Tampon Rodeo

I had gone camping with a friend, my mother, and her friend. She happened to bring along her 2 sons– a 4 year old and an infant – whoa, whoa, whoa. My friend and I tried to stay away from that mood killer as much as possible. It’s not that I didn’t like all children when I was in high school, but this toddler was exceptionally annoying and out-of-control. There wasn’t any room for us in the trailer anyway, so we stayed out in the tent and only really went inside for food and toilet breaks.

So there is always one thing you really don’t want to have when you go camping... your period. If that Mother Nature woman from that stupid commercial appeared, I would have taken great joy in bitch-slapping her right across her smug face. There weren’t any guys around or anything; it was just the simple inconvenience of it. I hated not being able to flush my tampon – so gross! Turns out, I had an even stronger argument for that factor after that weekend.

After I had done my afternoon routine in the bathroom, including tampon re-fresh, it was time for the 4 year old to have his bath. His mother began running the water and undressing the kid when her infant son required a bit of her attention. No more than 1 minute could have lapsed from that moment to when she had returned to her eldest son in the bathroom. He had not only gotten into the garbage and discovered my dirty tampon, but he must have dunked it into his bath and then proceeded to twirl it around like a rodeo cowboy. He seemed to be pretty impressed with his work as well. The entire bathroom, including the kid, looked like a horrific murder scene from CSI. The still-running bath had a thick marbled effect of blood spreading like a disease throughout the tub. The shower curtain, mirror, sink, window, toilet, towels, floor and every wall was splattered – as if the entire room was just decorated by Jackson Pollock.

It was totally disgusting, not to mention humiliating. It was even my own blood and I could barely keep my lunch down when I saw what that little shit had done. My mother was the one that did most of the cleaning up, bless her! I was never so grateful for ugly wallpapered walls than I was that day; it wiped off fairly easy. If it had been painted dry-wall, we probably would have had to re-paint the room!

That ghastly visual will be forever etched in my mind. If I am ever somewhere that I cannot flush my tampon, I get a flash of that scene and I gag every time. My anxiety level rises while I am forced to mummify the damn thing in toilet paper and hide it deep within the garbage.

With a family like mine...

“Aaaaaa-ngela, c-come d-down here!" There stood my mother and father, both pretty liquored up and smirking to each other. In front of my entire family, including some friends of my older brother, my mother proclaimed in a slurred voice, "Hhhh-hey everybody, our Aaaaa-gela is now a wooooo-man! Waaa-hoo!"

She then proceeded to pull out a box of Kotex and a belt (back in the day before self-adhesive pads, we had to use a belt to hold the pads in place). She waved them in the air while doing some drunken form of a taunting hula dance, and then tossed them in my general direction. My mother was almost glowing, but not from pride; rather from the orange sunset that was seeping through the nicotine-stained curtains and shone around her body. She contributed no instructions or comforting maternal words of wisdom, not that I really wanted any in front of everyone; I was embarrassed enough already.

I went through pads like water, changing them constantly and still leaking. This went on for a couple of long, messy years. It was frustrating as hell! I thought maybe I was bleeding an abnormal amount and that there was something wrong with me. I lost count how many pairs of underwear I had to secretly pound, scrub and wash myself before I put them in the general laundry collection. It was my oldest sister that one day happened to see one of my pads in the waste basket; I must not have hid it as well as I normally tried to.

“Hey Ugly! Is that YOUR pad in the garbage? Why is there blood all over the bottom side? Are you an idiot? The cotton side goes UP, plastic side DOWN! BAH-HA-HA!”

Oh my god! I had been wearing them upside down for the past 3 damn years! I FELT TOTALLY STUPID! My ‘loving’ sister thought it was hilarious and burst out of the room to go and find my other older sister to quickly pass on the joke, to which I was the giant BUTT. I not only felt obtuse but was completely humiliated. It’s amazing how I got through those years. With a family like mine, who needed enemies! If it was any consolation, at least after that day I had much cleaner underwear!

Aunt Flow is a bitch.

I did some math to figure out the odds on when any one female is likely to get her first menstrual period. Let’s say there is an approximate 6 year window (roughly) when a girl can start at any time, so therefore that would mean there is a 1 in 2190 chance that it would arrive at any particular date within those years. ONE IN TWO THOUSAND, ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY! So when did my body choose to start the big flow? When I was 12 years old... and oh yes... the first friggin’ day upon arriving at friggin’ DISNEY WORLD. Friggin’ Awesome!

The first few months, of course, it’s not a bright red colour; neither is it the consistency of that pretty blue liquid that the use on the maxi-pad commercials. It was brown and clumpy and disgusting. It was so dark that at first it didn’t even register that that is what it was– I had no idea what it was. I was pretty freaked out; I called for my mom. She came running in and paused, then tilted her head, smiled with a kind of pity-look and put her hand over her heart. “Awe Cutie, you’re a woman now!” ...SAYS WHO?

She ran down to the gift shop in the hotel and got whatever they had – which were these old lady monster pads that looked more like they were for geriatric bladder control (it IS Florida, after all). I don’t know if it was those pads or that I was just paranoid, but I felt like I was just about to leak through my shorts all day. Then, I would check and there would be the tiniest spot or nothing at all; it really sucked. So, including 2 adults and 2 kids, my parents spent approximately $350 that day for admission into the theme park, in which we spent the vast majority of it in line-ups to the ladies washroom. My father had no idea how to take in this new information, nor how to combine it with being where we were. I think he blew a fuse or two that day trying to process it all.

How ironic that my parents made a point to reserve a room at the hotel that had the giant Mickey Mouse-shaped pool – seeing as that I never was able to use it the entire time. It was a bit too soon to attempt tampons at that point, especially when my mom only had the “O.B. no-applicator” type. At 12 years old? Eww, gross!

