blurred as event ran into event.
A physician - that is I assume he was a physician since he wore a stethoscope around his neck - seized my folder, threw it to an orderly, then clutched me by the throat. Before I could seize him by the throat in return he shouted at the orderly.
'Thyroid, normal.' The orderly made an entry as he squeezed my stomach wall. 'Hernias, negative. Cough.'
This last was an order to me and I coughed as his rubber-clad fingers probed deep.
There was more, but only the highlights stand out. The urinalysis section where we stood in shivering ranks, each holding a recently-filled paper cup. Our file slowly wending forward, on tiptoe for the floor was a slosh, to the white-clad, white-masked, booted and rubber-gloved orderly who dipped a disposable dropper into each cup, dropped a drop into a section of a large, sectioned chemical tray. Discarded the dropper into an overflowing container, eyed the chemical reaction. Shouted 'Negative, next!' and carried on.
Or the hemorrhoidal examination. Good taste forbids too graphic a description, but it did involve rows of youths bent over and clutching their ankles while a demonic physician crouched over as well and ran along behind the rows with a pointed flashlight.
Or the injections, ahh, yes the injections. As this particular line crept forward I became aware that the youth in front of me was a bodybuilder of some sort. Among the pipestem arms and knocking knees his bronzed biceps and polished pects stood out as a monument to masculinity. He turned to me with a worried expression on the knotted muscles of his face.
'I don't like needles,' he said.
'Who does,' I agreed.
Not nice at any time, positively threatening in mass attack. I watched, horrified, as I approached the point of no return. As each shivering body came into position an orderly on each side injected each upper arm. No sooner were the needles hurled aside than the victim was pushed in the back by the uniformed supervising brute. After tottering a few paces forward two more injections were made. Arms curled with pain the subject leaned on the nearby counter. Where he was vaccinated. Very efficient.
Too efficient for the weightlifter. As he stepped into position his eyes rolled up and he slumped unconscious to the floor. This, however, was no obstacle to military efficiency. Two needles flashed, two injections were made. The sergeant seized him by the feet and dragged him forward where, after receiving the rest of his injections, he was rolled aside to recover. I gritted my teeth, tried stoically to accept the puncturing barrage, and sighed.
At some point the mass medical examination ended with a final assault on whatever shards of personal dignity the victims might still have left. Still nude, still clutching our plastic bags in our left hands, our thickening folders in our right, we shuffled forward in yet one more line. A row of numbered desks stretched across the width of the room, very much like the reception hall of an airport. Behind each desk sat a dark-suited gent. When it was my turn the sergeant-herdsman glanced over his shoulder and stabbed a stumpy finger at me.
'You, haul it to number thirteen.'
The man behind the desk wore thick-framed glasses, as did all of the others I noticed. Perhaps our eyes were going to be examined and this was what we would be like if we failed. My folder was seized yet one more time, another printed sheet inserted—and I found tiny red eyes taring at me through the thick lenses. 'Do you like girls, Jak?'
The question was completely unexpected. Yet it prompted a sweet vision of Bibs that obscured the medical mockery around me.
'You bet I like girls,' was my instant response. An entry was made.
'Do you like boys?'
'Some of my best friends are boys.' I began to have a glimmering of what this simpleton was up to.
'Are they?' Slash of pencil. 'Then, tell me about your first homosexual experience.'
My jaw fell with disbelief. 'I can't believe that I'm hearing this. You are doing a psychiatric examination from a checklist?
'Don't give me any cagal, kid,' he snarled. 'Just answer the question.'
'Your medical degree should be taken away for incompetence - if you ever had one. You're probably not a shrink at all, just a time-server dressed like one.'
'Sergeant!' he shouted in a cracked voice, his skin flushing. There was a thunder of feet behind me. 'This draftee is refusing to cooperate.'
Sharp pain slashed the backs of my bare legs and I yowed! and jumped aside. The sergeant raised the thin cane again and licked his lips.
'That will do for the moment,' my examiner said. 'If my questions are answered correctly.'
'Yes, sir,' I said, snapping to attention. 'No need to repeat the question. My first experience of that kind was at the age of twelve when, with the aid of large rubber bands, I and fourteen other boys…'
I continued on in this vein while he scribbled happily and the sergeant muttered with frustration and waddled away. When the form had been completed with the last work of fiction, I was released and ordered on to join the others. It was back to the elevators again, jammed inside in nude groups of forty. The doors closed for the descent. The doors opened.
At what was obviously the wrong floor. Before our horrified eyes there was displayed a vista of desks and typewriters. With a young lady laboring away at each of them. There was a fluttering sound as all of the folders were swung forward over the vitals. The air temperature rose as everyone turned bright red. All we could do was stand there in carmined embarrassment, listening to the endless rattle of typewriter keys, waiting for heads to turn, gentle female eyes to peer our way. After about fourteen and a half years the doors slowly closed again.
There were no females present when the doors opened this time, just the now-familiar form of another brutish sergeant. I wondered what twisted gene in the population had produced so many thick-necked, narrow- browed, potbellied sadomasochists.
'Out.' this one bellowed. 'Out, out, groups often, first ten through that door. Next ten next door. Not eleven! Can't you count, cagal-head!' Followed by a yipe of pain as discipline was enforced yet again. My ten victims shuffled into a brightly lit room and were ordered into line. We faced a white wall that was hung with a repulsive puce-green flag distastefully decorated with a black hammer. An officer with little golden bars on his shoulder strutted in and stood before the flag.
'This is a very important occasion,' he said in a voice heavy with importance. And occasion. 'You young men, the fittest in the land, have been chosen as volunteers by your local draft boards to defend this country we love against the evil powers abroad that seek to strip away our freedoms. Now the solemn moment that you all have been waiting for has arrived. You entered this room as funloving youths. You will leave it as dedicated soldiers. You will now be sworn in as loyal members of the army. Raise your right hands and repeat after me…'
'I don't want to!'
'You have that choice,' the officer said grimly. 'This is a free country and you are all volunteers. You may take the oath. Or if you choose not to, which is your right, you may leave by the small door behind me which leads to the federal prison where you will begin your thirty-year sentence for neglect of democratic duties.'
'My hand's up,' the same voice wailed.
'You will all repeat after me. I, insert your own name, of my own free will… '
'I, insert your own name, of my own free will.'
'We will do it again, and we will do it correctly, and if we don't get it right next time, there is going to be trouble.'
We did it again, and correctly. Repeating what he said and trying not to hear what we were saying.
'To serve loyally… to show respect to all of the senior officers… death if I show disloyalty… death if I should desert… death if I sleep on duty…' and so on to the very end, which was 'I do swear this in the name of my mother and father and the deity of my choice.'
'Hands down, congratulations, you are all now soldiers and subject to military law. Your first order is that each of you will volunteer voluntarily a liter of blood since there has been a sudden call for transfusions. Dismissed.' Weak with hunger and fatigue, dizzy from loss of blood, cold noodle soup still sitting leadenly in the stomach, we reached the end of the line. We hoped.
'Fall in. Move it along. You will each be issued with a disposable uniform which you will not dispose of until
