It is a very old tradition of mine to be bitter on valentine's day. As this day was approaching on my calendar, I wondered. Will I not write sarcastic top ten lists this year? Will I not send ridiculous cards to my single friends? Will I not (gasp!) wear black??

Fear not. Just because I'm dating someone does not mean that I've lost my bitter self in a bed or rose petals. Perhaps this was inspired by hearing a few friends of mine repeat the same mantras about dying alone that I said every night for a full decade, or perhaps it's watching Hillary Clinton slowly lose her grip on the primaries and being assured of my fear that America, dear old God fearing macho America, would not elect a woman to lead them, and God forbid a woman who was cheated on by her husband. Not that I really dislike Mr. Obama. (Though I wish he had also pledged to double NIH funding.) Not that I am not thrilled at the idea of having a Black man as president. That is if he beats McCain... Please God. The red states and White Bible Thumping America may squelch that dream, too. But I think, ironically, if Obama wins, he won't win on his proclaimed platform of CHANGE but on, eh, fine, some change, but not too much.

Anyway, I'm not here to discuss politics. I'm here tonight purely for entertainment purposes. First a disclaimer: the following is a work of fiction, any character or episode resembling a person or incident is purely coincidence. Kind of. No, for real: this is almost all lies, and the things that are truths have been so twisted and stretched they are now mostly lies, too.

Second, a dedication: to all the happily coupled and the miserably singled and the miserably coupled and the happily singled friends out there, Happy Valentine's Day. And to all, a goodnight.

The Plight of the Female Doctor-to-be

In reference to your advice to “Wears Glasses” in which you so misleadingly advised her not to hide her intellectual pursuits from her boyfriend and that smart is sexy and powerful career driven women, coveted among the male population, I would like to point out a few things in my experience that negate this. My first tip for “Wears Glasses:” get contacts.

I thought I had it bad in college. There were three kinds of girls in college. Girls who put out, girls who had boyfriends, and girls who were virgins. And invariably ugly. I fell in the third category, of course. I sat in the back of my genetics class cataloging the guys into those I was attracted to and those I possibly had a chance at fucking. These were mutually exclusive categories. When I applied to medical school, the first thing I looked into was male to female ratios. I really didn’t give a damn about NIH funding or number of students per cadaver. Please. I wanted to know if I could put an end to my dismal solo streak. So I rejected Mount Sinai. 70% female in the first year class the year I applied to medical school. And I set my heart and 20 odd years of devout observance in RomCom, the only religion to capture my faith, on the hopes that med school would be better. After all, the guys would be smarter and older and more mature and all around better people than the college beer chugging variety.

As it turned out there were three types of girls in medical school. Girls who were engaged, girls who found boyfriends during the first two days of orientation, and girls who were doomed to being single. Some were ugly. I fell in the third category. Of course. So I turned to the world outside of medicine with a few girlfriends. Mary, the most outgoing of us all, gave me a pep talk before I hit the bars: “the female medical student is about as highly desired as the dodo bird, the only difference is that the dodo bird is extinct, so it has one up on us.” Rule number 1: Never, ever tell a guy that you are in medical school.

So Mary graciously invited me to go out with her and her possy. Some of the few girls in the class who seemed doomed to being single, yet weren’t ugly. This was a step up for me. Mary was the first to grab a guy’s attention. He had dark gelled hair and was in finance. A combination about as rare in Manhattan as the farm chicken is in a chicken farm. It took no more than 30 seconds before the dreaded question arose. So what do you girls do? I’m a dance teacher, said Mary. Then around the bar, one by one we each answered something that was decisively cute and female: in school for fashion design, a yoga instructor, a secretary for W magazine. I’m a cheerleader for the Mets, I said. I was never invited out with them again.

Second year I learned how to do a physical exam. I was a bit nervous of having to examine a penis up close. After all, all three of my penile experiences were with drunk college boys and definitively in the dark, you know, like in a random dorm room, in a closed section of the library, or once, quite literally, in a closet. Thank God we first learned the basics in same sex groups.

I had a pediatrician lead mine. She urged us to do serious exams on each other, not cut corners, and treat our partners as if they were actual patients. Then we gave reports on our findings. I was lucky enough to have one of the biggest gunners examining me, Laura. She gave me a very comprehensive exam, and reported it to our class in detail. I could have done away with a few of them. I noticed the patient is hirsute, she said. And then of course, being the first rate student that she was, went on to give an assessment and plan, which was not required. I would recommend that the patient be assessed for PCOS or perhaps even a testosterone producing tumor. Not everyone can be hairless and Asian like Laura.

The first erection I saw in medical school was in the hospital. I was examining a 13 year old in the ER for rule out appendicitis. He was in those flimsy pajama pants they gave the kids. I tried to pretend I didn’t notice. Secretly thinking, well at least someone is attracted to me. But maybe it was just a weird response to his pain and the anxiety of being examined.

There was a posting on the bus stop in front of my med school for a few months: “Looking for a few strong women.” It was an ad recruiting women for construction work. I heard two guys one day, while waiting at the stop, “would you ever date a construction worker?”

“Only if I were gay.”

“No, I mean a woman construction worker.”

“I know what you mean, it would be like dating a guy. Their calves would be all big and shit. That’s just gross.”

Is this the problem with medicine? Is medicine still a male job? Can my career choice be chalked up to my possible PCOS and hyperandrogenism? Even though, after my serious research and to my greatest dismay I discovered that the majority of people applying to medical schools are now women.

So my dear friend, Glasses Wearer. It may be 2008, but not all men are ready to give up the culturally defined gender roles of 1958. Wear your contacts, bat your eyelashes, don’t use any words that have more than three syllables and catch yourself Prince Charming. Otherwise, do as I did, and find yourself an enlightened male nurse.

Yours Truly,

Doctor Reality