Getting the Love (Your Vagina) Wants

It's true that I don't worry about colon cancer.  I don't worry about peeing every six minutes someday (as depicted on "The Family Guy") and all the other awful, awful stuff I'm sure goes along with this gender-preferred disease.  Therefore, I don't worry about my doctor someday sticking his finger up my sphincter or telling me to turn my head and cough, or whatever else doctors put men through to guarantee none of their nether regions turn sour on them.

And (most) men, I assume, don't worry about ovarian cancer.  (Let it here be noted that the word "ovarian" is different than the word "avian," and no: there are no birds residing in our reproductive organs.)  It is lucky, then, that men do not ever, ever have to visit the gynecologist. 

I won't make claims that the preventative measures men have to go through aren't as tough as what women endure, but if this were Vegas, I'd put money on a man pissing his pants at the male equivalent of a woman's annual visit to her friendly OB/GYN.  And they would NEVER go back.

Not only do we (lady people) go back, but we do so every year, sometimes TWICE a year, basically as soon as we are legal to vote.  It's really pretty stupid if you don't, and you better bet your Gynie (pronounced "guy-knee") will shake his or her finger at you for missing even one pap smear.  As if being subjected to something called a PAP SMEAR weren't bad enough.

"What's a pap smear?" you ask.  Imagine this.  After all the doctor's office formalities, paying your co-pay blah blah blah, sitting and waiting and watching everyone else do the death march before you, you go and get weighed.  No big deal, right?  Sure, if your nurse isn't a size two and isn't obviously judging you as she slides the tiny weight further and further toward your doom.  Then she cheerily announces your weight.  As if you couldn't do math.  As if you couldn't add a large sum like one hundred to whatever else is the other number and come up with what you weigh yourself.  Has anyone ever really asked their nurse, "So, like, what does that mean?"

Nurse Betty then sits you down at her station and you are forced to look at pictures of her happy life with what appears to be her new husband, dog, boat and wheelbarrow.  She asks you personal questions about your birth control methods, responds with resounding ambivalence, and requires absolutely no context.  You might want to say, "Well, let me explain how my sex life doesn't suck..."  But she doesn't care.

Then she marches you into a sterile room, and tells you to disrobe, which you do as fast as you have ever have, all so when that fateful knock sounds and your doctor comes to poke around at your insides, you won't be caught hopping around butt ass naked trying to pry a sock off your foot.  And of course you don't want your underthings hanging out on the office chair like you're drying laundry, so the artful tucking of said underthings into your pants or skirt or whatever requires at least a few seconds of attention.

But don't worry, you have time.  In fact, you have time to think about life, your fifties, where you want to retire, the origin of the universe and maybe you even find yourself on the brink of understanding some deeply-rooted fear you have of commitment -- and then the knock.

So your lovely doctor waltzes in, shoots the shit with you for a second or two, then reaches to rub your throat for alien spaceships lodged under your jaw or something, but not before you think she's gonna lean you back and start feeling up your boobs, so there is the awkward half-leaning-back-half-laugh when you discover she's checking your glands.  THEN you lean back and she feels up your boobs.

I don't know why, but I always forget that they do this with the robe off.  I always have a moment of brief terror when she has me pull my arms out from the robe and my breasts are exposed to another woman, not by accident, not after I've just skinny dipped in a lukewarm sea on the coast of Italy, but under fluorescent lights.  Luckily, my lady's hands are always warm and something about it is comforting.  Plus, I have awesome boobs.  Nothin' to worry about.

Then you scoot.  Of course, you never scoot far enough down, because when, on any other day of the year, do you scoot down so far on a bed-type thing that your ass is hanging off the edge?  I always figure that, at this point, my feet are in stirrups and that is enough.  Nope.  "Scoot down just a little further," she says.  Ooooh GOOD.

What pleases me most is the jovial conversation that follows the scooting.  The part where she starts the exam by saying, "Oh things look good down here," like a proud mama, after she has pulled back the robe and has a NASA-powered light pointed directly toward my va-jay-jay.  I'd like to note at this point that I studied this light as I was waiting alone in my soft cotton hospital gown.  There was a warning sticker on the light that read: "WARNING: EXPLOSION HAZARD IF PLACED NEAR FLAMMABLE ANESTHETICS."  And this thing is pointed at my va-jay-jay?  Awesome. 

