Virgin Territory: Stories from the Road to Womanhood

Read an Excerpt

First Flowering: Blood, Breasts, and (Pap) Smears


Thanks, I Needed That
abby, medicaid administrator, 31

My entire family was obsessed with my period. For years, every time I saw my grandmother she'd say, "Did you get your monthly yet?" And my mother had already given me a lecture about the evils of tampons. She wasn't very modern about it. She thought they were dirty and unclean, and they were definitely out of the question at my house. She actually wanted to get me the belt, since that's what she and my older sister used. But there was no way I was going to strap one of those things on.

So I took matters into my own hands and sent away for a kit from Stayfree. I think we learned about it in health class. The kit had it all--pads, an informational book about your period. It was great. And I was ready.

I was thirteen and one of the last of my friends to get my period. I was so self-conscious about it. When am I going to get it, when am I going to get it? My friends have it, when I am going to have it? My chest had developed, but where was the rest of it? Come on, I even had the kit!

And of course I had to read the Judy Blume book with Margaret always waiting for her bust and her period.

I was on Kick Line, my high school's version of the Rockettes, and one of the girls bled right through her shorts and I felt bad for her, but I also felt a little jealous. Like she was the mature one and I was still a baby. And I used to listen to stories about cramps and how this one girl's mother used to give her wine for her cramps and I thought that was really adult.

So finally I was in gym class, in uniform and out on the hockey field.My stomach was hurting, but I had no idea what was going on. I always had stomachaches in school and I figured this was just a typical thing. But when I came in off the field and went into the bathroom to change out of uniform--lo and behold!--there it was.

I was so excited. I remember being in between classes, running around looking for my friends, and going "I got it! I got it!"

That night, as soon as my mother got home from work, I said, "Mom, I got my period." And she slapped me out of the blue. Whack--right across my cheek. I'll never forget it. Then she said, "Welcome to womanhood."


A Little Help from My Friends
Susan, Boutique Owner, 62

I didn't know how to use a tampon until I got to Cornell. According to Grandma, you couldn't be a virgin and use one. She also told me that you don't French kiss until you get engaged. You know, she was engaged for four years and was a virgin until her wedding night. Hey, this was the old days!

But I hated pads and I hated the belt. That's why you could never go swimming if you had your period, you know. The pad would get soggy in the water, and there was no hiding it. So I got to college and started seeing what was in the bathrooms and what was on my friends' shelves, and I starting asking questions like, "What are those and how do I use them?"

So three of my friends greased up a tampon with Vaseline and shouted instructions from outside my bathroom stall. I think I had to put a mirror between my knees to see what was going on. And I'm taking a while and they're all shouting encouragements like "Come on, Susan! You can do it." And I finally get the thing up there, and I'm thinking, 'This isn't so comfortable.

So I walk around with it for a while, but it's really hurting me, so I say to one of my friends, "I thought tampons were supposed to be more comfortable than pads."

"They are more comfortable," she says.

"But this thing is killing me," I say.

"Well, did you remember to take the cardboard out?"

When I had been using tampons for a while, I said to Grandma, "It's so much easier. Why would you ever want to walk around feeling like you're wearing a diaper?"

She had never, ever used a tampon. And as far as I know, she had never heard of oral sex either.


Riding the White Horse
Stacy, Actress, 37

It's 1976, my grandmother is sixty-three and I am thirteen. The deal was, every summer my mother would send me to Pittsburgh, and I'd spend some time at Lambie's house (that's my grandmother) and some time at my aunt Jeannie's house with my cousin Derek. All summer Derek and I would shuffle back and forth between the two, spending a few weeks here, a few weeks there.

My family was very small. My mom used to say that we had all our family reunions on our couch. So Derek and I were close--because he was an only child too, and we'd been spending our summers together forever. We had all these inside-type jokes. Like, if Derek was acting up, being stupid, I'd say, "That time again?" And he'd say, "No. Just before." There was some Midol commercial on where they'd say that--you know, meaning that there was some PMS going on. So the fact that Derek and I could joke about PMS, well, that shows how close we were.

