For reasons that are not clear to me, women who are strippers (or “professional dancers,” as they prefer to call themselves) seem compelled to inform me of their occupation within the first ten seconds of my meeting them in the ER. Thrusting out their right hand (and sometimes other parts of their anatomy), their introductions have an eerie similarity, as if this skill were taught to them in stripping school. “Hi! I'm Veronica! I'm a professional dancer . . .”

End of the intro, and long pause. Perhaps they're waiting for me to say something, but I'm not bright enough to figure out what it is they are looking for. Adulation? Sorrow? A request for an autograph, maybe? I dunno.

It's not that I dislike strippers. If anything, their candid bluntness is a pleasing departure from the all-too-frequent exchange of bullshit that often blocks effective communication between the patient and the ER doctor. Most strippers know that they're willingly debasing themselves by engaging in humiliating work, but they are at a loss to find a more respectable job that pays equally well. In that respect, they're like ER doctors.

When I read the triage note ⁽¹⁾ on Diane, I speculated, “I bet it's LGV.” A nurse who was standing beside me at the nursing station inquired, “What's LGV?” ⁽²⁾

“This is LGV,” I immediately recognized as I entered the patient's cubicle. Diane didn't bother to don the gown, much to my eternal gratitude. She was obviously comfortable being naked—an occupational benefit, perhaps. While the physiques of most strippers often left me wondering why men would pay to see them, Diane's beauty left me stunned. But it's not polite to stare, so I went right on with the questioning. The mystery wasn't what she had, but how she'd acquired it. She said that she wasn't having sex. Ordinarily, since LGV is a sexually transmitted disease (STD), I'd question her veracity. Furthermore, I guessed that she must have had dozens of men chasing after her. The fact that she wasn't having sex may seem implausible, but I believed her. By denying it, what would she be trying to protect—her reputation? Obviously, she was quite comfortable with herself and her chosen occupation. Fibbing about her sexual life seemed to be a non sequitur.

A few minutes into the questioning, she said that she and several other strippers had shared a G-string the month before. One person took it off, and another immediately put it on. Gee whiz, and I'd been warned to never share a toothbrush or comb with anyone (I gleaned these personal hygiene tips from reading my Dad's World War II Army manuals when I was in third grade). Uh, sharing a G-string . . . without washing? OK, so she's not a rocket scientist.

Combine a G-string, soaked with the secretions of prior users, with the rubbing and tugging upon it that seems to be a necessary aspect of such titillation, and what do you get? An efficient means of spreading STDs without the need for intercourse. I'd solved the mystery of how she had acquired the infection, but I was still mystified by her lack of common sense. Or maybe she never read her Dad's Army manuals?

Another stripper came to the ER because she twisted her ankle during her performance—must have been a vigorous show. As I examined her ankle, she asked, “Is there anything I can do to have my boobs produce milk, besides becoming pregnant?”

“Why would you want to do that?” I inquired.

“To make it part of my act. I think it would drive the guys wild to see me squirt out milk.”

The mind reels. Men would actually pay to see this? “Yes, it's possible, but I don't think you'll find a physician willing to prescribe anything for that purpose.”

“Why not? It's my body,” she countered.

And it's my medical license, I thought. “I'm sorry, but I can't help you. I think the State Medical Board would take a very dim view of such therapy.”

“How about if I gave you some free passes to my show? Wouldn't you be thrilled to see it, knowing you're the one who made it possible?”

This would probably not go down in the annals of medicine as one of its finest moments, and I had absolutely no interest in viewing such a spectacle. “Thanks, but no.”

“Doctor, I'm past my prime. I have to do something to spice up my act, or I'm going to be canned. Can't you help me, please?”

“No, can't do it.”

Time for the guilt trip. “Oh, I see, you're just like other doctors. All you care about is yourself. You wouldn't lift a finger to help someone who really needed help, would you?”

“Why don't you ask your own doctor?” I said.

“I did. I told him that if he did it for me, I'd suck him off. But his wife is a nurse who works in his office, and she overheard me. She threw me out, and told me to never come back. See, I don't have a doctor right now. You want me to blow you?”

The prospect of being involved with a kinky over-the-hill professional exhibitionist did not entice me. “Let me finish examining your ankle.”

“Are you going to help me?”

“With your ankle, yes. With the other matter, no.”

She withdrew her leg in a possessive jerk, and then slid off the gurney. “I'm not going to let some prick examine me,” she muttered as she hobbled past me. “I'm leaving!”

Ordinarily, I would attempt to reason with patients who would threaten to leave before their treatment was finished, but I wasn't in a mood to try that with her. I knew her ankle wasn't broken and her ligaments were stable, so it was pointless. I wished her good luck.

As I was making chitchat with a patient, I asked her what she did for a living.

