They Sold Me Underwear and I Was Happy

This email is to let you know that we received your order, they said. And we’re busy putting it together for you right now. Hold on to this receipt as confirmation, they said, and let us know if you have any questions.

I do have questions. I have had them for a long time and, for a while, my mother answered them. Now, I mostly ask my friends, but it’s been hard the last ten years, as I’ve been living in the middle of nowhere, and pregnancy after pregnancy keeps me chatting about other things, other discharges. It would seem I almost missed the trend of leakproof period underwear entirely.

They were supposed to arrive yesterday, my underwear, but the tracking says, in transit—late. What does this mean? The days of my period are approaching, and I was planning to take the underwear out for a test run. I’ve bloodied my sheets long enough. Although all of my sheets were bought used, even then they’re expensive. Blood doesn’t come out in the wash, and it’s gross to see brown stains when you make a fresh bed.

I understand the US Postal Service is under stress at the moment and I wish I could have sourced the underwear locally, at a farmer’s market, packaged with a sachet of lavender. But our farmer’s market is tiny and sparse. No one’s selling much and I’m socially anxious, so I don’t like going because I run into people and they want to talk to me. And usually I run into people I’ve been avoiding. Does that make me a bad person?

Probably I should have ordered them at least through Etsy. Probably someone has made them with scraps from a quilting project and I would have been better off buying direct-from-producer. I went with the name brand that was advertised on social media. I bought them right in the middle of another thought, actually. I didn’t even need to cross a firewall, and it all happened so fast—linked right to my PayPal account, click here, and boom! Delivery in ten days. Well, that was fine; I had just gotten over my last period and I could wait.

I have struggled with what I desire, things that feel below a legitimate level of intellectualism, things that seem silly, things that make me feel like an extractive, consumptive materialist who seeks validation in purchased things and takes comfort in my own vanity. I think about the upper echelons of philosophical minds who might look down on my choices, who might say I should be writing about more important issues related to uplifting the voices of people and wise ideas. Or not writing at all.

Maybe they’re right. Sometimes I can handle the buying and the discourse at once, but often I choose buying alone and no discourse. The buying is affirmed. Congratulations, they said, your order is on its way! Thank you, they said, and I was happy to be thanked.

I don’t know why it took the algorithm so long to figure me out. Maybe it knew I was the kind of person who never clicked ads, who didn’t see myself in the ads, who didn’t hover over them, who barely used social media except to try and be a part of a community that I felt ultimately would never want me. I always abided by the idea that real community is the people you see every day, but then dropping my kids off at school didn’t feel that much less disorienting.

Congratulations, they said, your order is on its way! Thank you, they said, and I was happy to be thanked.

We believe all women should be free from judgement and self-doubt, they said. That’s why they designed their underwear for every life stage to make us feel more comfortable in our own skin. If I bought these underwear, I wouldn’t have to wear a pad at night, which is essentially like wearing a diaper. The feeling of coming to bed wearing a diaper as a thirty-five-year-old woman with the possibility that I would leak out of my diaper and onto my sheets and then have to spot clean them in the morning before coffee is not something I’d choose, if I had to. And while I’m happy to have the ability to move my body in whatever way I want, and sleep in whatever position, and I know that is a privilege many people don’t have, I don’t like wearing a diaper and I don’t like to sleep with things inserted.Things are stressful. There is a lot going on in the world which continues to worsen. Schools are closing, opening, closing again, and everyone who’s worried about the state of humanity is wearing masks and protesting against injustice in the streets. I should be protesting in the streets instead of shopping online for leakproof underwear. Shopping is disgraceful, isn’t it. It’s like eating delicious things that are unhealthy. You do it with your mouth closed at the very least and you don’t hunch and you wipe your face. Shopping for period underwear is like shopping for lube—You fuck?

Shopping for period underwear means you’ve accepted the fact that you bleed once a month and you change your undergarments to match that timetable, that the period runs you. But every time my period comes, I’m surprised. What’s wrong with me? I’m forgetful. But surely one can protest and also buy underwear. One can write about big ideas and small ones?

