Not out of any sort of embarrassment or because the subject is awkward. Far from it. But I have seldom spoken with anyone about these things and so have no idea if my experiences were typical. Here it is: beginning at around the age of four, mom’s tampons entered my consciousness. Over the ensuing years, they played an outsize role in a shockingly naïve and innocent boy’s nascent sexual self-awareness. An always-present feature in my little world (on the shelf in the bathroom)—innocuous in appearance, made of familiar everyday materials, yet highly mysterious. For a long time I had no clue as to their real purpose. Finally, they became another piece in the puzzle of that terrible mystery.
I was an inveterate explorer of my mother’s purse and the top drawer of her dresser—those places where interesting things were to be found. Of course, it was an implicitly forbidden activity and I took advantage of any available situation to examine their contents. Curious as a cat, such behavior felt completely natural even while I instinctively knew it to be an invasion of sacrosanct privacy. Before entering school, I would sometimes accompany my folks to town. (Mom didn’t drive so she was always driven by my father if she needed something from the nursery or yardage store; as a rule he went shopping by himself.) Whenever they’d leave me alone in the car, out of lack-of-stimulus-induced curiosity the first thing to do would be to check out the contents of her handbag. (Dad usually accompanied her and paid for things so the purse would sometimes be left behind.) She didn’t wear make-up aside from lipstick but there’d be a couple of tubes and I’d automatically uncap them, roll the contents up and down to see how far they’d extend, and give them a sniff. (Perhaps this is unusual but never once in my kidhood did I apply lipstick to my person—perhaps because I found the smell unpleasant.)
There wasn’t much in the way of excitement or novelty in there but one familiar object always fascinated: an oblong plastic case with a simple telescoping lid which held two paper-wrapped Playtex®tampons. (Once I’d learned to read, both words added to the puzzlement.) Their individual, hermetically sealed condition, somewhat like band-aids, suggested perhaps some sort of medical connection. They were always intriguing and bore a particular aura of some vaguely disturbing mystery. At that point, I’d likely pull out the pair, return them, and slide the lid back on. I admired the colorful swirled design of the plastic—very 60s-ish—and appreciated the aesthetic quality of the fine tolerance that allowed the lid to fit so perfectly…the slight vacuum felt when pulling it off quickly. In fact, as a budding scientist I enjoyed most of all the feeling of creating and pondering the meaning of this vacuum-induced resistence.)
Since I shared the bathroom with Mom—Steve and Dad in the other one just down the hallway—I was surrounded, as long as I could remember anything, by her feminine accoutrements (which I now know were far fewer in number and kind than is the case with most adult females in the USA). Rifling the medicine cabinet behind the mirror and the shelf with swinging doors took place whenever I was in there and feeling slightly bored. Inside that cabinet, there was always the cardboard carton containing dozens of tampons. So many! What for? Intuitively, I knew that it would never be an option for me to enquire as to their purpose. Why? More on that shortly. Of course, on occasion I’d unwrap one to play with, assuming that its disappearance would go unnoticed. The construction was intriguing and the strange device’s function a complete cypher. I wracked my grapefruit-sized brain for clues as to what the contrivance’s purpose might be…wondered at the compressed cottony plug with strings and why it might be in the double tube. (Once emptied of its “works,” the tube—held to my eye and peered through as I lengthened it—was an excellent pirate’s telescope.) Without ever making any real connection to a monthly cycle, I nonetheless was very much aware that there were “periods” of use and disuse. It wasn’t just in noticing the paper wrappers and dicarded cardboard tubes in the trashcan—it was something far more dramatic and downright frightening.
In my household the toilet wasn’t automatically flushed except—and always—after a bowel movement. (The rare occasions I’d find that someone had forgotten to flush, or flushed unsuccessfully, were a real shock.) I wasn’t forbidden from using Dad and Steve’s bathroom. I often did if it was closer and there was some hurry. And I noticed that there was never a small wad of toilet paper floating in the bowl as there typically was in the other bathroom.
Now, here’s a thing that mystifies me to this day. Friends who have heard this story are dumbfounded and I have yet to meet a person with whom I share this frightening experience.
My mother would put her used tampons in the toilet…and not flush—not always, but not infrequently (in season). I can’t recall if she only began this pracice at a certain point and don’t remember the specific occasion that I went into the bathroom and found a blood-soaked object lying at the bottom of the bowl, blood slowly diffusing into the water. No doubt the very first instance caused instant terror: Mommy’s hurt!! With it, the unsettling realization that I could never ask what was wrong. In fact, she seemed to be fine. So I quickly learned that, whatever was going on, it wasn’t life-threatening.
Apparently it was some while before I discovered the little folded instuctions paper. Certainly it was before I could read but the line diagrams made the skill somewhat superfluous. This was a document that I studied long and hard, and on many occasions. Again: no memory of the first time but, on that day I found out that Mommy…puts these things inside her!! Horror. Their purpose was apparently to soak up blood from some hidden wound inside my favorite person, something you couldn’t put a band-aid on. I suspect I didn’t give this notion too much thought; it was simply too disturbing. And, again, because she seemed to be fine, there was no cause for undue alarm. I should mention that, at that time, I was aware that she was without a penis (probably from pictures of African native women in National Geographic) but no notion, aside from the solid realization that there was some sort of orifice for her pee to escape from and babies to come out of, no conception of a vagina, per se, whatsoever.
Back to the instruction paper. It included line drawings of a decidedly generic female’s middle third as viewed from the side. It showed, graphically, that the woman—as instructed, with one foot elevated and placed on a line representing the edge of her bathtub—was inserting the tampon inside herself. I could vaguely perceive that the cardboard tube might facilitate this process. It was all so… perplexing. But undeniably intriguing from a purely scientific stance (which was how my mind was already beginning to work). So there was a cold, impersonal element to my curiosity as well. Such a strange stew of emotions. And then…not at first, but at some point, that side-view simple line drawing with distinctive curves and crevices…became a highly charged erotic image. How desperately I wanted to know what was hidden between those lines! Alas, the instructions came with no front—or, better yet—rear view. All this remained a mystery—incredibly—until I was almost old enough to drive. Had I been born swarthy and dark, I would’ve been shaving before I knew what tampons were for.
©2018 by Tim Forsell draft 18 Apr 2018
