The Revenge of My Conscience

Fate will not allow it. It is unquestionably in poor taste for me to reminisce about my teen (and later lapses) - years as a smoker - and also a fundamentally unhappy person with halitosis and stinky fingers - on my blog about being open about women's health. Not to mention the lying bastards who try to convince children to smoke. So while my tongue was obviously in my cheek, the body rebelled. Two nights ago, a canker sore on my lip, actually a mongo herpes sore, sprouted and was itchy, burning, tingling and bubbling. Fortunately, my dermatologist is also one of my best friends, and it is through her generosity that I received quick treatment. But as many ailments do, the itching and swelling and discomfort returns as the day ends, right in the center of my upper lip. A mere millimeter away from the very spot where a cigarette would dangle. I do not believe that everything happens for a reason; I do not think I believe in signals; but I do believe that my conscience may have slapped a big fat puss-ball on my mouth.

Why Can't I?

Following a recent loss, many people have told me to take care of myself. Lovely, thoughtful, intelligent people, who know from their own experiences that one must pamper one's self and slow down some to stay sane. They are concerned and compassionate, and I do feel slightly stricken when I hear it because I know I am not doing it. I am a mother, I work full time, and I'm not sure how to squeeze in the taking care of myself part. If I do go to the gym, or manage some yoga - which, in honesty, I am just getting back to after months as a sloth, eagerly saying I'll probably go and then never going - I am so goddamn tired that I take a bath and sleep. It is definitely caring for myself but I am more not doing it than doing it. I also have to not do all of the other things I'm supposed to do but I'm not, like organize my clothes, clean my bureau, help the children organize their rooms, and sort through the many piles of varied things I accumulate everywhere, at home and at work. I am really busy not doing a lot of stuff.

Plus there is a part of me - not the poor-me part, I'll skip that - but another, brazen, immortal part that truly believes I should do whatever the hell I wanna do. Why can't I smoke a fucking cigarette for crissake? I used to smoke, I enjoyed it immensely, and then something overtook me - a tiny moment of forward thinking? - and I realized I could not do that. But why? It is so much fun. Why am I of the age that I must know that some things are good for me and others are not? I hate knowing. I don't wanna know. I would like to eat a chocolate donut and dip it in coffee and I would like some fried chicken and I would like to watch more television, and go to more movies. I would like to have several naps a day.

Perhaps the best solution to the time crunch plus resistance-to-self-care would be a healthy-vitamin aromatherapy cigarette! I have time to smoke, definitely. It's easy as breathing, you just have to have two free fingers. Some people dangle it and don't even use a hand, like Clint Eastwood, and they let the ashes fall here and there, charming little specks of dust. I could smoke and brush my teeth at the same time; I could read, clean my bureau, drive children anywhere. I'm not sure about flossing, but I could sacrifice. My Whole-Body Cigarettes would increase lung power, lower cholesterol, and do the dishes at the same time. Okay, that might be a bit much to ask. Back to reality: the second-hand aroma would relax my children with the scents of chamomile and orange, and magically increase my body's ability to maintain vigor on 5 hours of sleep per night. I'll use the extra time to take a walk, a run, go to yoga class, or meditate. Alas, since society is not ready for many of my ideas (just wait, you'll be begging your grandchildren to light up), I am planning on yoga at 8 a.m. We'll see if I make it.

Hair Scare

I'm hairy. Not as hairy as some other gals, but a lot hairier than I used to be. When I first got hair in my armpits, there were a few long strands and I was utterly disgusted. It looked like an old guy's comb-over under my arm. When we went on a vacation, my mother quietly told me it was time to shave. Now I was really disgusted. When had she seen my pits? Wasn't body hair a male thing? Didn't that stuff belong on my father's chest or my uncle's back? I can't say too much about hair before mentioning that mine - the stuff on my head - is curly and frizzy and it's the usual sob story of how weird-looking I was as a kid because I had this weird Jewish hair, and then of course, I grew to love it. Except only on my head.

The teen years were manageable - if you'll pardon the expression - in regard to hair. I could wear a bikini and reveal nothing; I could be groovy and shave or not shave my legs; my face was pristine, in regard to hair. The hair on my head became a matter of vanity. People complimented me for my natural curls, all long and wildish. I was a body hair virgin then. I thought I knew the meaning of the word hairy, but I hadn't a furry clue.

In my early twenties, a coupla hairs peeked out my bikini, but they were barely visible. At 27, I got pregnant. Coarse black hair sprouted all around what were once my thighs, and now, apparently, were a pair of brillo pad forests. Maybe small creatures would live in there. As my belly grew, so did the hair. Maybe I was going to give birth to a gorilla?