Enter: the duck thing.  This thing, men, is shaped like a duck's bill and it is inserted directly into your you-know-what.  But that's not all!  IT EXPAAAAAANDS!  Yup, Daffy Duck spreads you open like it's a double-handled trowel and you are the motherfucking Earth. 

At this point, of course, with your very soul exposed to this woman, you start thinking about everything that could possibly be wrong down there.  Lint?  OH NO!  How many times did you pee that day?  Did you eat pineapple?  Does drinking coffee make your Girly Land smell like a Starbucks?  I swear, I care more what my female gynecologist thinks of my vagina than any man I have ever known.  Why?  Who knows.  Maybe it's because she's a woman.  Maybe it's because she sees so many of these things in one day, and I want mine to stand out.  Maybe it's because she told me once a few years ago that I had a "cute" cervix and I want to stay deserving of her praise.  Then I wondered, actually, if she tells everyone something along these lines.  I wondered if she told some other woman that her labia was shiny, or acknowledged a mother of four for her excellent upkeep.  I'm not gonna lie: I felt a little jealous.  But then I figured complements like these were necessary in her line of work, and build trust between a woman and her Gynie.  Good psychology, too; get 'em to want to please you!

At this point, with the "smear" part of the pap smear over (you know it as soon as you feel the strange snag in the core of your being that tells you something that looks remarkably like a pipe-cleaner-type-art-project-thing has just been stuck directly up your cervix), the duck trowel is removed and she can proceed to place two gloved fingers inside of you, confusing your body and mind, and feel around while you continue to try to have a conversation about health care reform.  But before you know it, she's sliding off her gloves, you feel empty inside and like you've been licked by a slobbery cow with all the goopy KY jelly stuff she applied, and she's telling you you can get dressed and she'll "be right back" to talk to you. 

Yes, NOW let's have a conversation.

Obviously, you repeat aforementioned speed-dressing, and have just a few moments to contemplate how glad you are that she will have a chance to see you clothed and looking like a normal person before you leave her office.  Then she comes in to talk to you about the dangers of breast cancer running in your family and what your options are if you care about being tested for the gene that carries this monster, which you probably have, and then she warmly asks you as you part ways if you're cooking for Thanksgiving, good luck with your family, and see you next year.  You walk past the same skinny bitch who weighed you on your way out, as well as the receptionist and No, I do not want to make another appointment for next year.  This is the medical equivalent of the Walk of Shame, and I had enough of that in college, thankyouverymuch.

Pair this with the fact that I had to pee the whole time and the exam is called a Pap Smear.  They couldn't come up with something more dignified?  At least men have the term Prostate Exam, which sounds a little more Harvard Law School than pap smear, which just sounds like some ambiguous liberal arts college in Montana.

What I'm saying is that the gynecological health of women is practically the BCS, with the male prostate playing the SEC and the vagina playing the PAC 10, where the SEC is bigger and gets all the attention, and the PAC 10 works harder, is more talented and has a higher grade point average, but never gets the credit.

Just ask the Oregon Ducks.

Floaters & Homeless Dudes

I don't have much time.  I have avoided studying at all costs, and Dr. Boyfriend is teaching his Really Hard Class.  (This is about as much as I understand from this complicated graduate-level analysis class he professors.)  I am sitting at his computer, waiting for him to return, staring at incredibly large font.  He has a big Mac monitor.  This is the closest I will ever be to penis envy.