One day I go into Lambie's bathroom and I see that I started my period. And now I gotta tell my grandma. So I'm like, "Lambie, I started my period."

Her first words are "Derek, go outside."

Now mind you, Derek was all the way down the stairs, far side of the house, in the corner. I mean, he wasn't even on the same floor as us! It was like she was evacuating the house. Like all of a sudden we were some battle station.

And her making Derek go outside--she was immediately setting up the divide between men and women. Like it was wrong for Derek to know that I had my period. And he was my best friend, so I should have been sharing this all with him.

So once he's clear outside, Lambie looks at me and says, "When did this start?" And I'm so dumbfounded she's asked me this. It's like when you wake up and the phone is ringing. You don't know how long it's been ringing. Is it the first ring, the second?

So I say, "I don't know when it started. It started."

"Well, do you have anything there?"

What she means is, do I have any paraphernalia.

So I tell her, "I got some toilet paper down there."

Now, that means that Lambie has to go walk to the store. And quick.

Now I know the corner store in Homewood, Pennsylvania, couldn't have had what Lambie brought home. I mean, in this small town, you had the guy in town who sold "frush" fish. That's what the sign in his window said. And another guy had turned his basement into a beauty parlor. People were selling penny candy. Batteries. So Lambie had to have gotten on a bus, because Homewood had no kind of drugstore.

Meanwhile, the whole time she's gone, I am sitting there with my legs crossed so tightly, pressed together so closely, I could have put my shoes on backward. Not to mention, if I feel the slightest little thing, I'm back in the bathroom.

So, three toilet paper rolls later . . . Lambie comes home with the equivalent of one of those big brown grocery bags. Because why? She's sixty-three. She has to buy what she knows. She don't know from adhesive strips. She don't know from wings. And she pulls out this box. But the box has only like three pads in it--because they're so big. She takes one out. It's the size of a hero. This submarine sandwich, with all the extra material coming off at the sides at either end of it.

Then she whips out the second box. And it has a belt in it.

Now, there have been several times in my life when my chain-smoking grandma has beaten her own chain-smoking record, and this was one of those times. Here she is staring at me, and I'm staring at her because I don't know what to do with these things, and out comes the pack of cigarettes. And she's trying to figure out the belt without actually getting into it herself and she's chain-smoking, turning the thing around, trying to remember how it goes. And she's explaining to me how to put it on with this cigarette hanging out of her mouth, going, "Here. You do like this." And I'm watching her, hoping she'll draw a diagram or something. Because when I go into the bathroom to actually put the thing on, I just can't get it to work. When I was thirteen, the widest thing about me was my knees. So I'm adjusting and she's chain-smoking, calling out, "What you doing in there?"

My normal panties are now fitting like bikinis, because I got this submarine sandwich down there, it's dragging down my briefs. And my shorts are too tight and I can't walk. You know that song that goes, "If you want to ride, ride the white horse." After this experience, I thought that song was about wearing pads.

I know that I have to hide it all from Derek, because if Lambie sent Derek outside, it must mean that he shouldn't know about it.

And I know that Lambie is helping me all she can--we don't talk about this stuff in my family--and she's in over her head. So she gets on the phone and calls Aunt Jeannie. Derek and I aren't scheduled to go back to Jeannie's, but we go back that night. Lambie figures Jeannie is younger and that it will be easier for me to talk to her.

It must have been my third trip to the bathroom in two hours when Derek finally walks by and knocks on the door.

"Jeez," he says. "What are you doing in there? Dying?"

And I say, "Maybe so."

"Ooh, is it that time again?"

"Yeah," I tell him, "right now."

So that's how Derek found out. And sure enough, Aunt Jeannie says, "Derek, go downstairs!"