The biggest problem with being self-employed is keeping up with your own insurance. Taxes are no big deal; you can hire an accountant to that in a heartbeat. If you’re lucky enough to find a reliable mechanic, your auto woes can be handled with minimal effort, as well. Anything else, from press releases to home maintenance can be handled by someone else, and often cheaper and more painless than you’d imagine. That pesky health insurance, however, will always find a way to—ironically—bite you in the ass whenever you least expect it.

Health insurance companies love me and hate me at the same time. They hate me because they are wary of giving coverage to someone who leads the life that I do. No, I’m not a smoker (anymore), heavy drinker (very often), or have chronic health problems that have been passed down to me from distant relatives (yet). What I am is an independent contractor who travels almost every single week of the year, at varying pay scales. The insurance companies hate the fact that, even if I manage to pay their ridiculous premiums, they might actually have to do something for me, somewhere down the line. A person who travels as much as I do can get sick or injured, and might need some of that pesky medical attention he’s been paying for out the ass whilst in perfect health.

That being said, insurance companies love me because they have no problem charging me the absurd premiums they do and constantly making me jump through random hoops. This two-step is done to both reassure them that I’m not one of those annoying “unhealthy” people who will one day expect his insurance to take care of him and also, I am firmly convinced, to amuse them senseless. In fact, I have suspicions that some tests the doctors have given me over the years were done for no reason other than to make some jackass in a suit giggle. I’ve often wondered, rubber glove shoved firmly into my posterior, if there was an insurance rep watching an a hidden camera somewhere, laughing to himself whilst thinking, “That’ll teach you to ask for money for a root canal”.

Such is the case when, right after becoming a full-time comic and leaving the “Real World” behind, I decided to start paying for my health insurance out of pocket. I used a company that many of my fellow comedian friends recommended and proceeded to answer every ridiculous question that was placed in front of me as part of the application. Before that day, I had no idea that it was somehow important to know whether or not my father’s third-grade teacher might’ve once had a cold sore during a fire drill in Michigan, circa the early 40s. Turns out, that’s one of the leading causes of Polio in single men with blonde hair who are named Ward. Thank God Mrs. Winestone never got herpes, or I might’ve been struck down in my prime, much like FDR, forced to tell these stories as chats by the fire, rather than via my laptop.

After the paperwork was approved, I had to go to an appointed doctor and have a “FULL PHYISCAL”. If you have ever had a “Full Physical”, you know that the problem isn’t the “Physical” part, but the “Full” part that comes first. Every man, at some point, has a physical; it’s annoying but necessary. Only a brave, select few of us, however, has ever had the dreaded “Full Physical” reserved only for rare lab studies and prisoners of war. Those who have never had it will, at this point, simply shrug and wonder. We brethren who have gone that extra mile, on the other hand, bow our heads with solemn grimaces, a silent prayer, if you will, to those who came before us. Let’s put it this way: A kick to the groin is painful. That is a physical. A kick to the groin followed by uncontrollable laughter by the assailant? That is a “Full Physical”. Like having a vasectomy and then getting your wife pregnant a few months later, it’s like adding insult to injury.

I did the usual routine that a man must go through when having a physical: Turn over, bend over, cough, kiss the doctor with tongue, and take him to see “The Chronicles of Narnia”. You know, the usual stuff. After being poked and prodded for a half hour without getting roses first or a hug afterward, I figured I was done and was preparing myself to go home and rock back in forth while crouched in the shower. At that moment, a nurse walked into the room. Clipboard in hand, she didn’t even make eye contact when she spoke to me.

“Mr. Anderson, there’s one last thing,” I swear that she cracked her knuckles, “we have to administer an STD test.”

“Okay,” I shrugged, “I’m sure I don’t have any STDs. What does this involve? Do I pee in a cup? Will you take some blood?”

“Oh, no,” She looked at me slyly, “it’s a very simple procedure…”

Let me interject something here very quickly, while I’m on the subject. Nurses are sadistic bitches. It’s not really their fault, really, and is just a byproduct of their industry. See, they have to put up with a lot of annoying things. They have to deal with doctors with God Complexes, and annoying patients whining all day. They take the most abuse in their industry and typically get the least amount of credit. With that in mind, understand that they love to take this frustration out on you. They cannot wait to poke you with something—anything—if it might relieve their job stress a little bit. If a nurse tells you something is a “Simple Procedure”, that does not mean it isn’t going to hurt you. It just means that it’s easy for them to do to you. I’ve known nurses who think a gunshot wound is “simple”.

“So, what’s this procedure all about?” I asked, hearing my voice already cracking.

“It’s so simple,” Nurse Stalin repeated, “we just have to perform a Male Pap smear.”

It’s amazing how I could hear those words and not remotely sense the danger in the air. It’s almost like a young deer who walks up to a hunter and stares at his shotgun with innocent curiosity. At that very moment, I realized how I’d slept through all the non-sexual subject matter in regards to females in my high school health class. Not only did I not know what a Pap smear even was, but I had no clue that it might be somewhat uncomfortable. After all, women get Pap smears all the time. Really, how bad could it be?

