EASY PEASY

You’ve been procrastinating for weeks, getting haircuts, going shopping, busy with work, but finally the tension is too much. It’s time to get a sexual health check.

All too often it had been my experience that to get a sexual health check was one big hassle, especially to get a full HIV screening; the nurses would patronise you, the waiting room looked like the gates of a beige institutionalised hell and the results would take weeks to come back.

Generally one is made to feel like they have done something wrong, especially those “nasty promiscuous gays”.

Really what you need is a non-judgemental, quick, easy and visually inoffensive environment to be tested in.

Dean Street Express, on Dean Street in London’s (still just about) Gay district, ticks all these boxes and more. In fact they have made it so easy and pleasant that I have found myself getting checked when I also go for a haircut.

The decor, which cleverly emulates “Pizza Express”, although not to everyones taste, is pretty damn plush for a clinic. Instead of feeling like you’re waiting for your death sentence amongst a sea of “Jeremy Kyle’s”, you feel like you could be waiting in a hotel reception or the salon to meet a friend.

There’s plenty of relevant magazines to read and comfy, designer looking seats allowing for a relaxing visit.

When you enter Dean Street Express, you either register at reception, or if you have been before you just scan your card on one of the various check in points. The machine then asks you a few basic questions and you’re in. The person behind the desk then hands you a groovy package of elongated cotton buds and vials all contained neatly in a blue cocoon.

The first half of the screening is done by yourself in a private cubicle which again bridges the gap between hotel room and a large toilet. TV screens clearly instruct you on how to take samples and when you are all done you put your capsule in the WOOOSH tube!

Then little bits of piss, poo and saliva fly through tubes in the air and straight into the lab; much better than the afore version in which you awkwardly walk around the clinic with a cardboard bowl of urine covered with a piece of paper trying to find the nurse.

The next part of the check is downstairs. This involves bloods usually which can seem daunting, however, the nurses in this clinic really put me at ease. I feel like they’ve all been there before, and I’ve found myself actually wanting to stay and talk with them over coffee.

Furthermore, I have never experienced a wait of more than 40 minutes and most of the time i’m in and out in 20.

Finally, comes the results, some immediately, and the rest in a maximum of 6 hours via SMS, (text). This is surely a record for any result from anything medical related.

Dean Street Express really has taken over! It was so desperately needed and they have so successfully filled the void and solved many issues that previously existed with the sexual health system with such simplicity and grace.

Dean Street Express, Artpornblog is more than happy to be checked by you.

Easy Peasy.

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Written by Ted Rogers “Artpornblog”

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