Monday, May 08, 2006

Monthly Visitor

Being relatively drunk from the bottle of wine I helped myself to in the earlier part of the evening, I was sprawled on my couch watching Phua Chu Kang. Not exactly the most glam of tv programmes to be watching, but it was Sunday night can? And I usually spend Sunday nights mourning about the impending doom - Monday morning.

I left the glass doors to the balcony open, it was a warm and humid evening. Even being clad in a halter top and lose cotton pants didn't help much in cooling me down. I got up to retrieve more mango pudding from the fridge and felt the stickiness of my back against the leather couch. Yuck. Time for another shower.

As I squeezed those little mango morsels out from their little cups, I slurped loudly sucking in the pudding and the sweet syrup around it. Yes, you read me - I slurped. Loudly. Hah! Sue me!

Damn nice I tell you! The liberation and high I get from slurping loudly while eating them mini mango puddings. Who cares? No one around what! Just the Phua family and me.

Then it was time for another short commercial break. Three ladies came on screen to tell us more about the "Peraduan Rebutan Emas Kotex" (Kotex Gold Snatching Contest) with RM140,000 of gold to be won. The first lady pranced around saying "Datang bulan lagi!" (Here comes my period!) in a little happy sing-song tune. The second went "Pakai kotex lagi!" (Use Kotex again!), while the third merely said something along the lines of no contest forms needed.

There I was, skin moist and sticky from the humidity and annoyed at the fact that if I don't go for a shower soon, I may end up being glued to the leather couch for good, and I get to see some lady sing away happily about having her monthly menses.

That's ridiculous! Which woman in the right frame of mind would jump for joy at the arrival of her monthlies? OK, maybe there's one - those who missed a pill, or miscalculated their cycle, and thus are worried that they could be pregnant. Only these women would be so elated when their menses arrive.

The rest of us groan and complain about when our period is here. OK, most of us have accepted the fact that it ain't gonna go away despite our hatred for it. We just live with it I guess. But really, let me tell you more about the inconvenience us women go through during the 5 days of our menstruation, and it's NOT to be sung in a happy sing-song manner.

There's the mess. Imagine blood oozing out from your vagina non-stop for 5 whole days. It's oozing out when you are sleeping. It's oozing out when you're working, when you're walking, when you're at the computer, when you're driving, when you're smoking, when you're eating, when you're shopping, when you're having sex, when you're peeing, when you're in the shower, when you're in the lift, when you're everywhere! It doesn't stop! God damn, it just doesn't stop! For that 5 days, we constantly walk around with a wet patch between our legs. It's not nice.

Then there's the smell. Fuck me the smell is gross. The musty tang of the smell of blood is fine, but blood which has been there for say a couple of hours till your next pad / tampon change? Huh? Yes, some sanitary pads these days boasts "dry and comfortable" feeling.. but we carry that wet patch around with us all day, and sometimes, we can smell ourselves, or rather, the musky bloody smell from down there. It's not exactly Givenchy.

Then there's the inconvenience of the whole ordeal. When I had my period the other day, I left the house in a hurry and few moments later, I U-turned back. I forgot my little pouch. Yes, the little secret pouch women carry when they hit the loo. It contains our precious jewels - some tissue, a couple of tampons or sanitary pads. We are advised to change our tampons every 3 to 4 hours, therefore if we spend 8 hours at work, we need to bring an extra of 1 or 2. And if we plan to go out after work, you need a couple more. See the hassle?

Then there's the contractions and spasms in our lower abdomen which makes us go pale and all we want to do is swallow some Ponstan and curl up on the bed, while hoping that it will go away soon. But honey, we've all got bills to pay! Curling up in bed isn't gonna help!

So the meeting is about to end, finally! After 2 hours of sitting next to Mister-Look-Down-My-Cleavage in the boardroom, I was glad to get up and leave. Then I think, "Hmm.. I wonder if I stained my skirt? My last change was about 3 hours ago.. oh shit! What if I stained my skirt? Oh no! Worse! What if I stained the fabric on the chair?" But these days my fear of this has been relatively subsided ever since I found the wonders of tampons a few years ago. Tampons don't usually leak cos you stick it up inside you - which is great! Though I sometimes still worry.

Then finally, you're at the shopping mall and it's time for a change of tampon. You run to the nearest public toilet. Most of us Malaysians have our grouses about the condition of our public toilets. Dirty toilet bowls, stained toilet seats, flooded cubicles, flush not working, the terrible smell, the whole works. OK, so you're just going in there to take a quick leak and then exit, and you're already complaining. Now imagine if we gotta go in there, find a clean spot to place or hang our little pouch, find the string hanging from outside our vagina, remove the tampon, wrap it up for disposal, unwrap new tampon, insert new tampon, and then only we exit the cubicle. Imagine if the the only toilet available was flooded and dirty. And in the midst of avoiding stepping on yellow or brown puddles, we sometimes accidentally drop our new tampon on the floor. Now imagine if that's the last one! Dang, imagine the trouble!

So Kotex, you should know better. Having your monthlies is nothing to sing about!

Posted by Doreen at 9:22 am