igpy kin has a blog

Write a story like Lydia Davis.

I have no idea who Lydia Davis is, and I'm so behind (whoo, this is 3 out of 8 I'm supposed to have done so far!) that instead of following the prompt, I give you all this bit of Something I Wore When I Should Have Been Writing About Hipsters & Holgas.

Great, gushing relief. Ensure, first of all, that you don’t have a tampon on hand. Or, if you must, ensure it’s an accident. Other women have marked the dates down–ominously red–faithfully, for years. Not you. Ensure that if you ever learn the magic trick of remembering to put marker to calendar, you avoid doing so until scanning the mirror for menopausal chin hairs has become a reality.

It will be an accident–great gushing relief–because–perhaps gushing is the wrong word–you will have walked to the bathroom, taken your key, ensured you knew how to get back into the damnable office where you will spend the rest of your day(s) sitting staring at bright lights, and the red on the paper as you try to swipe yourself dry will take you by surprise.

Look at it for a moment.

Make a ‘hm’, perhaps.

The toilet paper must be discarded in the appropriate bowl, and you must calculate whether or not your dryclean only skirt will have suffered too dreadfully from the first dew of your monthly bleeding–think of it like that, as the first dew of your monthly bleeding, in italics, serif font, and you can forget drycleaning dilemmas in favour of grousing about 1950s girls’ guides–wash your hands.

Wash your hands.

(Great, gushing relief.) Take a moment to breathe out, because you’ve been off the pill this month–wasn’t your fault, you had the boxes ready, ahead of time, but then by the time you needed them they'd had migrated somewhere into the mass of clothing books and papers that hides the edges in your room–you still don’t know where they are, you had been off the pill and now there is great, gushing relief flushed safely into an abyss, because it didn’t matter that you were off the pill and you had wanted to feel something like you’d felt with people past before not long when you were in the playground just a few moments’ bareback but you know what they say, even the pre–

Great, gushing relief.

Return to the office. Attempt to look as inconspicuous as someone who has just come in from a three minute absence to dart into a cubicle, make purse-rummaging noises, and head back out can. Return to the washroom. Remember that one of your coworkers – whose name you either cannot or did not bother to recall – rued the absence of hooks in the stalls in this damned bathroom (or maybe it was these damn stalls, at the time). Accordingly, deposit your purse on the floor. Lock the stall. Note the hook that does, at least, appear to be on this stall in this bath damnedroom.

Move on.

Wipe yourself (again). Push the paper–which is only blood, and therefore only appropriate–into the momentary gap left by the swinging door of the small white ladies’ disposal bin. Remove the tampon from its wrapping. Upon inserting the tampon, dispose of the plastic applicator in the toilet bowl.

Turn, then realize you have disposed of the plastic applicator in the toilet bowl.

Pause.

Regard the toilet bowl. It’s not so bad – they clean here regularly, and you were probably the last to piss in it. You flushed. Reach in. Raise the applicator from its watery grave. Drop it atop wrapping and paper alike. Drip, if you can. Return to the sink–touch, in passing, as many of the other, non-cotton items in your purse as possible before washing–wash. Congratulate yourself. You have done it again. Great, gushing relief. Take that, ovaries.