Zaftig snorted, “All I mean to say that our finest University Hospital female urologist cutting through the abdominal wall to make repairs often finds it convenient to surgically excise potential cancers by removing the testicles. Removal of those extraneous organs insures longer life and less aggression.”
“His nuts removed,” I added, “how should Al conceive of a script with appeal to a prurient interest? A man without nuts is like a car without a motor. It won’t work.”
Releasing Zaftig, Al announced, “Ladies, lets resume position. We’re going to finish getting undressed for the march to the shower.”
Zaftig and I led the procession of naked young women to the shower. While maintenance men shot the scene, Zaftig and I looked on from the entrance. “What do the Holy Virgins do in a communal shower?” I asked. “Do they look down, face the wall, or pretend they’re in their own universe?”
“When I was in school,” Zaftig reminisced with that distant look, “they’d talk about budding breasts, butts and boys. Returning from vacation or a weekend home, the girls’d display dental impressions — eh hickeys — on their mammary glands like a medal of honor.”
“Doesn’t sound very virginal to me,” I shook my head.
“They’d talk about BJs,” Zaftig laughed, “It took me a while to figure out what that meant. They’d condescend to lecture me.”
“They inspired you to study anatomy,” I suggested.
“`We got caught putting out,'” Zaftig recalled, “the girls would say as they held their mammaries to display the impressions their boyfriend left, `that’s how we landed in here. What about you? Don’t tell us you really want to become a nun!'”
Zaftig recollected with a smile, “For all the chattering about teasing boys with outercourse the girls in the convent’s communal showers had more interest in comparative female anatomy, the gluteal prominence — when they ragged me as the rollie — poly girl as tall as she is wide. Lots of people do.” Zaftig looked down and sighed, “So did you–when we met.”
“Yes, I had,” I confessed. Touching my nose, I added, “We were both eh–taken with each other.”
When Zaftig opened first the door to admit me, my eyes almost came out of their sockets just like a character in an old cartoon. If I hadn’t been so stunned, I might have run away. Pleasingly plump wasn’t the word. Rotund, perhaps, No Zaftig. “Al was certainly right about you,” Before I realized what was coming out of my mouth, I blurted out, “Here’s my face, my ass comes later.”
Zaftig took my Freudian slip with a laugh. “My Ex — boyfriend didn’t mind the preeminence of my gluteal prominence, until the day he broke it off. Seems everything happened at once. Father cut the stipend, my boyfriend broke it off with me and my roommate didn’t like the rent increase the landlord wanted. She took off. What comes next?”
“Me,” I declared, “I’m a law student. You Docs are in a pissing match with lawyers, refusing to treat lawyers. Would I be a problem for you imperious Deities cowering behind the curtain of silence?”
“I’m ready for anything,” Zaftig affirmed.
“Then,” I assured her, “I’m the solution to your problems. I’m boiling in the same kettle, Dolly. I’ve lost my flat — off campus rooms — my previous roommate from college years got herself married,” I explained, “and wanted the place to herself. I had been in that apartment since undergraduate days. I was there so long I thought of it as home. Problem was my name wasn’t on the lease. I outsmarted myself.”
“Oh?” Zaftig prompted me.
“Even though I promised to tiptoe around her doing her guy on the floor in front of me any differently than I had when she did him or any other guy — or gal — huh,” I paused to laugh, “before the marriage. Heck, I’d’ve done them both just to keep the flat.”
Zaftig’s eyes widened in shock at my spiel, “Al told you that I went to a convent school — St Athena’s right here in town.”
“Dolly, we have much in common!” I dared to continue, “My saintly father threatened the family doctor with sending me to St Athena’s of the Holy Virgins Convent School to force the bastard to write gym excuses.” I looked up to the heavens with a crazy smile. “There were many virgins at St Athena’s?”
When Zaftig’s laugh turned into a stare fixated at my hawkish nose, she looked down trying not to be impolite. In a weak voice she apologized. “I’m not to react. Proboscises show great structural variations in human physiology.”
“Pro — bos — cis!” I exclaimed tripping over the words deliberately. Laughing I threw Zaftig a hug. When Zaftig looked at my arm quizzically, I reassured her, “I’ve heard you’re a third-year med student. Oh, my pro — bos — cis, you say!” I covered my nose with my free hand, “If you should manage to graduate, Dolly, you can maybe fix my needle nose for me–and a lot of more interesting other stuff too.”
“Oh!” Zaftig replied in a serious tone, “I don’t intend to take up one of the traditional roles reserved for women in medicine: teaching, gynecology, obstetrics, or Craniofacial reconstructive surgery.”
“Dolly,” I declared, “It isn’t what you say, but sure you say it. Maybe I can get an English translation.”
“Huh?” Zaftig was taken aback. That was the first time she shot me that look, like she was disconnected uninvolved in the scene, like there was no personal relationship.