Taking the Plunge
by Malia McCarrick
“I’m a bit concerned,” I mentioned, munching a French fry, “I want to use tampons, but I just don’t know how.”
I’d recently come home from college to begin my first summer break, delighted not to be a freshman anymore. Unfortunately, I felt high anxiety. Distress was my middle name. I would soon be nineteen, and I still didn’t use tampons! While all the other girls in my dorm that year had successfully graduated from those bulky pads, I, on the other hand, was the girl stuck with the canoe between her legs once a month. I knew I had to put a stop to this nonsense once and for all. I couldn’t face the humiliation anymore. I was bound and determined not to be the only Kotex girl on my floor next year in the residence halls.
Chris would know what to do. She’d been a friend since eighth grade, and I’d marveled at her firsts. First to wear a bra (nine years old). First to have a steady boyfriend (thirteen years old and French kissing in the stairwells during lunch). First to have sex (fifteen in the back seat of a different boyfriend’s car, a feat they accomplished between Sunday school and the 11 a.m. service). Confident she’d been using tampons for years, I brought the subject up the next day when we met for lunch.
Chris leaned in over her Frosty and whispered, “Oh it’s so easy! There’s nothing to it! Just unwrap and plunge!”
I felt queasy at the image conjured in my mind, and felt the Wendy’s single rising in my throat. “I just don’t think plunging sounds healthy at all!”
“Oh it’s not bad. Just don’t get the supers. You’ll feel like someone stuck a wad of cotton up your . . .”
OK, I had enough. I figured being known as Kotex girl wouldn’t be so bad after all next year. But Chris would have none of it. Her new mission that summer was to make sure I pomp-and-circumstanced my way through Tampon Insertion 101.
A few weeks later I made the mistake of mentioning to Chris that I had menstrual cramps.
“My uterus is falling out!” I moaned on the phone to her on a Friday night.
“I’ll be right over!” The phone went dead. Instinctively, I crossed my legs. Twenty minutes later, I heard her little Chevy Citation in the driveway. Mom and Dad were out in the yard. I had no hope of reprieve.
“I’m coming up!” Chris yelled and I heard her thump thump thump up the stairs in tune with my heart. When she got to my bedroom door, she held a brown paper bag in her hand.
“Thank God you brought booze,” I half-teased, then watched as she lifted a thin box from within. I saw Kotex on the side. Now they were making tampons, too?
“Traitors!” I sneered. Chris began her instruction.
“First, remove the wrapper.”
“Oh, I’m so glad you told me that part.”
She ignored me and went on, “Next, you can either put one leg up on the side of the toilet, or sit up from the seat a little and bend at the waist, inserting it that way.”
It sounded like more of an exercise than anything. I wondered how many repetitions I had to do?
“But what if it doesn’t go in?” I whined. Chris assured me that it would.
“Well, I think you’d better come with me,” I decided as I grabbed the bag. Her face suddenly turned pale.
“Umm, I think it’s better if you do it alone.”
Ha! Not in your life, honey. I grabbed her by the hand and marched her into the bathroom with me. The green shag carpet now matched the color of her face.
“I can’t watch! I just can’t!” she pleaded.
“Go stand in the tub then and pull the curtain.” I hustled her into the shower, shoes, clothes and all. That shower curtain never snapped shut so fast!
“OK, I’m ready,” she sighed from the other side, resigned. Assuming the squatting position over the commode, I unwrapped. I positioned. I plunged.
“OH MY GOD!” I shrieked. Silence from the shower.
“Is it supposed to feel like sandpaper up my crotch?” I tried to walk around the bathroom but resembled a drunk duck.
“Maybe you don’t have it in far enough,” she murmured helplessly.
I considered the length of the applicator and didn’t think my vagina could be nearly a foot long. I kept waddling around the bathroom making occasional “Ow! Ooo! Eouch!” noises.
Suddenly, a knock at the door. Didn’t I remember to lock it? My mother walked in. I duckwalked right out.
“What are you doing?” she puzzled over me, then reached past the side of the shower curtain. I heard the water explode from the overhead faucet. Turning around, I was just in time to hear simultaneous screams as Chris practically ripped the curtain from its hooks and leaped out onto the carpet, while my mother thought the Holy Ghost had taken up residence in her bathroom. As if infected by the panic, my scream came next, which was just enough to end my tampon practice session for the day.
“It fell out!” I moaned as Chris dried off and my mother took another dose of her blood pressure medicine, her planned bath completely disrupted. Chris patted me on the hand and promised that tomorrow would be another day. My rite of passage into the wonderful world of OB and Playtex would just have to wait, which it did until a few months later.
The moral of this story (and, of course, you knew there had to be one) is that while I’m a strong advocate of the importance of coming out, I’ve also learned that there are those times in life when it’s oh so important to just stay in!
Malia McCarrick travels the world on breaks from teaching college writing to US military members, veterans, and their families on bases in Asia, Europe and the Middle East. She has published creative nonfiction and memoir in Bright Flash Literary Review, Spank the Carp, New Feathers Anthology, Persimmon Tree, and StylusLit, plus music and martial arts pieces in Jazziz, Tae Kwon Do Times, and several Michigan publications. She holds a Ph.D. in creative writing.
