The doctor was flamingly, mincingly, almost exaggeratedly gay, which made the pap smear a vaguely surreal experience. I am not used to having someone say "Oo! Ectocervical tissue!" in quite those cheery, utterly nonthreatening tones. (Not having heard the phrase before, I asked, which ended with him drawing cervixes on the little white paper table-cover and explaining interesting things about squamous vs. columnular tissue cells and their relationship vis-a-vis the cervix.
He won me over completely, however, when going in for the breast exam, he spotted the tattoo on my bicep--I have a rather large black celtic hound tattoo armband--blinked, turned my arm over, stared, and said, in awed tones, "Wow, you're not a wuss!" And then he had to explain to his assistant that getting the underside of the arm tattooed is an exercise in agony, and you can always tell the guys who wussed out by the barbed wire going two-thirds of the way around the bicep. (There are very few pleasures in this life, when one is a nondescript woman of no particular physical strength, to compare to standing smugly next to a giant Hell's Angel who could bench press a Volkswagon, and having a much more badass tattoo than his. It's a small victory over the cosmos, but I'll take what I can get.)
I did have to get a tetanus shot, though, since it's been ten years, and my attempts to weasel out were firmly quashed. So now my arm is sore, but I suppose I'll be grateful when next I stroll through Bob's House of Rusty Nails and Small Biting Animals.