black glasses and a pair of prescription sunglasses and I’ll bring my pink glasses in case I break my black glasses” is a conversation I have had in my head, with myself, as I contemplated a weeklong trip to the woods I was going on in the hopes of making a dent in this book you’re reading now. I brought three pairs of regular outside pants and two pajama bottoms and a pair of inside pants that can double as outside pants if the building I was staying at caught fire or I had to make a snack run, all to sit in my boy Fernando’s subterranean Airbnb in the dark in front of this computer. Imagine the time and mental energy I could save if I were not this person.
I have with me five T-shirts and two dresses and a lightweight sweater and a heavier sweater just in case the air conditioner is strong, or I go out to see a movie. (I mean who knows what the night might bring because I’d rather put on more clothes than turn off that sweet, sweet refrigerated air.) But I tried to pretend to be a different, more easygoing person in Texas, a person who doesn’t travel with just-in-case jammies, so I was forced to try to conceal my crime while wearing the evidence of it splattered down my front and up my back because I just don’t enjoy doing things while naked!
They don’t make those bed linens easy to remove, and I appreciate that. No one wants to wake up with their body touching the clammy sickness of an actual mattress. I could hear vacuuming down the hall but couldn’t gauge how close it was or how much time I had to get the bed stripped and rinse myself off and get fresh clothes on before they arrived, and I would feel compelled to apologize for being a disaster to people who would probably just wish I’d shut the fuck up and leave. I yanked up the corners of the sheet and brought them together in the middle, then folded them again, then rolled them into an internally oozing blood tube, which I set on the floor near the door. I took a shower, soiling two washcloths and a towel and murdering that embossed rug-made-out-of-towel-material in the process, then I found the (modest) wad of emergency cash I keep in the bottom of my backpack when I’m traveling—because I definitely want to be killed taking too long getting the money out when an impatient robber rightfully pegs me as a naive tourist—and dug up three twenties and left them on the bed with a note that read I apologize for my body. It is a toilet.
* * *
—
My last period began on December 15, 2017, and ended on February 12, 2018. I only know this because that Texas episode scared the shit out of me, and since terror is my only motivation, I bought the kind of planner high school kids pretend to write their assignments in and marked a red dot on every day a torrent of blood rained down from my uterus, helpless as I stained every flat surface in my home. It wasn’t the first time this kind of thing had happened to me, but it was certainly the worst and most extreme case; I couldn’t live my life like a normal person, let alone live the exciting life of a woman in a Kotex ad! I don’t rock climb or play tennis in tiny pastel shorts! I’m not sitting in a kayak or riding a fucking city scooter!
I got blood on the cart at Target while trying to decide between universal remotes. I left a rusty smudge on a light-blue chair at the DMV and tried to clean it off inconspicuously with an eyeglass wipe. A neighborhood kid asked if I spilled juice on my pants while trying to sell me shitty Cub Scouts popcorn. I went to see The Shape of Water and left The Shape of Sloughed-Off Endometrial Cells behind in my seat.
I wanted to scrape my insides out with a serving spoon, because I spent two consecutive months marinating in my own insides. I started taking the pill to try to stanch the flow, but the side effects were comically terrible, and the