Angela May

Maggie Holden’s Pussy Manifesto

            Okay, let’s start with a joke. So, an unused condom still in the wrapper walks into a bar and sees an unused tampon nursing a bloody Mary. The condom approaches the tampon and says, “Hey, I see you’ve never been used, neither have I. Whatta ya say we use each other and find some meaning in this crazy world?”

Wait! Fudge. This isn’t a joke; there is nothing funny about loss of meaning and purpose. There may not be a joke here, but this is a perfect segway into the life of a very special tampon.

Okay, after the horrible pickup line the condom and the tampon have a great little convo. and a couple of more drinks. The condom explained that he had never been used b/c his owner was really into Buffy The Vampire Slayer and since the entire series can be had on DVD, there’s really nothing more to explain.

“What about you?” the condom says.

The tampon took a super mega gulp of her bloody Mary and then spun the celery around the glass making the ice cubes knock into one another. She slightly laughed at the ice cubes predicament, as if she was very familiar with their situation. The lighting behind the tampon was pretty much non-existent, but, even w/ the exemption of light, she still radiated w/ the appearance of fresh, compressed cotton. She pulled up her long string, set it on the stool next to her and began.

 Everybody knows a girl has got to bleed. This is the Pussy Manifesto. I know this for a fact. I’m a tampon and I had been sitting on 22-year-old Maggie Holden’s porcelain countertop for a few months. She had skipped a few periods and was worried about the white stretch marks elongating everyday on her belly.

I felt really bad for her because I knew she wanted to use me. I wanted to be used. Being a big wad of cotton with a string is not so fulfilling when you can’t be shoved up a twat. It is a tampon’s only pleasure. Alleviate women from embarrassment.

She was splashing and singing in the tub while pantomiming Janis Joplin lyrics in the reflection of the silver faucet, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose...na nana na nana na, me and Bobbie McGee?” Maggie was a little bit overweight for her size, but I really don’t think she noticed. Or at least she hid it well from her own seclusion.  She was supposed to be shaving her legs, but from the look of her silver razor with the still very moisturized strips, she didn’t have too much skill in the removal of leg hairs. I would’ve helped her, but I’m an inanimate object. I think it would’ve really freaked her out if I’d of jumped from the sink and into her tub, picked up her razor with the hands I don’t have, and started to remove hairs from her private areas. No, Maggie should have been a big girl and got Nair.

This was a summer night. Just one night, in the longest summer ever. The summer of 1980. Maggie was so excited about seeing her friend and getting drunk. Maggie loved to drink. One time she got so drunk that she got two of my roommates from the cardboard box and shoved them up her nose. It looked pretty neato, but many tampons resent the idea that we would go up just any orifice. You would never see me in anyone’s ass hole. Well, except for this one time. But that was in the sixties and things were different back then.

Maggie was a total social drinker, though. I’d never seen her do a dramatic interpretation of Radiohead’s “Polyethylene” when she was by herself. Perhaps I never saw her do it because Radiohead wasn’t a band yet.

If it wasn’t her singing that song, I would’ve loved her voice.  It was like a child’s water wing floating over crashing waves. No matter the situation, her voice never wavered, never trembled. That’s why it took me so long to begin worrying about her missing period. She never talked to me directly about the situation. I mean, it’s not like people talk to a roll of toilet paper and express their anxiety when they haven’t taken a shit in a few days.

I wanted to help her out. It was selfish of me to want her to bleed, but I just needed to be used. I was the last one of the box and it wasn’t fair for me to wait till her body wanted it, needed it. Then again, the miracle of life is fascinating and maybe she could’ve had a little girl and saved me to be her daughter’s first tampon! It would’ve been so symbolic and meaningful for me. It’s a tampon’s dream to be the first. There’s nothing like a virgin.

All the same, I was scared. What was I supposed to do? I’m made for one thing. They don’t mesh together the greatest amount of the most unwanted, harsh cotton for anything. Tampons are made to be a little uncomfortable and to absorb blood.

I couldn’t think of any other use for me and i still can’t. I didn’t know what to do. Neither did Maggie. That’s why she invited Carly over. Should she tell Carly the entire predicament? Why didn’t she tell her what she already knew?

It’s like when you’re asked the question, “If you were stuck on a desert island, who would you want with you?”

And then you choose someone you love or a close friend. HOW STUPID IS THAT? If I got to choose who’d be on the island w/ me I definitely wouldn’t choose someone that I’d feel bad about eating...b/c that’s what’s gonna happen! When mama’s hungry, mama’s hungry! I hate dumb fucks that want to eat cool people!

Knock knock. That was someone knocking at the door. I realize that knock knock doesn’t really sound like knocking, but tampons work best with personification rather than onomatopoeia.

Maggie threw on a pair of tattered jeans and some t-shirt with a bar’s logo on it. She carried me to the door, turned the glass knob, and pulled with dementia’s gusto.  Before I knew it I was flying through the navy blue sky and hit Carly in between the eyes. “What the fuck, Maggie! You threw a tampon at my face.”  Carly had a big bottle of tequila in her arms and an unmistakable sparkle in her eyes. They were going to get plastered. 

“I still haven’t needed to use my tampon yet.”

“Damn, Maggie, you need to take the test.”

“I’m too scared.”

“You also missed a patch of hair by your ankle. Do you want me to teach you how to use sharp objects again?”

“Shut up. I hate you. Yeh, can you show me again?”

