Dear Diary:
Nekkid
Preventive Medicine 102: I had an appointment with the dermatologist today. I pretended, to her assistant, that I didn’t really know why I was there. I could show off my lovely Mohs-surgery scar, and did. When Dr G peeled back the bandage, she and the technician cooed approvingly, and I wondered if they were thinking what I thought when I changed the bandage on Monday: that I was at Greenberg’s, looking at an impressively frosted cake. But if Dr G had referred the squamous-cell biopsy to Dr B, the Mohs surgeon, that was the end of her involvement. I wasn’t there for her to look at my Hostess Cupcake stitchery.
Nor was I really there for her to do a follow-up exam of [TMI]. I was there, the technician reminded me, for a full-body exam. Ick. I protested; excuses proliferated. Dr G reminded me that the exam was overdue; she also said, “I sound like your mother.” Mind you, I would not be going to a doctor who was old enough to be my mother. Dr G is older than my daughter, but not by much.
Because the [TMI] problem involved a degree of unbuckling and unbuttoning, I said to hell with it, meaning my resistance, and agreed to disrobe. Dr G naturally had to leave the room (?), but she promised to be right back. When she did not come right back, I realized that what I hate most about medical examinations is sitting around in my underwear (or worse). I do not sit around in my underwear at home. It bothers me not to be presentable. The fact that I’m at a doctor’s office makes no difference. Underwear is underwear.
After a long absence, Dr G returned, bursting with apologies. Even better, she ventured, as she began to examine the upper half of me, to ask my advice. Since I was a thoughtful person — how on earth had my dermatologist come to that conclusion? — what did I make of the very rude patient with whom she’d been dealing while I sat around in my underwear. The very rude patient was a thirty-something trophy wife who had to have everything done yesterday, in order to fly to Europe next week, and who not only didn’t want to pay for it, but couldn’t pay for it, notwithstanding such accoutrements as a Birkin bag in a color not seen before, Pucci everything-else, and a couple of Cartier tennis bracelets. Dr G was so exasperated that she suggested — “for the first time, really; I’ve been doing this a long time, and I’ve never lost it before” — that the lady “trade in” one of her bracelets for the cosmetic procedure that she didn’t want to/couldn’t pay cash American for. Astonishing fun though this repartee was, Dr G still wanted to know what the woman could have been thinking, carrying on the way she did.
I said that her refusal to pay was meant to signify that she was too important a person to have to pay for things. Dr G and the technician stepped back a bit and admired me — there is no other word, etymologically — as if I were some science fiction wizard. “You ought to be a shrink,” they said. I thought of all the shrinks who have not said this to me, and felt better about the full-body exam process. Sadly, not so much about the underwear.
Did I say “Pucci”? Dates me, don’t it.
Pucci Pucci Poo! Now there was a movie I played in my mind that I think I’ll erase! Poor Pucci Pucci You!
First of all, Pucci is back in, so no harm/no foul on dating yourself.
As to your wonderful summation of the trophy (think bowling, if the Real Housewives of New York are any class indicator) wife and her sense of entitlement; you are right on the mark.
Your doctor was right to have gently, but firmly, put this woman back in her place; this is the only language, if indeed any, that such people understand.
It is a sad fact that this is what we have come to, people with no earthly reason for it walking around in a cloud of self-entitlement. In my youth, money did not buy cache, you had to grovel in charity work to even consider becoming a member on the “Bon Ton” and even then, there was no guarantee of permanent entree. The people who walked about with such a sense of not needing to have to pay for what they wanted before this collapse of society were old nobility and displaced royals, as opposed to actual sitting royals who are the hardest working class of people on our planet. Yet even these groups, however, gave value by the social cache of their mere presence in an establishment and polished tone to a party; not commodities to be lightly dismissed or undervalued. In effect they paid well, and some might even say, dearly, for their ‘perks”. What we have now are the vulgar rich (or even formerly rich, thanks to Mr. Madoff and the less-savory denizens of Wall Street) who do not feel the need for, nor are aware of their want of, polish; a kid hawking newspapers on a street corner (do they still do that?) has more social cred.
Hopefully, the era of “ME” and these monsters it has bred will pass with the economic collapse and the obvious need for society to reinvent itself if it is to survive. Fortunately, the true Old Guard still exists, if hidden in the shadow cast by the glare of false gilt, so lately tarnished. Hopefully, its core values will reassert themselves in the community at large, albeit in a less ossified manner.
Can I set an appointment for next week? I need someone to convince me to stop believing I’m an INFP.