“I'm a professor of humanities, and an ecdysiast,” she answered.

One of the lessons I learned from reading Dale Carnegie books as a teenager was that a good conversationalist could engage people in discussing topics that were of interest to them. There was little hope of that here. I had an entire year of humanities in college, and not only did I not understand it, I didn't even understand what it was about. And an ecdysiast? What was that? An unusual religion? A cult? Some disease discussed in medical school on one of the days I skipped?

“You know, a striptease artist,” she explained.

No, I didn't know. Learn something new every day on this job. I began to think of why they had such a compulsion to mention their occupation. Must be a facet of their exhibitionism.

“Aren't you going to ask me the standard question?” she said.

“What standard question?” I asked. Realizing that my brain was in slow gear, I regretted not downing more coffee at the start of my shift.

“Everyone asks me why a professor would also be a stripper.”

“That thought crossed my mind, too. I bet you have an interesting explanation.”

“Not really. I'm just doing it to make more money. I'm not a full professor yet. Just an associate professor, and the pay is lousy. I make more money taking off my clothes in front of a bunch of drunken strangers than I do expanding the minds of bright young college students. You must have had humanities in college; don't you think it was one of your more important courses?”

About as important as reading the directions on a box of toothpicks, I thought. “Yes, it enhanced my enjoyment of my other courses.”

“See, it broadened your perspective.”

Not quite, I recollected. It was so boring that it made organic chemistry seem like fun. “Yes, in a sense, it did.”

“And aren't you going to ask me the other standard question?”

I wondered, how often does she have these conversations? Caffeine level still sub-therapeutic, I once again admitted my ignorance.

“The other question that everybody asks me is if I'm afraid someone from the university will find out about my other job.”

“Seems like a valid concern,” I said, stating the obvious.

“To begin with, I'm not doing anything illegal. If they fired me over that, I would have the ACLU on them in a flash. Besides, I doubt they will ever notice. While I'm stripping, I spike my hair and take off my glasses. I wear so much makeup that I doubt my own mother would recognize me.”

“How did you get the job?” I inquired.

“I showed them my body!” she answered coquettishly while smiling.

“No, how did the thought of becoming a stripper cross your mind?”

“A few years ago I was dating one of my students who worked at the club as a stripper. He introduced me to his boss, who liked what he saw.”

Must have awfully dim lights in that joint, I speculated. “Wasn't it risky to date one of your students?”

“Thanks to the chairman of my department, no. He has what amounts to a harem of students. He's not in a position to say anything.”

Flashback to my college psychology professor. Even by university standards, this fellow was odd. He spent much of every lecture describing his favorite subject: himself, and he beseeched the women in the class to abstain from sex and redirect their sexual energy to him. He also claimed that Henry Ford II wanted to put a bullet through his head. Yeah, right. I'm sure that automobile tycoons have more pressing concerns than thinking about snuffing out oversexed lunatic professors of psychology.

I told the patient about my old psychology professor, and she correctly guessed what university I attended as an undergraduate. Since this was in a different part of the state, I was surprised she apparently knew that*. “Do you know him?” I asked.

“Not personally, but I've heard of him. He has quite a reputation.”

And quite a libido. If he is still teaching, I bet he's popping Viagra^® tablets before his office hours. Wondering if I should change my career, I asked, “Are many profs involved with their students?”

“Not nearly as many as there used to be. My chairman is an exception, but most colleges really frown on the faculty having affairs with students.”

Another college flashback. I wasn't privy to many of the juicier happenings at the U, but one student with a profound distaste for studying admitted to me how she'd received a 4.0 (an “A”) from a certain professor in spite of flunking all of the exams in his class. She'd go into his office and cry, and he would comfort her. They'd begin hugging, and one thing would lead to another. A minute or two later—he had a problem with premature ejaculation, she said—she had her 4.0. Well, he did give her quite an education. She got pregnant, and learned what it was like to be a mother. She dropped out of college and returned home to live with her parents.

“I'm curious, Dr. Pezzi. Did you ever become involved with any of your professors?”

“No. The closest I ever came to that was when I had a crush on my neighbor, Maggie, when I was a freshman in college. If I remember correctly, she taught math at a community college. Although she was 17 years older than me, I was in love—or lust. I was too shy to bring myself to say anything to her about that, so I'd hang out with her son in the hope that something would eventually work out with her. Nothing ever did, though, probably because I was too dumb to recognize an opportunity. One day her son said that his Mom would like to know if I wanted to go out with her to have a cup of coffee. I told him no, saying that I didn't drink coffee. (At that time, I didn't.) What an idiot I was!”

The professor had come to the ER for removal of a splinter, and she'd led me on a short trip down memory lane. Dale Carnegie would be proud of her.

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