I will conclude this blog with a list of weird stuff:

1.  I'm afraid of the bathrooms in my office building.  All except one.  The one I'm not afraid of is just a very nice type of bathroom one might find at a highly-evolved doctor's office.  The other bathrooms, which consist of two stalls each, must be accessed by a key.  I have the key.  We all have the key, which is nice of our boss.  HOWEVER.  These bathrooms are also accessible by the clients we serve.  There is one key for clients, and it is rubber-banded to a clipboard.  It sits on the desk of the nice receptionist named Vanessa.  Vanessa gives the clients the key, and they use our bathroom.
     I am consistently afraid of walking into one of these two bathrooms (especially when the lights have been turned off; I HATE WHEN THEY DO THAT!) and finding a dead baby floating in the toilet.  Yes, I realize this is ridiculous.  OR IS IT?!  You'd have to understand where I work and the population we serve, and no: this is not a gross stereotype.  I am simply saying that if ever there was a population prone to disposing of their newborn babies in toilets, it's these kids. 
     It's either floating babies I'm afraid of or homeless dudes.  I'll tell you why: I share a bathroom at home, and the security of the house is questionable.  No, it is not a dorm and it is not a hostel.  I have my own apartment with a lock and everything, but four of us share a bathroom.  When I first moved in, one of the girls told me that, one night, the shower had been left on all night.  She thought someone had committed suicide.  In the morning, they discovered the muddy leavings of what appeared to be a homeless person. 
     I don't usually worry I'll find a homeless dude in my bathroom at home, but at work: I fear the very worst.  I fear a man (yes, in the women's restroom) washing the soot from his arms (he will obviously be a chimney sweep).  The man would then stare at me hungrily, not out of heterosexual attraction, but out of actual hunger.  I might then be devoured by said homeless dude, or else risk INTENSE guilt at having escaped and denied him a good, solid meal of human flesh. 


That concludes my list.  Good night.

Canon In Four

VOICE I: The Inappropriate Inviter

Dear Sir,
     From the very beginning, you were excellent blog material.  Not only because it was the first time I was ever hit on in a grocery store, but for the fact that the first thing out of your mouth had to do with my butt crack.  I laughed politely and tried to look interested in soap (since that's the aisle in which you accosted me), but it was obvious you had inappropriate boundaries with strangers.  Little did I know this relationship would become one where you repeatedly made tasteless jokes and invited me to your birthday party repeatedly and without heed to the fact that I kept denying your invite, mentioning my boyfriend and generally avoiding your advances in the most classic college movie type ways.
     It's clear to me now that I made the right decision in writing you that scathing email in return to your last egoic attempt at being hilarious.  My girlfriends have laughed heartily upon my reading them the email, and I have shoved off the icky feeling of being unaccustomed to letting someone think I am a stone cold bitch.  Over careful review, I've decided I'm fine with this.  You can tell your trippy friends all about it and laugh and banter and be generally trippy together.
     So, in summary, you are not hilarious.  You are short and will always rely on your hair band days as a sound technician for Brian Setzer Orchestra.  I will quote my email to you yet again in saying: joking with a girl about the tricks your tongue does will only pass if you're in Vegas.  I wish you a very long, fulfilling life as Creepy Guy With No Boundaries.  I wish for you also: 1) a clue, 2) more friends, so you don't have to invite strange girls to a party they want to avoid like the Bubonic Plague.  I pray Buddha will bless you with the knowledge that you are not, in fact, irresistible to ohsomany girls.  May he also lend his services to your ego problem.

Peace.


VOICE II: That Guy

[n] that guy: A man who epitomizes general insensitivity, emotional suppression and ambivalence toward relationships with women, resulting in being "that guy" every woman has at some point dated, and subsequently, will forever more try to avoid.  Ex: "Oh, you know the type.  He was that guy."

I'll keep this brief, men.  If, when you start dating a girl, you are already consumed with the fear of being That Guy, you should follow the necessary steps to immediate withdrawal of yourself from said girl's life:

1. Tell her, in all honesty, that you possess no amount of certainty that you won't eventually take a steaming crap all over her heart.
2. Fart.  Burp.  Pick something out of your teeth or call a woman walking past you a cow, just so she thinks (accurately or not) you're disgusting.
3.  Tell her not just that you hate babies, tell her you eat babies.  Tell her you're still wanted in Vermont for crimes against infants.  Talk about the science behind Shaken Baby Syndrome.
4.  Open your glove box and pull out a pair of panties, and just start sniffing.  Don't explain the panties, just sniff.
5.  Take a swig of jagermeister from your flask as you reach across to open the car door and tell her to start walking.

This should do the trick.  If she comes back for more, it's safe to assume she's heavily medicated or a minor.  Call her probation officer.


