lost in a blood red sky

as a teenager, my friends and i laughed in amazement at the stories our friend melissa would tell us about her aunt. the one in particular that shocked us was the one in which her aunt landed herself in the hospital after having sex without removing her tampon.

"how could she not know she had one in? how could she just forget?" we wondered aloud. as 16-year-olds goddess girls, we were new to our bodies but we knew enough to never have a guy pull on the string, let alone have sex with one in.

which is where we start this post. it seems my va-jay-jay is now the blackhole (so to speak) for tampons. like george bush's elusive search for WMDs, i too, had a fruitless search looking for a tampon that i swore was there.

the lightbulb finally registered over my head the other evening as i got changed after work. by the time that "whoops, i forgot to take something out" blinked overhead, the tampon had already decided to play hide-and-seek. and it was nowhere to be found.

"i don't understand, what do you mean, you can't find it?" mam asks. "they don't just wander off by themselves. where did it go?"

listening to his questions, i realized his tone changed from this is not a new version of "not tonight, dear i have a headache" to "what the fcuk did she do this time" as i am hunched over the toilet spelunking in search of this elusive tampon string.

"are you sure you put one in this morning?"

wordlessly, i point to the applicator discarded in the trashcan and go back to digging rooting through my va-jay-jay like a homeless person searches for food in a trashcan -- mumbling incoherently as i look. but i am starting to panic as those same words are forming in my throat - where the hell can it go?

flat like a tube of toothpaste
my health education classes in a catholic high school were a joke. as the track coach sweated profusely at the front of the classroom, he would provide such gems of wisdom like "the vagina is flat like a tube of toothpaste" and "the cervix is the size of a typed letter O".

forget any chance of actual sex education or -- goddess forbid -- any mention of birth control except to point out failure rates. then they push their own agenda of the natural family planning, with like a 50% failure rate. it's like trying to sell someone on a car whose brakes work only 50% of the time when the car they want has brakes that work 99%. (in a way that would make any lawyer proud, they also point out the 50% failure rate is user error. as in, if you were a better driver, you wouldn't need effective brakes to avoid a crash, would you?)

we educated ourselves on our bodies, through each other, planned parenthood, and good old fashion research in the days prior to the internets". (seriously, how did we advance civilization prior to having this wonderful series of tubes at our disposal?) and we certainly all learned how to use a tampon.

which is why now, at age 31 and seemingly wiser than my 16-year-old self, this is so disturbing. frankly, i am not sure which is more disturbing -- that i can't remember taking the tampon out or the fact that i lost the tampon without realizing it. either way, i feel like i've got more serious issues than a missing wad of cotton and string.

just call the doctor
after checking the internet to see what ills will befall me with this wad of cotton that must now be lodged somewhere between my uterus and my breastbone, i broke down and called the doctor knowing full well the advice i would receive. (this is after the serious of tubes told me to put my legs onto a wastebasket while squatting over the toilet and pretend to give birth (pretend?), pushing downwards to use your muscles to rouse the tampon from its hiding place, mind you. mam had quite the chuckle when he opened the bathroom door to find me in such a position with a mirror on the floor between my legs.)

dialing the number on my cell phone, i reach the lovely answering service who assures me that if this is an emergency i should go the emergency room at the hospital. the memories of sitting in the waiting room for hours waiting to be seen by a doctor still fresh from my mc-clotsky days, i told her i just wanted to speak with the doctor instead. now that it's 8 pm, and the office closed exactly 30 seconds prior to my call, i wasn't hopeful for a quick call back.

the next morning, after a fitful night worrying that the symptoms of toxic shock syndrome would take hold before the doctor called me back, i preemptively called them. i began my spiel with my best legalese (i've been hanging around lawyers too much these days) "i may or may not have taken it out, to the best of my knowledge..., i cannot recall such an event" .... so much so, the receptionist may have recognized the language as being legalese and decided to bring me in to see the doctor just in case i was a lawyer with a lost tampon (i'm not.)

at the doctor's office, the assistant takes my blood pressure. "rough day at work today?" she asks while looking at her watch to see, now that it's 3:30 pm and i've been sitting in the waiting room for a half-hour now. "you might say, what with scoring your last available appt for months, ducking out of work early a week before a deadline, worried sick that either i have lost my mind or a wad of cotton is hiding behind my cervix, waiting to let loose a nasty wave of toxic shock syndrome which, with my luck sister, will just plain. old. suck."

damn, my inner voice is tough.

thankfully, my sadist otherwise known as my gynocologist, decided the office was too warm, and turned the thermostat down a few degrees before i would need to disrobe. this helped eliminate the steam that shot from my ears, too.

the temperature finally hit his intended 57 degrees just as i scooched my butt to the end of the exam table, feet high in stirrups waiting for the clicks of the medieval torture device they call a speculum. the pink paper sheet kept me toasty warm, too, as the table that was so thoughtfully positioned over the air vent meant to keep the doctor who worked above it cool, never mind freezing the bejeezus out of the naked woman draped in paper who lies in close proximity as well.

click, click, click. "you don't have any children do you?" he asked, making me wonder why he's asking that question. (am i flabby and out-of-shape down there too?) he looked left. he looked right. he looked in every single place, in every single light, as the assistant watches over his should making faces at the sight of my obviously ugly va-jay-jay (why else would she have that scrunch-face look?).

it was nowhere to be found. it wasn't hiding by my cervix, nor did it flip around, do a backflip and land sunny side up somewhere. it just disappeared.

so dearly beloved, we gather here to say our goodbye to the tampon lost under a blood red sky, who obviously along with it, has taken my mind.