The absurdities our bodies subject us to! Other than being doubled over with diarrhea in some stinking public toilet, I know of nothing more ignominious than getting your period when you have no Tampax. The odd thing is that I didn’t always feel this way about menstruation. I actually looked forward to my first period, longed for it, wanted it, prayed for it. I used to pore over words like “period” and “menstruation” in the dictionary. I used to recite a little prayer which went: please let me get my period today. Or, because I was afraid someone would hear me, I said: P.L.M.G.M.P.T., P.L.M.G.M.P.T., P.L.M.G.M.P.T. I used to chant this on the toilet seat, wiping myself again and again and hoping to find at least a tiny spot of blood. But nothing. Randy had her period (or “got unwell,” as my liberated mother and grandmother said) and so did all the girls in my seventh-grade class. And my eighth-grade class. What big bosoms and C-cup Maidenform bras and curly pubic tendrils! What stirring discussions of Kotex and Modess, and (for the very, very daring) Tampax! But I had nothing to contribute. At thirteen I had only a “training bra” (training for what?) I didn’t fill, a few sparse brownish-red curls (not even blonde, for all that I was a natural blonde), and information about sex gleaned from all-night marathons with Randy and her best friend Rita. So the prayers on the pot continued. P.L.M.G.M.P.T., P.L.M.G.M.P.T., P.L.M.G.M.P.T.
And then, when I was thirteen and a half (ancient compared to Randy’s ten and a half), I finally “got it” on the Île de France in Mid-Atlantic, as we returned en famille from that disastrously expensive (though tax-deductible) European jaunt.
There were the four of us sharing an inner stateroom near the din of the engines (while our parents had an outer cabin on the Boat Deck) and suddenly I reached womanhood two and a half days out of Le Havre. What to do? Lalah and Chloe (who are sharing one set of bunks) are not supposed to know-being, my mother thinks, too young-so Randy and I engage in some conspiratorial trips to the drugstore for supplies and go sneaking around the cabin looking for places to hide them. Of course I am so delighted with my new toy and my new sense of distinction in the adult world that I change my Kotex no less than twelve times a day, using them up almost faster than we can buy them. And the moment of truth arrives when the steward (a beleaguered Frenchman with a face like Fernandel and a temper like Cardinal Richelieu) finds the toilet stuffed to the top and overflowing. Until then I had not felt particularly oppressed by menstruation. It was only when the steward (who was certainly not thrilled about having to tend a cabin which resembled a girls’ dormitory) started yelling at me that I joined the ranks of potential radicals.
“What ave you poot in ze commode?” he shrieked (or something to that effect). And then he made me watch while he pulled out the disintegrating Kotex glob by glob. Is it possible he really didn’t know what it was? Or was he trying to humiliate me? Was it really a language problem? (Comment dit-on Kotex en français?) Or was it just that he was taking his frustration out on my menarche? I stood there turning red and muttering drugstore, drugstore, which (I am now given to understand) is a French word.
Meanwhile, Lalah and Chloe were giggling to beat the band. (They knew it was dirty, even if they didn’t understand all the details. They certainly knew something was wrong or else why would I be running to the bathroom a dozen times a day and why would that scary man be yelling at me?) We steamed toward New York leaving a trail of bloody Kotex for the fishes.
In my thirteen-year-old mind, the Île de France was the most romantic ship in the world because it made a cameo appearance in “These Foolish Things”-that dreamily romantic song (played by my dreamily romantic father on the piano):
(The poetry I was raised on!) Somewhere in the song, “The Île de France with all the gulls around it…” is dreamily mentioned. Little did I know that the gulls would be diving after my bloody Kotex. And little did I know that by the time I got to sail on it, the Île de France would be much the worse for wear and would rock and roll like an old tub, making nearly all the passengers seasick. The stewards were losing their minds. The dining room was practically empty at every sitting and the room-service bells kept ringing. I see my pudgy thirteen-year-old self clutching my clutch bag full of Kotex on the dipping and weaving decks and bleeding my way all the way home to Manhattan.
Ladies and Gentlemen, my menarche.
A year and a half later, I was starving myself to death and my periods had stopped dead in their tracks. The cause? Fear of being a woman, as Dr. Schrift put it. Well, why not? OK.
I was afraid of being a woman. Not afraid of the blood (I really looked forward to that-at least until I got yelled at for it), but afraid of all the nonsense that went along with it. Like being told that if I had babies, I’d never be an artist, like my mother’s bitterness, like my grandmother’s boring concentration on eating and excreting, like being asked by some dough-faced boy if I planned to be a secretary. A secretary! I was determined never to learn to type. (And I never have. In college Brian typed my papers. Later I pecked with two fingers or paid to have things typed. Oh, it has greatly inconvenienced me and it has cost me ridiculous sums of money-but what are money and inconvenience where principle is concerned? The principle of the thing was: I was not and never would be a typist. Even for myself, no matter how much that would have eased my life.)
So, if menstruating meant you had to type, I would stop menstruating! And stop typing! Or both! And I wouldn’t have babies! I would cut off my nose to spite my face. I would literally throw out the baby with the bath water. And that, of course, was another reason I was in Paris. I had cut myself off from everything-family, friends, husband-just to prove I was free. Free as a misfired satellite in outer space. Free as a hijacker parachuting down into Death Valley.
I swiped the remains of the roll of toilet paper, stuffed it into my bag, and started back toward my room. But which floor was it on anyway? My mind was blank. All the doors seemed identical. I ran up two nights and blindly headed for the corner door. I flung it open. A fat middle-aged man sat naked on a chair cutting his toenails. He looked up in mild surprise.
“Excuse me!” I said and slammed the door in a hurry. I raced up another flight, found my own room and bolted the door. I couldn’t get over the expression on the man’s face. Amusement, but not shock. A tranquil Buddhalike smile. He was not alarmed at all.
So there were people who got up at noon, pared their toenails, and sat naked in hotel rooms without regarding each day as an apocalypse. Amazing! If someone had burst into my room and found me naked and paring my nails, I would have died of shock. Or would I? Maybe I was stronger than I thought.
But I was also dirtier than I thought. Despite what Auden says about all people loving the smell of their own farts, my reek was beginning to offend my nostrils. Since I had no
Tampax, a bath was out of the question, but I’d have to do something about my hair which hung in limp and greasy strings. It had begun to itch as if I had fleas. A new start. I’d wash my hair at least, douse myself with perfume like the smelly courtiers at Versailles, and set out. But where was I headed? In search of Bennett? In search of Adrian? In search of Tampax? In search of Isadora?