the period piece

Friday, oct. 18, 2002   |   0 comments

I don’t know about you, but I don’t seem to be getting my period anymore. It’s actually more of an ellipsis. You know the bloody hallway scene in The Shining? Like that, only with chunks. Chunks! Little pieces of Evany-brand fetus food that shoot off and hit the wall when I change tampons.

Still here? Hi!

So this bloody torrent of mine, it borders on the supernatural. It has its own tidal pull — I don’t menstruate with the moon, it waxes and wanes to my monthly schedule. And nothing can stop it. Nothing. Not one of those extra-super-sheep-sized tampons. Not two extra-super-sheep-sized tampons. Not two tampons plus a night-time maxipad with wings. Not even a pair of Depends. Yes Depends! I’ve stood in line in a public place, waiting to pay money for Depends. Depends have crinkled and bulged under my clothing. And still I had to run to the bathroom every five minutes to replug and swap and readhere and adjust.

My lady river has always flowed wide and deep, but over the past three years or so, it’s gotten just ridiculous. Of course I went to my doctor and she checked me top to bottom, inside and out, but she couldn’t find anything wrong (other than the anemia, which appears to be a direct result of all the gushing). She sent me to a special sonogrammist who, by lubing up my stomach and poking a weird dildo camera inside me, was able to eliminate the possibility of endometriosis and tumors. So it appears I’m fine and normal. It just happens that my version of normal features a monthly geyser of blood.

The only thing that helps reign in the flood is the pill. But the pill has the fabulous side effect of making me very, very blue, blue in that crazy kind of way where I can’t see that it’s the pill that’s making me depressed. It’s all just, “ohhhhh, this sad world we live in, a world without hope, a world where nothing anyone does makes a difference” and “does this life make me look fat?” So I only resort to the pill when I can’t stand the blood any more. And then when I can’t stand the weltschmerz anymore, I go off the pill. Et cetera.

The worst thing (worse than splattering chunks? yes) about having a period of biblical proportions is that it doesn’t happen every month. I can see why you might think that’s a good thing — when it comes to a Niagara of menstrual blood, less is more, right? But much as a professional torturer alternates abuse with kindness, it’s the unreliability of my uterine lining that really tenses me out. Being toilet-bound for a day is one thing, but not knowing when it’s going to happen is particularly terrible. Especially since the Bloody Gusher, as my friends have come to know it, loves to throw me little surprise parties. About a day after I think I’m well in the clear, I’ll head off on, say, a second date, without the usual truckload of plugs and padding, and then … surprise!

The Second Date (A True Story)

I met up with him at Doc’s Clock, ordered a beer, and just as we went to sit down, I felt that horrible “letting go” sensation radiating up from down under. I slowly straightened, set down my beer, and sort of backed my way to the bathroom. And indeedy yes, my bloody poltergeist had picked this choice moment, the very beginning of a second date, to festoon the back of my light green pants with a circle of red the size of a dinner plate.

What else could I do but go back out there, tie my jacket around my waist, and say, “Yeah hi, I’m having one of those moments where there’s blood everywhere?” To his credit, he shrugged and said “OK” and agreed to come back to my apartment so I could get some new clothes and fortify my hole.

As soon as we got home, I grabbed the first pair of pants I could find, which turned out to be these weird, red Gap jeans, and changed in the bathroom. It wasn’t until I put my red Pumas and red corduroy jacket back on that I realized that I was now dressed head to toe in red, like some sort of menstrual super hero. But since I didn’t want to be one of those “outfit indecisive” ladies, I just went with it and the three of us — my date, me, and the freaky red outfit — left and walked up to Mitchell’s for ice cream.

By the time we got back, the carnage had seeped through again, so I replugged myself up, then we went out to finally get that drink. And during the 45 minutes we were at the bar, I had to go change tampons three times. Yay!

Throughout it all, he totally went with the flow. Sure, he didn’t ask a whole lot of questions, but he got like ten extra plus points simply for being un-weird about the situation (which, let’s face it, was pretty spectacular).

At the end of the night, he walked me back home. Frank with all the blood loss, I just said, “I was kind of hoping we could make out tonight, you know, to find out if we really like each other or not, but I think, what with the hemorrhaging, maybe we should wait until the next date?” And that’s exactly what we did. The end!

Only that wasn’t the end. One night, a few months later, he hopped out of the car to open the garage door and as I pulled in, I heard an odd little “pop” sound.

He walked over to me as I was getting out of the car, and he said, “I’m not laughing, but I’ll understand if you need to laugh.”

“What? What happened?”

“You ran over a packet of ketchup.”

“No!”

“Yeeeah.”

When we got into the light of the elevator, I could see that he was splattered from hair to shoes. And that’s when I lost it, haha, just doubled over laughing for like five minutes. Hahaha! So good! Man.

And that was the real end. We didn’t actually call it quits until a few weeks later, so I’m pretty sure it wasn’t about the ketchup. Not entirely, at least. We liked each other and everything, it was just that “something was missing”, the umph or spark or special sauce or whatever. But how fucking awesome to have the whole thing bookended like that, with insane bloodshed at the beginning and slapstick, faux blood at the end? It was probably so tidily balanced, such a perfect-perfect package, that the universe just couldn’t let it go any further. Nature’s first green is gold, isn’t it?