How ridiculous to be concerned about body hair. I went to a women's college. I had worn a menstruation bracelet to symbolize my oneness with womanhood. I had let the pit hair grow. (Never braided it.) Why could I not love my self in my natural state? Because my new self reminded me of a man, for crissake. A man named Larry! A man with hair on his stomach. Yes, it was on my belly, too, in a line from navel to crotch. I became a symbol of natural preganancy, womanhood, round and growing, yet dreading the sideburns and moustache that seemed like they might appear any day. I was utterly hair-phobic and pathetically acculturated. I was, truly, mortified. A man named Larry!

How are we supposed to accept this stuff if no one ever tells us? My mom told me a helluva lot more than her mom told her, but also - my mom is not hairy. My father is hairy. Hairy like Dad. Blech! Hairy like fucking Larry. Then comes the hair on my chin. I'm plucking wildly now. And the lowest point: hair on my otherwise lovely pale pink nipples. What an outrage. A humiliation, a shock. Every time I hear someone say 'that'll put hair on your chest,' I think don't bother, I've got it already. Of course I am so uptight about it I pluck those out. Because what if I forget and I go to the doctor or I remove my shirt in front of someone, and there, protruding from my nipple is a hair, a black, curly hair?! I'm shamed, I'm repressed, I shoulda been a fair-haired Swede. If you haven't figured it out yet, I am still, this very day, backwards in regard to my body hair. I'm luck a fucking Cosmo article, a Teen People, a guy named Larry.

About two years ago, the hair on my head started falling out. After a shower, I'd comb it, and there was this little swirly packet of hair. I panicked at some point, and my doctor told me I was peri-menopausal in my late thirties. I made a plan: save all waxed, shaved, plucked (oh the self-mutilation) and otherwise removed hair for later plastering on top of head. My hair's frizzy - some of it could definitelty pass for pubic hair. I knew of course that that would never work, but a girl can wish. A forty-year-old woman can wish.

I do, on rare occasion, accept all of my hairiness, in tiny philosophical winter all-covered moments of reflection on hirsutism. My hair does not fall out so much anymore, and I am an expert plucker. Besides, once my brothers became adults, they both got hairy too. So I can be hairy like my brothers instead of hairy like my dad. If my eyebrows meet I'll post it.

Messy Menstruation

Is there a way to menstruate without making a mess? Particularly at menarche, when one's first period begins, a sort of natural anarchy, striking a girl's vulnerable frame at any unknown moment? When I first got my period I believed that a drop of blood would come out of my vagina - supposedly a hole from my insides to my outsides - and that would be that. Mama and I had had a little communication glitch and I did not comprehend the weight - or volume - of the situation. She was actually away at the time, and so I managed the mess myself. She had foreseen the inevitable, however, and left some maxi-pads in the cabinet. They were mega-maxi. I took out the box, careful that no one was lurking around to discover - oh no oh no oh no me with a big weird not-cereal box of "feminine napkins" - and I crept back into the bathroom. But hold on! It was like a diaper. It was huge. Super-duper-deluxe-extra-double-bundled. It was a napkin I could have used for innumerable dinners. How the hell could I fit the behemoth into my pants? (A variation on that question would come up later in a much different context, but that's another blog.) In addition, the stuff coming forth from my alleged vagina looked like blood but also, clearly, had other stuff mixed in. This was not a paper cut or even a big scrape with nice thin red blood. This was something akin to perhaps a female pudding. And, and, well, yuck. I was not yet at one with the complexity of the female body, and I found the materials leaking out of my female body to be repugnant. My menstrual distress also came with diarrhea.

I did stick the pad into my pants and I walked around, even had a stilted conversation with my dad, and then proceeded back to the bathroom, and took the thing out. I examined the box all over. Something was wrong. The blonde box lady smiled, and the helpful diagram showed how the tape worked, but surely this creation was intended for a different use - perhaps a different species? It felt like a massive wad of diaper in my pants, and I was sure that other people would actually see that there was a massive wad of diaper in my pants. I spent a lot of time working my neck muscles to check out my ass in my corduroys. I had to be sure the pad was lodged properly in the very center.

Eventually, months later, I experienced the joy of first leakage: two big brown spots on the back of my beige pants, discovered after school; also, the thrill of being exposed: a maxi-pad I'd hidden in my sock fell out, directly at the feet of a boy in my class; and catharsis: in college, when I opened my dorm-room door for my straight-laced brother and his even straighter friend, one of my female cohorts had left a pad stuck - eye-level - to the door. Fortunately, it was unused.

Mama gave me a big hug when she returned from her overnight away. I felt disgusted with myself. She told me that I was a woman now. She did, mysteriously, tell me that I would need to shower every day henceforth. She did not say why, though, and I did not ask. Was it because of the pudding, or had something else occurred, too, which had to be soaped away daily? Before my little sister got her period, having grown my ovaries a bit, I directed my mother to tell her everything. Not convinced that she would, my best friend and I sat my sister down, with a tampon, and held forth with the facts. Fact number one: you don't wanna walk around in a diaper, so learn how to use a plug.