I'm wearing a see-through gown that I must hike up around my thighs as I do lunging cheerleading kicks. "Bring the skirt up further," he advises, standing in front of me and looking at my reluctantly bare legs. I take the arm that was crossed across my breasts, try to pretend he can't see my nipples through the gown, lift my skirt up to the bottom of my underwear (which I insisted I keep on), and kick my leg out toward him. I look at him, and it's unavoidable that my chiropractor is staring at my chest. Which, as far as I can remember, has nothing to do with my completely made-up illness of chronic back pain.

I became a chronic liar (my own diagnosis) the day I sat with the human resources director at my new job and looked at my very first benefits package. While I had friends who could throw around prescription drug names like gang lingo, I had no idea of the difference between an HMO (Health Maintenance Organization) and a PPO (Preferred Provider Organization). She patiently explained with an HMO you get one doctor who takes care of everything, but with a PPO you can choose from a variety of doctors.

I'm a buffet kind of girl, and I grabbed an Aetna Open-Choice PPO. After doing a search on their Web site for doctors within 15 minutes of my home, I had well over 600 doctors to choose from. I discovered I could go to any of these doctors for a $10 co-pay, which honestly means no matter what the doctor normally charges, you pay only $10.

Up to this point, I could only remember willingly going to my family doctor three times, each the result of broken bones. Otherwise, I've been dragged, kicking and screaming, to receive shots that left the sanitary paper on the examining table soaked in sweat and the complementary stuffed animal twisted and malformed.

But staring at over 600 doctors, all of whom I could see for merely $10, was intoxicating. I couldn't even figure out what an opthamologist did. And while I thought you only went to the doctor when you were on your death bed, I started talking to my friends and discovered one of my friends was addicted to the chiropractor, and another was a regular at a dermatologist's office. Someone else was discharged as stable by her therapist, but she kept going, just to have someone who'd listen.

My new PPO opened up the illicit world of medicine, and I had found a subculture of doctors and patients that were merely using each other for money and vanity. I was determined to join.

The Chiropractor

I developed chronic back pain. I could barely stand up straight sometimes. The pain would start at the base of the back of my head and shoot screamingly down to the base of my spine.

My chiropractor is a squat old man who, upon meeting, I am sure will see through my lie; however, he merely reviews my paperwork and comments that he sees I work for a Web site. He looks at me, pursing his lips together into a cavernous O, and his tongue, rolled up like a taco, protrudes slightly. He draws it in with a slurp. "I used to work with computers in the 80s. Me and my buddies would have parties where we'd sit around and program all night. I remember the real floppy disks, and, man, you could pay up to $6 for one of those...." He talks for 10 minutes about computers, concluding with a knowing-wink statement about how his computer obsession has caused marital problems.

He looks directly at my chest for a long time. Is he trying to see my back through my front? He does the circle-mouth-tongue thing. "Next question," he says. "What does your shirt mean?"

My shirt says "Polyphonic Spree," one of favorite bands. I tell him so.

"I used to play accordion," he begins, still flipping through my charts. I hear about his bands, his trumpet lessons in middle school, how he wishes he still played....

"So you used to be on birth control," he asks abruptly.

"Uh, yeah." And what does this have to do with my back?

"And are you still on it?"

"No." Goddammit, it says that right on the chart, man.

"And why aren't you on it?"

"Uh..."

"I mean, are you not with a partner right now?"

Jesus fucking Christ, I wanna die.

"Why don't you take off your clothes and slide into this gown?"

And then I am doing cheerleading kicks. He is behind me, his hands pressing on that small section in between your hip bones and your inner thighs. I can feel his body pressing against my back. "Go ahead and bend over and touch your toes."

I'm nearly naked, vulnerable, and I start to believe something is wrong with my back as I move to the table and lie on my side, curled and pretzeled. He moves this arm here and this leg there and leap -- his Quasimodo frame launches in the air and lands on my back, producing a huge crack down my spine.

"Let's move you to our massage bed." I lie on my back, and he sits across from me, controlling where the bed waves up under me. He sets it on the lower back/pelvis setting, making me arch my hips high in the air repeatedly, and sits and watches. He moves his tongue around in his mouth, contemplating.

"I think you need to come back next week. You definitely have some back problems that are going to need massage therapy."

The Psychiatrist

I become suicidal, over-anxious and self-destructive. Any day I could take my life.

I picked my psychiatrist from the list because he had a lot of initials in his name and a Ph.D. Also, he is a man, and I know men don't understand me, so it would be easy to hate him.