There’s a ping pong night, a little group of players called The Small Ball Squad. They’re talking about periods: “Yeah, man. She’s really pissed this week. You know why.” And they know it’s more nuanced than that, but they can’t help it. It’s too easy, it’s ironic, really, it’s just a joke! Periods! It’s a joke. We love The Small Ball Squad. It’s so good for them to get together and they can vent about work and life. But they blame the blood, and it’s a fact.

It’s not just them. I’ve been socialized to think about my bleeding once a month as something uncouth, like touching yourself at the breakfast table. There’s nothing wrong with touching yourself, just not at the breakfast table.

I don’t know. I bite my nails. I lay in bed, I read, I bite my nails to the quick. I think it’s because my brain is moving fast and I have to occupy my mouth to slow myself down. I see my son do it. He bites his nails. He bites them when he reads, too. I tell him to stop biting his nails! I tell him it’s a disgusting habit. Don’t do it! He asks why. Just don’t do it, I say. I don’t know why. It shows how anxious you are, which is like showing your cards. Don’t show your cards, chew with your mouth closed, wash your hands, et cetera.

But biting my nails is beginning to hurt. In the heat, when my hands swell, blood flow goes to my hangnails and they burn when I use vinegar to cook. And when it’s cold, they feel raw and they chafe against my gloves.

The other day, my son asked me if he could paint my nails. Sure, I said, and he painted them very well even if he painted skin, too. They were blue on the right hand, green on the left. I like them, I told him. I kept them for a week. Then the polish chipped off, but I missed the polish, so I painted them again myself.

A week after that, I had longish nails, and I scratched my daughter’s back in bed and she loved the way it felt. I could do things with sequins I never even thought possible, like pick them up one by one without having to lick my finger first. I saw my hands on Zoom; they looked elegant and I’ve always hated my hands. I painted my nails this morning, again, but I want a new color so I’m ordering one online. When I garden, it will get chipped, but that’s okay. I’ll take it off with chemicals and then put on some more.

I do not place all that much value on image, and yet I value it secretly, against my will or in spite of it. I am distractible. I am supposed to be working on my brain and catching up on my consciousness, on my role in the collective consciousness. I know this and yet I’ll shop instead, as a distraction from the distraction. When I have my leakproof underwear, though, I will get back to work.

I am supposed to be working on my brain and catching up on my consciousness, on my role in the collective consciousness. I know this and yet I’ll shop instead, as a distraction from the distraction.

Can I be a gardener with worms and bacteria, whose kids shit by the pond, who picks up the shit with a leaf that is not big enough, who paints my nails with nail polish and buys more colors? I have other thoughts that live in my mind but aren’t on this page, of course. Maybe you’d rather hear, for example, my thoughts about the Dutch book which describes, beautifully, a plateful of stewed cow udders.

Today is the day. Weeks have gone by—months, years even! And today, the period underwear are in my mailbox! I can feel myself begin to bloat, just in time. I am floating, full of potential.

I am walking to the mailbox to prolong this feeling, so I can hold it in my hand and coax it slowly into being. Here I am, I’m at the mailbox now. I’m opening the mailbox. They’re in there, in a flat brown cardboard box! I’m ripping open the box impatiently now, I can’t wait another second to see these underwear, the ones that will change my life.

The only way this story can end is that I am hit by a truck as I turn around to go back home and try them on. Why is that the only way it can end? Because it is so stupid that a female writer should have to talk about underwear in order to sell the stories she really wants to tell, which are the ones that don’t go well with commerce. So, no end can be as sad or as perfect as one where I am lying in a pool of my own blood, gasping for my last breath, holding the leakproof underwear in my hand.

This world is fucked up. This democracy is fucked up. The design is fucked up, but it’s working according to plan. Underwear, nail polish, my face on a cake. I bled, and they made money off the blood. Yes, I do have questions. And, in fact, I know the answers. I might think: The truck hit me. But I am the truck, too.

These are the last words you’ll hear from me, these words about the underwear. This is what my children will have to remember me by, this essay, their mother’s last words. I guess they’ll also have the underwear, soaked in what used to be my intuition. But can they be leakproof when they’re covered in blood?

• 0