VOICE III:  Penis Pyramid

In relationships, there is a tier system for categorizing men.  There are variations and language issues, depending on your country or origin, but just like any governing body, this system exists.  I've crafted a diagram (with the help of Paint) as a visual guide:

Foundation: Bottom Feeders

Comparatively, there are more of these guys than there are monarch butterflies in North America.  These guys abound, can be found basically anywhere, and are easily identified.  Most of the guys a woman will meet in her life are Bottom Feeders.  Think of Bottom Feeders like the "fats/sweets" category in the food pyramid; they are bad for you, and should be consumed in moderation.  Except that they form the foundation of the Penis Pyramid, and in a certain sense, are necessary for the structure of the whole, much like natural selection.

Insulation: Three-To-Nine-Months Guys

These are a tricky species.  Because they stick around for longer than one menstrual cycle, a woman is apt to bond with them.  They will laugh with you, buy you cute nicknacks for your birthday and respond when you tell them you'd like a call sooner next time.  The problem lies in that they have a shelf life.  They are like the mozzarella cheese you forgot you had in your refrigerator.  When their true nature comes to light, it's as though you have suddenly opened the refrigerator of your relationship to discover a sour stench that reeks up your whole kitchen.  And because of the intensity a three-to-nine-monther brings, the stench is practically combustible. 

Time-travelers, AKA One-to-three-years Guys

Rare, like the flesh of a baby lamb.  These guys are a beacon for the wanton female.  When a woman meets one of these guys, the tongues of all her bells are rung and she is sure she's found a good guy.  She has.  This guy was born a One-to-Three-Years Guy.  This guy will provide you with ample emotional support, spend time with your family, like and talk about children with you.  Soon your apartment or cottage is filled with evidence of your happy life together, and you may even co-habitate.  This species is as sturdy as the mighty Redwood; he's not going anywhere. 

But, like any multi-faceted gem, he sparkles differently depending on when you find him.  Hence, he is a time-traveler.  He will at first appear to be The Guy (which we will discuss later) to the girl that finds him, but, due to the indescribable forces of nature and the female psyche, he is not.  Your Michael J Fox can evaporate from plain sight either because you are just not satisfied (thus, he is bound to travel immediately forward to the realm of The Guy [for some other girl]), or because he has traveled backwards to Three-to-Nine-Months realm, by way of some cosmic fuck-up which he cannot undo.  (This time-traveler will again return to his time machine and eventually become The Guy [for some other girl] after a good solid lesson or two is learned back in the Three-to-Nine-Months place.)  It should also be noted that, regardless of the duration of the relationship, the One-to-Three Years Guy will, until he moves forward to be The Guy, always be One-to-Three-Years guy in principle.

Note: It is a common misconception that Three-to-Nine-Months Guy can time-travel, given the elusive nature of the Time-traveler's ability to go back to this era, but this is decidedly inaccurate.  Time-traveler was never Thre-to-Nine-Months Guy, and is the only type of man who can make this transformation forwards and backwards so seamlessly.  Since it is laborious to discuss the properties of this transformation (and since every woman can, within one-to-three years, identify his time-traveling capacity), let's move on.

Top hat of the Penis Pyramid: The Guy

Without exception, The Guy was once a Time-traveler.  Either of his own doing or that of his former female counter-part, The Guy was once in a one-to-three year relationship with the woman he thought was The Girl.  A girl will have one, and under rare occasions two, of these in her life (two only if the first one was killed or goes clinically insane).  The Guy is as personal an experience as God for a woman, and he will not look or feel anything like any of the One-to-Three Years Guys she has dated.  In fact, she may not even recognize The Guy; having been One-to-Three Years Guy most recently, a newly-anointed The Guy will have become self-actualizing, self-sufficient and utterly self-aware, rendering himself unrecognizable to most females.  It's lonely in The Guy realm, given that The Guy never again returns to One-to-Three-Years Guy realm.  Because of his awareness, however, he draws to him The Girl who will be ultimately humbled by and deserving of his very presence.

Then they have babies.  Wash, rinse, repeat.