Carly was Maggie’s best friend. I don’t really understand the term “best friend.” Is friendship a competition where losers don’t get to be as good of friends with the winners? Tampons are all the same, so competition would be like a bunch of eggs competing that were also all the same. Carly was a bitch. Not a prissy, I’m better than you, bitch. Not a pissy, I don’t feel good about myself so I’m going to make fun of you, bitch. She was just an, I don’t give a shit, type of bitch. Maggie and Carly ripped each other’s ego to shreds on a daily basis. They really loved each other.

Carly picked me up off the ground and carried me to the coffee table next to an old book..

The first couple of hours are very unimportant. The ladies drank wine and tequila. They laughed and dreamed. I was hoping that they would grab candlesticks and bottles and dance around the apartment like those fucks in chick flicks. But no! They had to talk about Buddhism or the Tao Te Ching. Joyce and Woolf’s names were tossed around like pretentious glances at Oxford.

Girls love to understand everyone else’s problems. Mainly so they can compare who has like, I don’t know, the worst like life ever. Or whatever. Carly wanted to know what exactly was up w/ Maggie. I wanted to know to, at least before the end of the night. A time constraint wasn’t necessary, but then again, a tampon talking isn’t really necessary.  The end was approaching swiftly when Maggie began to describe the fundamentals of a nervous breakdown.                        

 “I cry for no apparent reason sometimes. I get so weak that lifting a Kleenex to my nose is a task that should only be conducted by a trained professional weeper. Perhaps scientists’ created tissues to make an unstable creature feel even more irrelevant in a perfectly functioning society. How many lifts of a tissue does it take to drive a young “woman” mad?” Yes, she actually put finger quotes around the word woman. Sorry. Maggie continued to say, “The last time I cried for no reason I lifted and dropped a tissue five times. I’ve always considered odd numbers unlucky, so I fainted on the fifth drop. Of course I was blacking in and out of my doomed mucus explosion. Black outs usually seem to follow shortness of breath. I don’t really know if my breathing decreases so that I will faint and wake up fine, or if my breathing decreases because it is so disgusting inhaling your own sulky snot rockets. Nonetheless, I’ll faint on a moment, not in a moment like physics may have a layman believe. Fainting on a moment means you flatten the dynamics, unlike in a moment where you prolong the insanity. I prefer to faint on a moment so that I squash all emotions flourishing at the fertile period. It is very important to faint at the right moment. If one is to faint before or after the fertile period, the unappealing subject matter can sprout back up again. I fainted inaccuratly once.”

Okay, so they’re conversation was completely dumb. I was so irritated and nervous by that time, that if Maggie actually needed to use me, I would’ve ran. Only in my mind of course. I can’t run. If CArly had stuck me in her pussy, i would’ve given her toxic shock syndrome. Like That!

I guess it was during Maggie’s idiotic story that i realized she was just wasting time. Avoiding her situation, thus pushing me farther away from the only reality i could know.

i guess at this point I’m tired of talking about her, I’m tired of remembering her. They continued to talk and joke and i grew angrier. Nothing monumental happened, they didn’t even make out after they were sufficiently buzzing. Tampons have no fun. Carly stopped having fun and told Maggie goodbye, walked out the door, and faded into the pavement of southern city.

Maggie locked the door behind her, walked into her tequila and wine stained living room and began to clean. She threw away all the laughs and giggles she had shared that night. She wiped away forced smiles and velveteen caresses from her wine glasses. She pulled down all the wishing stars and pink ribbon girlish dreams from her ceiling fan blades. Maggie took out her broom and slowly began sweeping away the waste of time, which was an evening with her closest friend.

She picked me up and carried me back to my porcelain dungeon. Maggie had a lamp with scarves over the bulb in her room. It cast a quilt of shadows on the wall and her face. She undressed herself and began to gaze at the patch of hair she missed on her ankle. She walked over to the bathtub that still had filmy water from the bath earlier that evening, stepped into the cold water, and let out a tiny gasp. She lowered the rest of her body into the water giving each limb a little time to adjust to the arctic water. Maggie picked up her silver razor and bent over to shave her ankle, but she saw her reflection in the silver faucet. So like a lady with her pinky high up in the air she slit her wrist, separating her tan skin from the translucent skin, setting free the red, blue, and purple lines she had she had been mapping out the last few years.

The little pulsing road map lines detoured from their path to the heart and sporadically, impulsively, and naturally left the warm world of the human body and felt for the first time the exuberant chill of used bath water..

Maggie’s blood cells were now members of the polar bear club, but little did these bodacious blood cells know they could never return from the water. They couldn’t have the hypothermic excitement and return back to their small, cozy capillaries. In a frantic movement i saw her blood revolt against the tiny icebergs made of soap. I saw them warn the others to stay in and keep Maggie’s body together, working to continue on the road to the correct heart chamber. Their pleas didn’t work. The blood cells had been on the same path their whole lives and the quick break for a cool swim was exactly what they wanted. Who doesn’t need a break from the monotony of the human body?

I sat on the edge of the sink, my cotton string growing damp from a drop of water deposited from a toothbrush above me. I sat there and watched the tub turn red, I watched Maggie disappear the plasma abyss. I felt compassion for the blood cells grasping for her body to gain warmth and then realizing the body was as cold as the bath water they were becoming a part of.

In a brief glimpse of distraction, they had to let go of the one thing holding their purpose. I just couldn’t let go of mine. I watched my only occupation writhe around her body. I had wanted to hold that blood for so long. But the job was too big for me and everybody knows a girl has got to bleed.

The condom got up and left the tampon alone at the bar. Condoms and tampons are alike in many ways and one is being a protector. This tampon had failed and it’s hard to be sympathetic to failure; even for inhuman unmentionables.

Last update : 08-04-2007 18:58

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