Hey public school younguns, remember that day in eighth grade health class when they rolled out the projector and sat us down and scarred us all for life? Remember how the boys joked like little assholes and some girls rolled their glitter-rimmed eyes and others just sat in petrified silence as six-foot depictions of diseased junk paraded Clockwork Orange style in front of our little, shiny, impressionable faces?
Well I missed out on most of that, as I was sprawled unconscious on the floor of the girls bathroom, having fainted dead away at the mere concept of internal birth control. For some reason, just the thought of a little copper wishbone thing wedged all up in my bits just cut out my cerebral lights and left me sick and helpless until the scream of a custodian aroused me from the daze. Don’t get me wrong, I eventually did get my state-mandated fill of sexual fear just like all the other droogs, choking back down my pb&j on wheat and swearing off dick for the rest of my life.
I grew out of that fear in a proper fashion, familiarizing myself with the lower halves of boys, as well as those fun little rubber bags that keep your life from spiraling into disarray.
By the time I turned eighteen-and-a-half I was pretty damn content with the safeness of my fuckery, with only a scare or two under my belt and no worldly intentions of including additional hormones / evil T-shaped uterine invaders in my boudoir.
Fast forward to present day, and I’m sitting in the gyno like a real lady, the letters “IUD” circling like buzzards in my head. In the name of cool-slimy-middle-school-bathroom-tile-pressed-against-one’s-face, why am I here, sweating cannonballs, wrapped in a sterile tablecloth, feet propped up in stirrups (who’s riding who though??), toes making little toe-fists as a stranger with a degree peers contently into my depths with the intention of making me a home to the sort of inhabitant that does not end up, in fact, a child??
The answer is a series of events having to do with the male species, believe it or not. One “event” being a six-foot-tall cool drink of sweet tea in the shape of a boyfriend, and the other a different sort of hormonal invader, that against all odds wormed his way to a political position from which he could legally but ham-handedly dictate the fate of every uterus in the country. All in all, I’d so nobly taken it upon myself to finally face my fear of IUDS in the name of feminism and baby-free boning. Hallelujah, right? right??
The pussy doctor was a kind older lady with a pretty green sweater who assured my shaking ass, “It’s not nearly as big as a penis, but definitely not as fun,” as she tore the commercial packaging off my new wombmate, a little wiry T by the name of “Kyleena.” (Also, why the actual hell do they name all birth control shit like “Lyla” or “Emmestra” and weird yuppie sounding names that sound exactly like what you’d name the poor hypothetical kid you don’t want? Just cruel). She came at me brandishing it like a bayonet bound for my bits, saying “just relax, honey,” and I replied with a weak “okay” as the room fogged at the edges, and my pelvic floor clenched up like a steel bear trap.
I won’t sugar-coat it. I shamelessly identify as a world-class weenie when it comes to pain and general uncomfiness and I squeezed the poor nurses hands purple at just the touch of the cool metal speculum. When the moment of truth arrived I swiftly departed from my consciousness, and somewhere deep in my dizzy delirium I found myself 13 and faint with the cold tile of a smelly middle school bathroom pressed against my cheek, and the dirty, desperate thought escaped my lips, “I just wish I liked girls!” Back in distant reality, I heard the eternal tongue-clucking of all the women of the world echoing off the sterile walls.
All encompassed, I emerged from that clinic a whole new girl: sweaty, minutely heavier, and blessed with feminine strength and resilience, bound for 5 beautiful years of worry-free whoopie, bleeding in the back of an uber (how many people have bled in here??) I felt the small smiles of every independent lady that has ever stuck it to the man glued to me like the truest Brownie badges. And I smiled too.
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