VOICE IV:  On Happiness and Weightlifting

A friend and I started this thing where we'd pick words or phrases and write stories from them.  One such phrase (picked by me) was "weightlifting philosophy."  I found it on the back of a Chipotle cup.  I used it (in my subsequent story) to describe the moment a young woman realizes she must breathe through the pain of a devastating relationship, lean into it, and then recover. 

I used this phrase with a different friend over the weekend as she tried her best to sort through the rubble of a recent heartshake (think "heartbreak," only less), and felt a bit like I was plagiarizing... myself?  It worked, though.

Then I went on an 8.5 mile run this morning.  I had to go to work, so I didn't have quite the time to stretch as I normally would.  I have been achy all day. 

These things are connected.  The idiocy of weightlifting, where a human being voluntarily lifts things or presses things together that are hard to lift or press together, all with the widely-held understanding that this will tear their working muscles, which, when they heal, will be more tightly-woven, less susceptible to tearing, and better-looking.  I mean, I ran 8.5 miles this morning, and I am not a recent Navy Seal applicant.  This is "training" for the half-marathon I'm running in two weeks.  This is supposed to build "stamina."  Jesus Christ.  Is this what we do in relationships?  Lift, press, run, tear?  Does this build "stamina"?  Is this "training"?

And think about what happens when you don't stretch: it hurts.  It's hard to move, even.  Good luck getting back in the weight room or on the street again with any rapidity.  What does one do to--pardon the waxing poetic--stretch the heart muscles?  The sheer volume of painful possibilities is enough to render someone to their couch for eternity. 

Yet we lift, we run, we love.

The Evergreens of Community College

Well, I've got a pile of crap on my bed (most efficient storage system ever) and I spent the better part of the afternoon panicking over the crappy California DMV online situation.  Ever tried that thing?  Don't.  Not unless you are proactive and actually notify them if/when you move so you can pay your expired-to-the-point-of-embarrassment registration.  I mean, do people actually do that?

Whatever.  It's my fault.  I get it.

Let me move on to another situation involving my Subaru Legacy: I almost died today.  Merging onto the freeway, we've all had the experience where some asshole ignores you and your car, stares blankly ahead, and forces you to the back of the line like you're the last kid picked for dodgball.  Or maybe there's a truck driver rolling in from Albuquerque who refuses to acknowledge you, and since you'd be pissed about coming from Albuquerque, too, you accept defeat and choose life over the enbankment he is seemingly forcing you into.

None of this is as frightening as the androgynous creature with a handicapped placard hanging from its windshield mirror, whom you discover has decided not only to refuse your entry to the awesome land of Freeway, but who is sharing the lane with you as you head toward railing and certain mangling of limbs. 

As any thinking person would, I slammed on my brakes, honked the horn as obnoxiously as I could and waved my hands maliciously in the air.  This must have upset the creature, because he/she/it slammed on their brakes, causing me to almost hit them, and then flailed one hairy arm out the window with a little present for me: The Bird.  All of us then slowed to fifty miles an hour, and I'll admit it: I was afraid that in passing them, I would see the shiny end of a double barrel shotgun aimed at me.  I just kept going fifty.

Enter: a family of what appeared to be illegal immigrants behind me, which I am all for.  Except when you ride my ass.  I mean, I really hate that. 

So I trotted to community college tonight where I'm taking an entry level course, and got forced into a group of community college winners.  I mean to make it clear here that community college is not the culprit.  Stupidity is the culprit.  Laziness and a lack of fashion sense.  These I call "The Evergreens of Community College"; they're there, always, like the mighty Ponderosa.

Obeserve:

Car Guy - Wears car-related shirts.  Every day.  No neck.  Huge upper body, calf muscles of a seven-year-old girl child.  Opens his mouth (he has braces) to ask surprisingly intuitive questions.  But he calls the professor "sir," so all bets are off.

Eyeliner Girl - Lots of eyeliner, possibly under five feet tall.  Twirls (blonde) hair around finger, thumbs through pages of book for an answer.  This is the first time she's opened the book, so it confuses her to find words.

The Void - A girl so stupid, so vacant and hollow, she has her own gravitational pull.  A black hole.  While everyone else is at least feigning effort toward the group project, she sits with her plump hands placed flat on her desk, smiling at the air in front of her. 



Just lucky the classroom didn't collapse in on itself.