I remember when I was younger.

I was in my 20s living in New York city. I was bartending in a place called the Bear Bar on the upper west side. It was between 77th and 78th on Broadway.

It was a great gig for me. And every Tuesday night, we had a ladies night. That was when women came in and drank half price. I built a huge following, and some of the cutest girls on the upper west side would come in and drink and literally hang out and flirt with me all night long.

I met a girl there one night and we started hanging out.

One thing led to another and one night I found myself back at her apartment.

I’ve always been paranoid about getting a sexually transmitted disease, but knock on wood I’ve never gotten one.

And I’m not saying I’ve been the most careful person in the world, either.

I used to, when I went to a girl’s apartment for the very, very first time, I would always look in their bathroom in their medicine chest. I’d look for the sister of birth control.

First off, I wanted to make sure they were on the pill or had something. If not, I was going to make sure that I wore a condom.

Because I was taught very wisely, never to trust what a girl says when it comes down to that. Because you never know if you’re with somebody that has ulterior motives, especially after spending years of coaching women and men.

I know a lot of women in their mid 30s that will tell you that their on the pill, when in reality, they’re just looking to get pregnant, and you may be their only opportunity.

So I remember one night, rifling through this girls bathroom, and I did so with the water turned on, so nobody could hear me in the next room. I learned how to open up drawers real carefully and slowly.

I learned how to open up a medicine chest and have my hand resting near the bottom of the medicine chest in case something fell out. I literally was OCD, so I memorized how everything was ordered and the direction they were turned around in. What was I looking for? I was looking for either birth control or sister of an STD.

I felt hot for this girl. I went to the bathroom. I wanted to make sure everything was clean down there.

So I started rifling through her medicine chest and I found some cream, and it said apply to the vagina three times a day.

I immediately panicked. There was no way in the world we were going to have sex, and believe me, we were hot for it. This was going to be our night.

I quickly tried to memorize the ridiculous sounding medicine. Don’t forget this was pre cell phone days and pre Google.

Nowadays I could have just stood in the bathroom and Googled the name of this thing and found out exactly what it was for. But in those days you actually had to have something called a memory.

And then you had to go and actually try to find somebody who would actually know what this cream was.

I walked back out of the bathroom, and I looked at her and said, you know, I got to go, I totally forgot that I have an audition in the morning. You see, I was a wannabe actor at that time in my life. She looked at me and said, oh my god, no stay.

And looked at her and I said, no, no, no, I got to go. You’re amazing, I said, let’s just continue this later in the week. I’m working for the next couple of nights, but let’s do it on Sunday, when I’m done working. I worked the next two nights and before I went into work all I thought was, I hope my doctor friend comes in, so I can ask him what this stuff was. I wrote it down, at least what I remembered it to be.

I bar tended on Thursday night and my doctor friend did not come in. I was thinking, I promised I was going to see this girl on Friday night.

I had to find out what this stuff was.

Friday around midnight he comes in, drunk as can be and I look at him in a state of panic and he looks at me and he goes, you all right?

I said, no. I asked him about the cream.

He looked at me and he says, what? He goes, you can’t possibly have it, it’s only for women.

A moment of relief, almost.

I said, then what is it for?

He says, it’s basically vagina diaper rash.

I looked at him and I said, can I catch it?

He says, not at all.

I looked at him and I said, thank you.

He looked at me and said, why?

And I told him the story and he started laughing really hard.

I love those days. Those days were fun, innocent and different. Nowadays you can just sit in the bathroom, Google a thing and know whether or not you need to bail out.

Or you can do what I always did, ask somebody and hope that they’re telling the truth.

But still, it was always fun going through the medicine chest to see whether or not they were clean or they had something, or maybe they just had some type of diaper rash.