In This Body: I Stand With
“if you want to end abortion, support free birth control for fuck’s sake”
Our monthly column "In This Body" is comprised of true stories about sex, gender, the body, and love, written by Fiona George, for NAILED.
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There aren’t any protesters outside this time. Always seemed the worst place to me, to hold a protest. No one is coming here to make a political statement. At the door, there’s a couple stopped, teenagers. She looks like she could be seventeen, but is probably younger. He looks younger than her.
He stopped her—just before she got to the door. I try to pretend like I don’t wonder what is going on there. I walk past through two sets of fogged glass doors. The waiting room is full, the air feels damp like it does in a room full of people who came in out of the rain.
I know the later in the day my appointment is, the longer I’ll be waiting. And it’s almost two o’clock. There’s a family in here, a couple of women and some kids running around, I think one of the women is holding a baby.
I’m paying attention but not really looking at the other people here. Being a constant people watcher, and in a room where everyone probably just wants their privacy.
I’m always surprised by the amount of men I see here, even though there’s no real reason to be shocked.
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What am I doing here?
I’m on my parents' insurance. I have another option. It makes sense to come here for birth control and basic testing, things that I can get at full discount here where I’d have a copay at the hospital.
But today I’m here for a yeast infection and it might even be cheaper to go to the hospital. But fuck that.
They call you up to the window two or three times during the check-in process. The woman behind the counter tells me they’ll call you in shortly before sending me to wait for an hour. She said shortly, so I didn’t pull out my laptop or a book, and once I realized I’d be here for a while, I just didn’t bother.
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The girl from outside, comes in without her boyfriend. She’s young, she’s blonde, she’s seeking affordable medical care, American.
A couple of teenage girls in the corner of my eye giggling over one of the pamphlets, or something on a phone. Making larger noise than the kids in the room.
I’m here because it’s a five-minute walk from my house.
Really, I’m here because I’m comfortable. See, whenever I go into the doctor’s office, I get on the defensive. Ready to fight for my vagina. One time, the doctor I get is a dude who hasn’t been informed of the correct age for a first pap smear since 2005. I know because he told me the same thing I heard in my first sex ed class, in fifth grade. That pap smears are for any woman who’s started bleeding—or who’s become sexually active.
That appointment was when I was about sixteen, and I already knew I didn’t need the exam till I was twenty-one. But I let him mumble around it and look it up on his computer and ask a female colleague in order to tell me what I already knew.
Some of the staff here, I recognize. There’s one woman who’s been pretty permanent since I started coming here a couple years ago. She’s given me my rapid HIV test results behind a closed door three times and I wonder if she remembers me.
I’m twenty-one now. I still haven’t ever had a medical professional examine my vagina.
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When I get called in, I’m glad I don’t have my laptop to put away. I always make this unprepared scramble at my name when I’ve been in a waiting room too long. Even if I have nothing to put away and nothing to pick up, my jacket gets tangled in my purse strap and I trip over my feet trying to make myself seen.
Like if I don’t respond immediately they’ll pass me up and I’ll have another hour to wait.
But before I know it I’m in the exam room answering the usual questions.
I’m not really on top of my health. I don’t pay much attention to it and I don’t track it. But when it comes to the health and well being of my vagina and reproductive system, I could put together a power point with a detailed timeline of at least the last two years.
I’m not above describing my discharge.
After we go over the basics, I’m left alone to do the vaginal swab for chlamydia and gonorrhea and undress from the waist down like I haven’t had to do in a doctor’s office before.
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It used to be strange to me that in such a liberal city there would be protesters at Planned Parenthood. But now that it’s such the political fight right now, I’m surprised there aren’t.
First time I saw them I tried screaming, if you want to end abortion, support free birth control for fuck’s sake. A woman was walking out of the clinic with a toddler in her arms, covered the small ears at my loud and angry swear.
I apologize even though I am thinking, you’re more offended at the word fuck, than these fuckers out here? But she will raise her child how she wants, and I apologize and the pro-lifers tell me there already is free birth control like they’ve been living under a rock since Roe vs. Wade.
But how dare they, how dare. Protesting an essential health resource that they’ve probably never needed. Guilting women who just want to get rid of their yeast infection, pick up some free condoms, get themselves tested, scan for breast cancer, get a pap.
There are some places that should be safe. This is a liberal city. This city I’ve lived in all my twenty-one years, and I’ve never seen this city full of left-wing atheists picket a church. Or try to stop the good a religiously affiliated homeless shelter can do.
This place is a haven, too.
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My pants are off, a long free-box sweater hanging down my thighs. I’m just unfolding the white disposable blanket when the doctor comes in. My bare ass crinkles against hospital paper. It’s a surprise how uncomfortable I am, even as a person who feels pride at my ability to say words like labia without flinching.
The doctor unfolds a set of stirrups from the side of the medical bed I’m sitting on. I never had to put my legs up before. She goes over what it will feel like when she puts that shoe-horn-lookin’ thing in my vagina and tells me I will be able to make an appointment for my first pap when my vag gets past this rough patch.
She talks to me through the whole exam. Complements the roses tattooed on the backs of my thighs, comments that my hood piercing healed well. Instantly, I felt comfort. That is why I was here.
The cold metal pushing open my vagina stings against skin already red and raw. She feels the pelvic glands on the insides of my thighs. I’ve done my research and know this is because swollen glands are a symptom of certain STIs. I also know this is why she asks if I’ve been experiencing fever or abdominal pain. I haven’t.
My cervix looks healthy, she tells me. She puts her blue glove hand inside me, around the metal. I hadn’t masturbated in days because of the infection and my first instinct is to rock my hips against anything inside, but I don’t.
I’d never had fingers inside me without sexuality attached. I slowed my breathing and focused on the cold hard of stirrups and the smell of sanitation.
It’s something called bacterial vaginosis, not a yeast infection. The PH in my vagina is all outta whack. The natural bacteria in there, getting a little overenthusiastic.
On the way out, I see the boy I saw when I came in. He’s smoking a cigarette, but I’m sure he’s not old enough. There’s a man with him, a grown man: his father? Her father? As far as I can tell, they’ve been outside waiting the whole time.
There are no protesters on my way out, either. Maybe they only do it early mornings. I feel a smile tickle through my face when I leave the parking lot.
At the end of the exam, the doctor felt around by my cervix, said she felt some extra skin. That she’s not sure, but some women basically have two cervixes and I might be one of them. She told me not to worry, that it wouldn’t affect my reproductive health.
I wasn’t worried, though.
It sounded to me like a superpower.
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Read the previous "In This Body" column: here.
Header image courtesy of Angela Buron. To view a gallery of her photography on NAILED, go here.