Currently Chasing: Control

So…it has been said by several different people in several different places that when women get together they all begin to “link up” with each other. Their bodies begin talking and they are like, hey you wanna bleed today? I don’t know, what about tomorrow? Yeah, tomorrow’s cool. Heather, is tomorrow good for you? Let me just check with Susan … Yep, all good. Let’s Bleed. It’s going to be a blastie blast.

But it’s not a blastie blast. It’s a nighty fucking nightmare.

I’m currently away from home and will be away from home for quite a few months. My plan is to remain single, remain celibate (those two work quite nicely together) and then my third thing … remain sane. Single, celibate, sane. Simple.

Well let me tell you what’s going to drive me insane before I even take the plane ride to the land of camel spiders … three periods in a month, that’s what.

I decided before I left home that I was going to get a year’s worth of birth control pills. It just made sense. Even though you really can’t call what I do being ‘on’ birth control. I would take a pill Monday, forget to take one Tuesday through Thursday, Take two Friday and Two Saturday and then drop Sunday’s pill down the drain on accident.

However, after getting here my feelings changed. I didn’t want to bother with the pill and there was no reason I needed to. It was just one more thing I had to remember to do every day, and trust me, I already had too much shit to remember. I already had to remember that on PT days I needed to wear Blue shorts with a brown command T-shirt, a white reflective belt (not the yellow one I spent 12 dollars on, but the white one that was issued to me for free after I spent the money on the other one) my camel back at least half full of water, my arm band ID holder and my ID, all while remembering that I have to be to PT at 6, which actually means 5:45, so I have to catch the bus at 5:25, which actually means 5:20 … and don’t forget my camera because there may be a surprise award ceremony immediately following PT even though no one knows and the person receiving the award is at medical. So yeah, Pill who?

So when my period came out of the blue one fine Wednesday morning, I thought to myself…ok, not the most convenient thing in the world, but doable. It’s fine. This seems to be around the time I should be getting it, so I’ll just go with it. It should only be hanging around for two days, three days tops. I bled for seven days. Eventually it stopped. And I thought, ok, well that was pleasant, but at least it’s over.

Until two weeks later when a girl in my office informed me that it was ‘about that time’ for her. That night my body informed me that it was ‘about that time’ for me as well. YOU’VE GOT TO BE FUCKING KIDDING ME.

So there we went again. Not to mention that the whole time I’m taking this ‘time’ for myself, I’m also shoving every sugary snack I can find down my throat and straight into my bloated belly. So that’s awesome.

After a few days it ended, but not without me deciding to take some corrective action. I decided to put myself back on the pill. With all the lack of scheduling and control in my life at this moment in time, It would be nice to have control over something, even if that something is as simple as my bodies decision to drop unfertilized eggs. So that next unbloody Sunday I decided to start taking my pills again.

There are pills that do a lot of things. Pills that help fight HIV. Pills that cure Polio. Even pills that help with the fight against cancer. But those aren’t THE PILL. The reason it’s THE PILL is because men feel like if you take it they can fuck you without a condom.

HELL YEAH, NOW THAT’S A PILL!

So it’s been two weeks and needless to say, I need to take three pills tomorrow and two Saturday. It’s good to be back in control.

Currently Chasing: A Condom

So the other day my friend goes out to meet up with a group of friends. On the way there she gets a call from another group of friends, so she stops to meet up with them first. As soon as she entered the bar she knew…it was on. There was a guy there that she’d been eyeing up for quite some time, just waiting for the right moment. And this was it.

They chatted, they drank…then they stopped drinking, and continued to chat. And then they left…in a hurry!

He tells her they have to stop at the store first. Apparently he wasn’t prepared for his evening to take this turn. He needed … protection.

So they head into the first grocery store they see and go toward the place where the condoms should be. Nothing. After some heavy investigation they decide to go to a manager and ask where they are. He whispers…aisle 4.

They are puzzled as to why he feels he needed to whisper. Buying a condom is not embarrassing. Having a crab jump into your fruit loops in the morning is embarrassing. Scratching your itchy, burning crotch is embarrassing. And then there’s always the house in Vermont that nobody wants. (HIV)

But whatever, they head toward the aisle and sure enough, there they are. Locked up behind glass.

Seriously? They are locked up? You can get condoms anywhere. You can find them in movie theater vending machines. You can get them at any random 7-11. Hell, I once was so desperate for a condom that I went in to a bar and started just asking people if they had one. After a few minutes someone pointed me toward the bar. The bartender had a whole fucking jar of them!

So anyway, they make their way back to the manager who then hands them the keys and whispers, key 5. Good Lord. They take the key and go to back to the aisle. They stand there for 15 minutes looking at all the boxes. Ever notice the condom aisle is like the fucking gum aisle? All different colors and flavors. Rubbery goodness.

They finally just grab a box…and their off.

Here’s the thing about condoms. Sure they protect against pregnancy. And that seems to be everyone’s only worry. But condoms are actually barriers. It’s like saying, I like you enough to let you penetrate me, but I don’t want the skin of your penis actually coming into contact with me. So please put on this baggie so it’ll be like you were never actually here. Awesome, and very romantic. Wouldn’t it be great if we just kept our medical records with us like the pros I saw in Thailand? They had that shit on the ready. Although most of the time it was just an index card that said, “I’m clean.” BUYER BEWARE.

(And just a side note, one of my friends actually took one of those girls up to his room, but she was so tired and he felt bad, so he just let her sleep for an hour while he beat off to porn. Although I think he still wore a condom.)

Anyway, back to my friend. After 42 minutes of Condom purchasing, they didn’t even end up using one. He ended up ‘arriving’ after only three or four minutes of four-play. And that was that.

However, this story did leave me with a question. Who should be prepared with the condoms? Men or women? Me personally, I feel like condoms are for people with dicks, and therefore should be purchased by people with dicks. I don’t walk around asking men if they have a birth control pill I can take. What do you guys think?