He lives on a mountain top, up a thousand switchbacks without guard rails, and I'm frazzled by the time I pull up to his house, a huge and intimidating home I'm embarrassed to park my rusting car in front of.

He ushers me into a jutting sunroom to sit on a couch. There are plants everywhere, and a copy of Chicken Soup for the Pet Lover's Soul sits next to me.

He looks at me. I start blabbering. I notice he's sitting quietly, smiling. I keep blabbering. Still no response. I stop. He points to his hearing aids and informs me he hasn't heard a word I've said.

"I THINK I'M SELF-DESTRUCTIVE. AND SUICIDAL!"

"Ah," he says. He looks at me kindly. We talk more. He hooks into the fact that I'm a drummer and like to run. "Let's meditate."

I've noticed there's a spider above me on the ceiling. I'm about to explode with fear. But I need to concentrate on being crazy and suicidal. I put my hands on my knees as instructed. He tells me to exhale and say the word "peace." I'm embarrassed.

"I can't hear you!"

"PEACE!" Pause. "PEACE!"

I start holding my breath, because I don't want to scream "peace" anymore, I can't stop thinking about the spider, and I'm about to become convincingly self-destructive. In the middle of my head spinning with held breath, he starts talking very rhythmically. My breath slides out of me, and I'm nearly asleep and completely trusting. I have no recollection of what he says, though at one point it moves me to tears. Some time later, I wake up with a wet face, my hands glued to my legs, and eyes I can't even raise to look at him.

He talks about future appointments and says I am a high-risk patient that should be seeing someone regularly. I drive down the mountain, my head still cloudy when I reach the bottom. I take a nap and have nightmares about spiders sliding into my exhaling mouth as I scream "peace!"

The Dermatologist

I've had it with people believing me. I'm going to take my freshly scrubbed and clear skin into a dermatologist and announce that I have severe acne.

My doctor has forgotten my appointment and is leaving for lunch when I arrive. The receptionist runs out to get her, and I see her, irritated, sliding a cigarette back into her purse. "Come on back."

She leads me to a tiny room with a dentist's chair, a huge machine and barely enough room for the two of us to stand. We crowd in close to each other. "So what's the problem?"

I'm finally going to lose. She's going to laugh in my face.

"I have severe acne, and I can't get rid of it."

She looks closely at my skin, as if she's seeing my face for the first time. She gasps. "Yeah, you really might have scarring with that."

I wait for her to laugh, to sock my arm good-naturedly, to pinch my cheek.

"We need to take care of that immediately."

There are no mirrors in the room, and within a minute I start to believe her and have landed back in eighth grade as the guy with craterish zits all over his face and neck.

She points to the machine next to the chair. "Let's get you a microdermabrasion. It's gonna suck all that crap out of your face, all of those white heads and black heads, and then we'll put a pumpkin mask on you and tighten your pores."

Luckily, my insurance does not cover the procedure. She tells me to seriously think it over and gives me samples of prescription acne medication.

I break into a run in the parking lot and stoop next to my side-view mirror. No eighth grade craters. I go home and try the medication just for the hell of it.

My face breaks out.

Self-medicating

The day I got my benefits package, I had no clue what an HMO was. Three doctors later, I feel like I had a crash course in choosing physicians and insurance coverage. And I also learned that on my list of hundreds of doctors, there ironically is not a specialist to treat those of us addicted to the functioning of our bodies -- their appearance, their quirks, their imperfections that we suddenly decide we can't deal with anymore.

There is no doctor who, instead of sharing his own stories, will listen to my serious concerns as I look at a body that just passed its peak and start to worry about how far and how fast it's going to go downhill.

I've got to work on recovering from the one thing I was hoping they'd diagnose -- my chronic lies and self-indulgence. For now I'm going to sit up straight, focus on my breathing and exhale through my craterous face. I think we're all a little sick these days. Peace.

Jennie Dorris pounds on drums all day in hopes of convincing the University of Colorado to give her a Master's degree in Percussion Performance. In the p.m. she works producing the Web site of Boulder's daily paper at www.dailycamera.com. She is also the nightlife reporter for the paper, which means she gets paid to write about booze. She is the founder and publisher of Knot Magazine, found at www.knotmag.com.

Jennie buys a lot of fortune cookies to help her discover what will happen in 10 years. One time, she went to a New York City psychic, but that just made her neurotically watchful for her supposed soulmate "John." The fortune cookie she hopes to find will land her as a freelance writer and a slammin' diva drummer from a yet undisclosed location.