So, to conclude with my original point– what the heck was wrong with the other 2185 days for a start date? My mother said that it’s a rule of nature that it tends to choose the most inopportune time, so we remember it. Screw that! I would have much rather enjoyed performing a big cannonball into Mickey’s giant ear.

Forgetting Something?

So there I was… in a relationship with my rock star musician boyfriend. We lived the typical rock star life…gigs all over, drinks a plenty, dancing, singing, smoking, getting high and staying out until 4 in the morning every day. Ahhh, the life of a groupie!! Did I mention the sex? Ah yes, the sex was pretty rock star too; it was fantastic. So fantastic that sometimes it made me lose my mind… literally. This one particular time we were upstairs in the rock star room, shaking the walls and windows. I couldn’t help to think what his other 3 male roommates were thinking. The sex was good, like I said, so good that when it was done I realized that I had completely forgotten that I was on my period.

Hmmmm… wasn’t I wearing a tampon? Uh oh, I don’t remember taking it out. Did he take it out? Panic set in. Jesus Christ, where’s my tampon?! What do I do? What do I say? Do I ask him? I got up the nerve to do just that. So I asked him if he took out my tampon (yes, embarrassing; yes, humiliating). He answered a simple ‘no’. Holy crap… it’s still inside me! Oh God – that means it is WAY inside me. What the fuck? What do I do? Panic set in a second time and there was no way I was going to the hospital. How do you explain that? There was also no way I was going to explain to our roommates why were going to the hospital at 4am either. I was going to have to get it myself. That’s right – get it myself.

There I was... naked... legs spread open on the bed and taking deep breaths. Rockstar was smoking while contemplating what to do about my situation. Ok, I have now built up the confidence to go in. Here we go... up goes the fingers and I can’t feel it! Panic was rising; I’m envisioning all those commercials you see about toxic shock syndrome. Where was the damn tampon?? Ok, I’d have to go in further. Up goes the hand... still nothing... up goes the WHOLE hand (I now understood some of those lesbian jokes). How far can it go? What is back there? Would I have to go up my elbow?? Just then, when it couldn’t have gotten any worse, I felt it. Yes, there it was, but wait… could it be... what the fuck? It was SIDEWAYS, HORIZONTIAL! I thought: Could that even be possible? I guess so, considering babies can live in that area.

So now what? So I began wiggling my fingers around to find an end. I felt like I was fishing inside myself. Finally, I find an end and begin to tug. Here it comes, almost there, push, push, breath, almost there, and we have it… I managed to give birth to a tampon, yeah…a tampon. Thank god! Then I looked up... oh ya, Rockstar was still there; he watched the whole thing. Oh well, at least no hospital and no toxic shock syndrome for me – just a whole lot of humiliation.

So remember ladies! No matter how good the sex is, keep your wits about you and take out your damn tampon!!

Cherry Poppin'

I had been in lust with a guy from school for about 4 months. Historically, I had a terrible habit of becoming “great pals” with guys that I liked... and then it would become too late to pursue anything romantically. My timing really sucked, but THIS guy was extra special, and extra hot! We really hit it off from day one, and spent a lot of time together. My stomach never stopped doing back-flips every time he would hug me goodbye. Even when he stole my cigarettes right from my mouth, I would get turned on. I wanted to jump him so badly; it became my all-consuming goal, like I was a lioness and he was my elusive gazelle that kept escaping my clutches. Meee-oww! Sometimes I felt like I needed someone to spray me with a hose to snap me out of it! It was bordering on addiction, and I knew it, and didn’t give a shit what anyone else said.

One Saturday night we ended up at a party for a friend of mine from another school, so we really didn’t know very many people there. We got good and drunk – but in that perfect “clumsy but everything is still funny” kind of drunkenness. It was getting late and we thought it would be fun to go outside for a pee break (the toilets were totally packed). Even though I was on my period (the heaviest day, too), I didn’t care at this point. We went behind a huge tree that was on a small incline, sheltered from most lines of sight. After he had finished, he came over to me while I still had my pants down around my ankles. We were both laughing and as I stood up, he started kissing me. WHOAAAA! I WAS SCREAMING ON THE INSIDE – SO DAMN EXCITED. I couldn’t believe it was actually happening. We shimmied slightly away from the pee area and fell back down on to the grass. I told him that I was on my period and he said, “I don’t care, I want you now!” Well hell, he didn’t have to say that twice! I pulled out my tampon and flung it towards the adjacent sports’ field. We didn’t have a condom, which we also didn’t seem to care about. I think this is one of those “heat of the moment” bad decisions that Degrassi Junior High warns you about. I’m not going to lie; it was incredible sex! A lot of passion, and pent-up sexual tension was all let out at once. I didn’t care about the after effects, the consequences or anything. All I cared about was that after 4 long months of pining away for this guy, I actually got him!

The next morning, I realized what happened. A part of me was, of course, still so happy, as I really felt deeply for this guy! But then the mortification sunk in... YUUUUCK! He must have been completely covered in blood from the waist down, because I was too – from my bellybutton down to my knees. So totally disgusting! I finally got to express my true feelings for this guy and now I will never be able to look him in the face.

We never spoke of it after that night but stayed together for a long time; so he must have been OK with it... more OK than I was! Luckily, I didn’t get pregnant. Of course, it WAS high school, so everyone found out (about the sex, NOT the period part) and it turned out that it was his first time! SAY WHAT NOW? He was super hot and I knew a lot of girls that he had fooled around with, so I assumed he was a “veteran”, but apparently, it was always only the first couple “bases” that he did with anyone. Some of his friends patted me on the back and congratulated me on “popping his cherry”. Funny how they phrased it that way – if they only knew how right they were.