“What does this involve?” I asked Nurse Mengala.

“We just place a small, cotton swab within the urethra to test for infection.”

YOU WHAT?!

I didn’t go to medical school. The very fact that I made it out of The University of Georgia at all is amazing, let alone that I did it in four years. Still, I like to think of myself as a pretty bright guy from time to time. With that semi-intelligence, I took the words the nurse had just spoken and spelled them out in my head, one more time.

“We just place a small, cotton swab within the urethra to test for infection.”

Hmmm.

See, that sounds to me, like…

STICKING A Q-TIP IN MY DICK.

And you know what? That’s exactly what it is. That’s it. That’s an STD test. Think about that for just a minute. Here we are, the most advanced species on this planet, with thousands of years of medical science and research behind us, and this is the best we can come up with? Literally stabbing a guy in his pee-pee hole?

This is a test that was invented by women, I might add. See, no man would ever come up with this brilliant discovery. If he did, he’d keep it to himself and, likely, commit suicide at the very thought that he helped to create something so horrible. Much like Dr. Frankenstein, any man who created this barbaric atrocity would be forced to live in shame, constantly hating himself for the monster he unleashed onto an unsuspecting (heavily male-populated) world. No, this test was invented by a woman. Some poor lady got stood up for the prom, was furious, and we are now left with the product of that vengeance.

Still delusional and trying to remember stories ex-girlfriends had told me about Pap smears, I had the audacity to wonder to myself, “How bad could it be?”

How. Bad. Could. It. Be.

Those are the words that pop into my head whenever I tell the story of my STD test, or, as I like to call it: The Day I Stopped Believing in God.

They lead you down this long dark hallway that seems to go on forever in a building that I swear wasn’t that long when I first entered it. Lights flicker on and off, much like they must do whenever someone is sent to the electric chair. I think I heard the nurse behind me yell, “Dead man walking” as we turned the corner, but I can’t be sure. I was too busy listening to the sounds coming out of one of the rooms that we passed. From within, I swear I heard a grown man crying like an eight year-old girl.

The examination room looks like a cross between a padded cell and a porno set. There’s blood smeared on the walls, left behind by someone who just didn’t listen when the nurse said, “relax and breathe normally”. Random pillows litter the floor, waiting for you to land on them when you collapse in fetal position seconds after the test has been administered. Other patients have written things on the walls and floor such as, “it puts the lotion on its skin, or it gets the swab again”.

I learned many things that day but, mostly, I learned that there is a big difference in having your privates held by a woman…and having your privates held by a nurse. See, a woman would be kind. A woman would be gentile.

Not a nurse.

It’s hard to “relax and breathe normally” when your limp member is coldly grasped in Golum’s fingers, awaiting a punishment for a crime that was never committed. It’s even harder when you see what the cotton swab actually looks like. This is no ordinary Q-tip. This is a tuft of cotton wrapped haphazardly around a long, plastic stick. An actual Q-tip taken from my bathroom cabinet would be preferable to the conductor’s wand they actually poked into me. The only consolation I received when seeing the swab for the first time was the fact that it was about nine inches long, which I found—oddly—a little bit flattering.

The nurse stuck the swab in me and proceeded to spin it around. You know, to be thorough. At that moment, I discovered that my version of “relaxing and breathing normally” basically consists of me biting my finger nails and making a noise that sounds like a dolphin being beaten with another dolphin. The pain feels much like getting a tattoo on the inside of your skin; a combination of being pinched and burned at the same time. I’m told that the swab was stuck into me by less than an inch, but I swear that I felt cotton tickle the back of my throat. My suspicions were confirmed when the test results later showed that, although I didn’t have an STD, I did have tonsillitis.

“It might hurt the next time you urinate,” Freddy Kruger, RN, said to me as she left me lying helplessly on the cold floor.

Oh, it might. Imagine being dry from the inside tip of your penis, all the way up to your spleen. Then you might have an idea of why urinating might just sting a bit. The next time I peed, I thought I was shooting battery acid out of myself.

When all was finally said and done, I was thrilled to find out that, as I suspected, I did not have any STDs, and the test came back wonderfully negative. I got my new insurance and went back into the world, happy to put that test behind me. The only problem was that, not long after that fateful day, I was informed by a completely different nurse something I wish I’d known all along: All of the STDs that I was tested for on that day, from Chlamydia to Gonorrhea to Syphilis, are easily cured by either taking an antibiotic pill or receiving a shot in butt. One shot, one time, and you’re cured.

Think about it.

Why even have a test?

The cure is almost painless, yet the test for the diseases makes a man feel as if he’s just been struck by lightning. You can never have that test done and know that you’d rather get several syringes shot into you instead, let alone just one and only once.

So, take my advice, men. If you ever go to the doctor, and they say, “we have to give you a syphilis test”, cover your crotch, look them in the eyes, and say:

“Screw it, I’ve already got it. CURE ME!”