Shady Stretcher, M.D.
The doctor is in
I had a friend once. We’ll call her Megan. Megan was freshly divorced and thought she might want to break into the dating scene. It had been a decade since she’d been single, and she’d never used a dating app before. Everyone assured her they were all the rage, easiest way to meet people nowadays, so reluctantly she gave one a try. She immediately began talking to a very witty, intelligent doctor. The conversation was easy, he seemed genuine, and she was immediately hooked. She’d never felt something so effortless before. She’d also never thought to verify his credentials. I mean, who would lie about being a successful, good looking doctor anyway?
He wastes no time asking Megan for a dinner date, to which she emphatically answers yes. It would be her first real date. Having been with her ex-husband since they were teenagers, she’d never known the “joy” of adult dating. She was so excited to go out into the great big world and meet young, professional men [insert laugh here]. Megan vacillated between outfits for hours. She fussed over her hair and makeup, trying to find the sweet spot between seductive and hookerish. She was a ball of nerves, some fear, some stress, but mostly unadulterated excitement.
Megan arrives to the restaurant five minutes early. She’s digging in her purse when suddenly there’s a bald head lurking in the driver’s window. He looks slovenly, dirty, disheveled. Who is this homeless man? What does he want? She wonders if she had any loose singles floating around the glove compartment. She lowers the window and the man is no more than 12 inches from her face. Megan opens her mouth to speak a kind word but is met with her name echoed back “Megan?” he says. She realizes this is no homeless man. This is her date: the well spoken, seemingly well to do doctor she’s been beaming about all week. This is the man she shaved her legs for.
Megan climbs out of her vehicle and is immediately taken aback. Standing face to face, the doctor looks completely different than his photo. He is completely unrecognizable. He’s significantly shorter and from her aerial view, Megan gazes onto the smooth spotted patch of naked skin atop his head, shining in the fading sunlight. He keeps his lips tight, almost as if he’s holding a secret, most likely the truth about his dental hygiene. There are fine lines around his eyes and mouth, his skin leathery like an old saddle. He’s wearing a maroon Union Bay polo with a crusty collar that could’ve passed for white years ago. His pants are made of khaki parachute material with bungees on the bottom. The crowning glory is the dirty canvas boat shoes. As Megan notices the lack of socks, making a correlation between the heat and sweat building in between his toes, a sweet and sour scent hits her and she gags uncontrollably. She shook at the thought and as she clenched her eyes shut, a tear ran through her Yves St. Laurent mascara. She should have turned immediately and fled without a single word. But she did not. She was already there, had already wasted her time, energy, and evening. So she turned and followed him into the restaurant.
As they sit, he launches into his issues with gluten, the salt content of soy sauce, and his battle with meat due to his constant intestinal issues. After droning on about his struggles with IBS, they eventually fall into an uncomfortable silence. The doctor is not feigning any interest, and Megan comes to terms with the fact that she is simply doing her part to feed the homeless. They sit in silence as the waitress refills the ginger trough four times like its the salad bar at Sizzler. The food is served and he ravenously descends on the platter. Every single piece gone. Megan sat sipping her lemon water in disgust: hungry, annoyed, disappointed, her earlier excitement extinguished entirely. She watches him scoop up the last remnants of rice, his hands cracked and dry, soot rested into the crevices, making his fingertips look like mosaics of filth. After he licks the ginger and dirt from his fingers, he announces he’s really fucking high. He smoked some weed in the car and he’s also taking some prescription meds that kinda zone him out. Megan feels some shred of relief knowing she won’t have to drive him to the local shelter. He then launches into a monologue about his success as a poker player.
“Wait? What happened to doctor?” Megan posits.
He holds her gaze, without a blink, for a long moment before continuing on without any further interruption. So, anyway, he is a professional poker player, but his real passion is stretching. He’s going to give up it up to follow his dreams of becoming a master stretcher. At that exact moment, Megan has what she can only describe as an out of body experience, akin to dying. She felt herself leave her body, her spirit drifting away. It was as if she was only witnessing the rest of this dreadful experience from afar, anxiously waiting to see what would happen next.
Megan collect herself and repeats back, “Stretching?”
Yes. He is quitting his very lucrative poker career to move back to California, with his mother, to study the art of stretching. Much like a black belt in karate, one must master stretching as well. Skip forward to the long twenty foot walk to the car. Megan scrambles for her keys and a few choice words to end this night when the doctor begins talking about nearby parks. Concerned he might kidnap a child, Megan listens as he explains to her that they can’t go to his place because he doesn’t have any furniture. Not even a chair. They could go back to Megan’s, but it’s pretty far, or just to a park nearby if that was better. Megan is confused, grasping to make sense, as the doctor tells her she looks tense and he’d love to show her some STRETCHING MANEUVERS, just to loosen her up. She freezes of the thought of being alone with him in a dark park, her body found days later in a ditch off the road somewhere. Megan is reeling and steps back, just a split moment from entering her vehicle, and then it happens.
The doctor extends his hands and they lock around Megan’s frame. She is stuck in place, unable to move and everything is happening in slow motion. His face is coming toward her, lips stretched apart. It reminded her of a horror movie where the predator’s mouth is open and a single drop of blood hangs from the end of the fang, terrifying. Instead, it was remnants of rice and ginger pieces shoved into the crevices of his dingy yellow teeth, a snaggle tooth dripping with saliva. Suddenly she is drowning in spit, his hard tongue whirling around inside her mouth like the arm in a washing machine. She feels hot, flushed. She begins to faint. Everything goes black. Megan is never seen alive again.
Just kidding. She ran away screaming and washed her mouth out with bleach. She blocked Dr. Stretcher and he was never heard from again.
Ladies, trust your gut when it tells you to run. If Megan had listened to hers, she wouldn’t have spent $60 to watch a bum eat with his fingers then accost her in the parking lot.