the jdate colonoscopy

No, no, it’s not what you’re thinking —

– if this perchance is what you’re imagining:

All the men I’ve met on jdate over the past 18 months crowd into the little room at the doctor’s and keep me company during this ritual of middle age, the colonoscopy. They want to know me well — very well — so they keep their eyes on the little screen and follow the journey of the mini-camera as it makes its way through my intestines: a left here, a right here, a wiggle here, straight for an inch or so, then another left…

Fascinated, enthralled (or perhaps, in some cases, repelled and horrified), the men forget my actual presence in the room as they watch the camera’s progress. Soon, all too soon, the procedure is over. The men leave the room and return to their offices, where they check their jdate inboxes on their laptops, now imagining the large intestines of all their possible dates.

* * *

Well, as I said, it’s not what you were thinking.

Au contraire:

what I mean is that I went to Rolly’s gastroenterologist for my colonoscopy — really!

* * *
Jdate is supposed to be a dating network, not a medical referral service. But one kind of network can morph into another kind, depending……and in my case it did.

As you may remember, during my Central Park walk with Rolly in August, I anticipated a discussion of — well, what was it? romance, dating, women I might introduce him to, the man I had then met, our “relationship” — just about anything except what we did discuss, the colonoscopy.

How did we arrive at the asshole?

The conversation went from the tupperware I had left with him the Sunday after Thanksgiving 2006, to the contents of his refrigerator, to an ancient item lurking there — that portion of the Halflytely liquid he hadn’t consumed before his colonoscopy.

That led me to mention that I’d never had one, and Rolly to say I had to, and me to agree that he was right.

* * *
In a subsequent email message, he sent me his gastroenterologist’s name and phone number, and that’s the one I went to, two days after Christmas.

* * *

Everyone says the worst part is drinking the liquid and “voiding” the day before.

My friend Marion said she loved her colonoscopy; it was so much fun to watch the camera worming its way through her intestines. (No one else said that.)

* * *

For me the worst part was as I expected it would be, the few hours before the procedure: I hate the time immediately before something medical is done to me. I hate the change from my own nice interesting clothes to the blue gown, the stashing of my stuff in a locker, the giving over of myself to nurses, then the taking of my blood pressure, the insertion of the IV, the forms to sign saying I’m aware horrible things might happen and I could die in this, then the moments when I’m supine on the flat metal table, gazing up at the huge picture of the intestines on the wall, and the room is all wires and lights and computers-screens and surgical people — but I’m still conscious of it all — I hate all that.

* * *

And so it was this time. BUT — I had a saving thought as I lay there, I mean a thought that saved me from complete and total anxiety.

It occurred to me that Rolly must have lain on this same table with this same doctor and anesthetist hovering over him.

* * *

And then I wondered, did the same instrument go up his ass that is about to go up mine? do they use the same one for everyone and just run it under hot water or something between uses? or is it disposable?

* * *

Rolly had kindly asked me out to dinner for that night, a post-colonoscopy dinner-date, and I raised the issue with him. It was his understanding that because there’s a tiny camera at the end of the — whatever it is they poke up you — it must be re-used.

And therefore, I said, the same one that went up you went up me? We might be really intimately connected now, you know.

Yes, he said; we’re asshole buddies.
* * *

We did talk about other things besides this new intimacy.

We talked about Christmas, our families, his writing, my work, — and Performer.

About half-way through the meal, he broached the subject delicately, saying he knew I might not want to talk about it — but wow! I was ready to jump in. I told him all the gory details, and he was particularly interested and amused when I told him Performer’s suggestion that he and I might become “friends” as Rolly and I were. As quoted in the previous post, it went this way:

ME: Never.
P: Or maybe, like with Rolly, once you’re involved with someone else.
ME: No: never.
P: Why? You’re friends with Rolly.
ME: Rolly and I speak the same language. You and I don’t.

Yes, and Rolly was also, I must say, pleased with that, pleased to hear my assertion that he and I spoke the same language.

* * *

And no, don’t get your hopes up that the old embers were stirred and something will begin again between us.

It won’t.

As usual he was “running late” — 15 minutes — and I paid half the dinner bill, though I ate almost nothing. He ate most of the dinner I had ordered, because my stomach was not yet up to par.

* * *

He did invite me to a concert next week, though whether that jaunt will happen, I have no idea.

* * *

I know we enjoy one another’s company, and (as my friend S, who met him, and my friend Mary, who also met him, keep telling me) he’s very handsome. And you got a glimpse of his amazing body in this post. So it’s fun to look at him and be seated with him in a restaurant, and he must get a similar kind of frisson being out with an attractive woman.

But if he for one moment thought that I thought something romantic might begin again between us, he would, I think, explain to me why that could not be so.

I already know, so he doesn’t need to.

* * *

I wonder if he has a whole stable of such women.

I’m inclined to think there are quite a few.

He mentioned a women he had dated (he talked as if this episode were several years ago, but who knows?) with whom things hadn’t worked out: after a few dates, he had said to her, It was a near miss.

!!

That was his tactful (?) analysis of the romance: a near miss.

I told him that was a very clever phrase to use, and he seemed to appreciate its cleverness also.

* * *
Naturally I wondered if he thought the same phrase applied to our romance, his and mine, but I was wise enough not ask him.

* * *
So that was my post-colonoscopy date, both medical procedure and celebration afterwards deriving, in the long run, from that first email Rolly sent me via jdate on September 4, 2006.

* * *

A long route from then to the present intestinal moment.

* * *

photo credit: science-art.com

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