I silently sign my name on the sheet telling the front desk staff sitting at the computer that I am here, and sit down in a generic, but expensive-looking chair.
Aiming for comfort.
Women are glued to their copies of Parenting or Marie Clare. A couple sitting cattycorner to each other look up at me, and then glance back at each other talking. An instrumental version of Memories from the musical Cats plays softly in the background. I don’t have a magazine, so I take up Candy Crush. After 10 minutes the woman at the front desk calls my name.
“Hi, Amelia! We just need to get a urine sample from you, so if you could just go down the hallway and to the second door on the left and leave that for us in the metal cabinet, then go to room number two, that’d be excellent!”
She never said bathroom. She never said toilet. She never said pee. I nod and smile congenially and make my way down the hall to the bathroom. I make sure to write my name on one of the gray sample cups on the line that says, “Name,” before I pee, having made the mistake last time of only naming my pee post-sampling. Needless to say, I’m sure, but not the best plan.
Having done the deed and avoided any splashing, I waddle over to the hole in the wall and put my cup with all of the other named cups.
I pull up my pants and retreat to my numbered room. I sit in a non-descript fold out chair in the corner, and glance at the stirrup table. I’m in a shadowed corner, for the huge procedure chair that is mounted to the ground and dominating the center of the room has a spotlight on it. I can’t think about it much before a nurse comes in.
“Hello, Amelia, how are you? Just coming in for a birth control refill?”
“Yes, ma’am!”
“And are you sexually active?”
“I am.”
“How many partners since last year?”
“Just one.”
“And do you have any allergies?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
She types my answers on the computer, and doesn’t look at me.
“Alright, Dr. D will be in here in a few minutes so sit tight.”
No directions for getting naked and draping a sheet over my genitals?
Field work.
I wait. I look around and inspect the models of uteri and what I think are lactation devices. I pick up one of two Star magazines and find out about Khloe Kardashian’s husband’s addiction problems. I stare at the pap smear spears. There are two half squeezed tubes of what I assume is medical lube on a white tray. They are displayed with the label facing down, completely parallel to each other.
As I inspect the other clear jars of giant swabs and depressors, Dr. D comes in.
“Hello, Amelia, how are you? Just coming in for a birth control refill?”
“Yep.”
“And are you sexually active?”
“Yes.”
“How many partners since last year?”
“Um, just the one.”
“And do you have any allergies?”
I pause and she repeats, staring at her screen, “Allergies?”
“None.”
“Alright, just tell the front desk staff where to send the prescription and you’re all done!”
She leaves in a flourish. I pick up my bag, confused.
Unruly Bodies 
I really like how you went about this and told the story. I understand that doctors want the whole thing to be as “let’s not admit why you’re actually here” as possible, especially in GBYN offices, but in reality you’re going for something extremely personal and fairly intrusive (not this particular visit, but still). It almost seems like a taboo to say “Hey, I’m here for a pap smear”. Instead it’s “I’m here for a yearly checkup.”
I would like to start by saying that I absolutely appreciate you putting this out there. I don’t understand this. We, as women, are expected to take care of our bodies. But if we EVER talk about this to anyone other than our mothers we are scolded. It’s like God forbid somebody know something SOOOOO personal. But yet, there are ads about your father getting is anal butt screening. Um, what? I always leave the doctor’s, more specifically the GYN’s, office feeling violated. They are like these robots that are taught to look at our bodies at some type of medical mannequin. As a child I was also told that the doctor was friendly, there to help, your friend. Then as you get older they become these judgmental, rude, robots that I avoid. My body is special, it’s unique, it’s MINE. Respect it. And I have a better question. Why is it okay for us to feel this type of violation and objectivity from a doctor. BUT, the minute we feel this way with any other human being (a friend, a boyfriend, etc.) it’s unacceptable?
And this is the reason I have never said nor have I heard a woman excitedly say she is going to see her OBGYN. Fortunately for me, my first (and last) appointment like this was 4 years ago when I was 17. Unfortunately for me, when the doctor went to do my PAP Smear, she said I “didn’t squirm as much as women a lot older than me” sort of in the same tone as a proud parent. And that is exactly how you make a 17 year old girl feel more uncomfortable than she ever has been.
The next time I tried to make the appointment, the doctor informed me that they had stopped performing these examinations on women under the age of 21 because our bodies were still developing and they found they were performing unnecessary surgeries. Needless to say, I was anything but comforted by that bit of information and am also now past age 21 and have yet to schedule another appointment.
I will schedule the appointment, I’m not blatantly avoiding it, but your post brings up the reason I’m a bit conflicted about it. Nowhere did it seem like your doctors were expressing any sort of respect for your body, it was just one of several bodies that were going to pass through their offices that day. And I don’t want to be one of several bodies, I want a doctor that respects my body as much as I do because how can you truly care for something you don’t respect?
This is really telling of the divide between the medical world and actual people. In these offices everything gets an official label, even though everybody knows what’s really going on. There’s also that sense that no one is really listening to you as a person, just the response you’re supposed to give. I really liked the part about them taking your information twice and not even noticing it. I feel like this is always happening to me with my doctors.