, kissed me there. I felt myself flood as his tongue went between the lips, found my clitoris and flicked it. This was even better than my own finger. I was disappointed when he stopped kissing me there and started to take his clothes off.

I stopped myself from doing what I wanted to do and touch myself. I didn't want anyone to know that I did that shameful thing. He lay down and guided my hand to his prong. I rubbed it and let him rub me.

'Put it in your mouth again,' he whispered.

'No. I don't want to.'

'Let me do it to you then.'

'No.'

'I've got these.' He was rolling a rubber sheath over his spear.

I knew it was too late then. I tried to get up but he was too strong. I screamed for help but there was no one to hear my cries. He forced my legs apart with his knees. It hurt when he pushed it into me: a sort of tearing sensation. Then he seemed to swell up inside me ─ and was gone. I felt empty. Disappointed. I wanted to touch myself so badly. I cried.

'Thank you,' he said, kissing my tearful face. 'That was great.'

'Why do you hate me so much?' I said.

'I don't hate you. I love you.'

'Liar. Look what you just did to me.'

'Oh God! The blood . . .' he said, jumping up and dabbing my thighs with a tissue.

I went home and cried all night. My mother knew something was wrong but she couldn't worm it out of me.

Despite my horror at what had happened, I couldn't stop touching myself all that week. I was becoming an expert at orgasms. The trouble was that, every time I had one, I felt empty and unsatisfied. My vagina wanted something to grip on. I wanted to feel Sean's hardness inside me.

It only took me a week to go to him.

'Good afternoon, Doctor. I've got a terrible pain here.' I pressed his palm against my bra. 'And here.' I pulled the other one to my groin.

He kissed me and started to undress me in the hall. In minutes we were in his bed and he was thrusting his hips frantically between my open thighs. I felt him swell and burst inside me. He stopped moving.

'Please,' I said. 'Don't stop now.'

He just lay there. I could feel him shrinking inside me.

'Please.' I could feel the tears coming.

'I can't,' he said. Why don't you bring yourself off.'

He guided my hand towards my sex as he rolled off me. It was his idea, I told myself. Why not? My fingers went about their accustomed task. In minutes, I was screaming.

'That's the sexist thing I've ever seen.' Sean was standing over my spent body, rubbing his thing slowly.

I came again as he said this, my fingers flittering frantically against my needful little clit. As the climax subsided, I felt his goo land on my face and chest. My mouth, open for a scream of delight, took a good dollop of it. Without thinking, I swallowed it.

                           *****

Sean has gone now. Three years it's been now. I miss him. I even miss pushing his wheelchair down to the shops. I even miss his paunchy old man's body and bald head. We had a good marriage. It took him three years, but he eventually learnt how to hold off and let me come before he spent inside me. The kids have all left home. Sarah, the eldest, who resulted from that time when I first brought myself off in front of Sean, is a doctor ─ a specialist even, specializing in diseases of the rich, she always says. And my youngest, poor, sensitive David, is head nurse at the local funny farm. The grandchildren are all delightful. But little Clara reminds me painfully of me sometimes. She spends far too much time with the boy next door. I must give her a talk about the facts of life some day.

And I want you all to know this. Yes, women of my age do still have sexual feelings. I still do what Sean taught me to do all those years ago. I'm going to do it now. As usual, I'll imagine Sean is watching me. Throughout our marriage, it was the one thing absolutely guaranteed to turn him on.