Weaponry of the Cold War

AT FIRST, I blamed the horrific pain of any attempted vaginal insertion on my long-unbroken hymen, which seemed to have been constructed of some sort of space-age polymer, with bindings of titanium and granite. It had resisted a childhood of baked-leather saddles, pitiful attempts at an Olympic gymnastics career, and twelve years of sprinting down soccer fields drawn on thick Ohio clay. Visits to the ob-gyn weren’t supposed to be fun, anyway; nobody ever put together an all-female band and sent them on tour as the Pap Smears.

I understand that I wasn’t supposed to be angry with my own vagina. The two of us hung around together all day long and slept in the same bed, and I took it to graduation ceremonies from two women’s schools where entire courses were dedicated to discussing our vaginas and how wonderful they were, how beautiful, how powerful, how worthy, how resilient against repression. Vaginas were art.

But while other women’s vaginas had monologues, mine had panic attacks. It did not like tampons. It did not like menstrual cups. It did not like anyone of any gender looking in its general didn’t like exam room four of my gynecologist’s office, where, two seconds into my first Pap smear, I fainted dead off the table. I was twenty years old and a former rodeo barrel racer who had been happiest at a leaning gallop; there was no excuse for slithering to the floor at the mere extension of a speculum.