Period Piece Pt 1.

The anxiety creeps up your spine when you realize you have to change your tampon. Carefully you fumble a new one out of the inner pocket of your bag into your clenched fist. You hope your conversation partner will notice none of this. You scoot from behind the tables and walk through the café to the public bathroom. The family at the next table stares at you. Do they see through your white knuckles and notice the hidden shape? Or is there blood on your skirt… 

The first time you see blood in your underwear, you think you’re dying. Then you remember your friends sharing the blossoming of their adulthood, so you search all the cabinets in the bathroom, until you find a pad. 

You start a learning curve over the next few periods and figure out, when and how much you bleed, how many days your cycle is. How many small diapers and internal sponges you need to have to cover this and when to change them. This period is filled with uncomfortable bathroom visits, in which you find your underwear to be the set of a slasher movie. Changing the pad is not going to clean your underwear. 

Throughout your awkward teenage years, your period becomes regular, the changing of pads and products goes flawlessly and you become accustomed to the monthly routine. You joke about it with friends and discuss the pill to control your flow and pain-level with your doctor.

And then it happens again. The blood has spilled and you feel like that awkward teenager again, doing a handstand in the hallway, the skirt fell down and your friends stared with a mixture of disgust and pity at your crotch. “Maybe you shouldn’t do handstands today...” one of them whispered. I got the hint. The rest of the day I shuffled through the hallway, my thighs pressed together.

In an alternative scenario, your first period will transform you. It will be seen as a sign of ripeness. As if you are a low-hanging peach, of sexual and mental maturity. Making you suddenly desirable, yet paradoxically repulsive. Your maturity comes paired with impurity and shame. Your child-like innocence is now seen as alluring. Your movements get a promiscuous connotation as you are now a seductress. Your blood is the scarlet letter embroidered on your cloak. 

You may be excluded from religious rituals, the preparation of food or family life altogether, until your flow has passed. 

Your period may have cultural side-effects such as a predetermined central role in the household and childcare and additional layers of clothing. It can cause the determination of your formal education and the beginning of a family. Your period may be the end of your childhood and the forceful jumpstart of womanhood. 

*****

In a perfect world, a period is normalized and celebrated. It signals that you are going to be an adult, which will give you so many choices. It is exciting, choosing who you want to be. Girls get educated about their biology and learn how to use different hygiene products. Boys also get taught about female biology. They go to the supermarket to get the right tampons and some chocolate for their first girlfriend, who has confided that she had an accident or an emotional day. Pads and tampons are as cheap and widely available as toilet paper. In every bathroom is a little box with free tampons and pads in case you forgot yours. The pill and more ecofriendly hygiene products are covered by health-insurance. 

When you have cramps so bad that you cannot move, you shamelessly call in sick. Because it is not an excuse. 

This is a perfect world. To make that the world our grandchildren live in, we have to start working towards it now. We have to start breaking the taboo now. Period.

 

Rupi Kaur writes:

Apparently it is ungraceful of me

To mention my period in public

Because the actual biology

Of my body is too real

It is okay to sell what’s

Between a woman’s legs

More than it is okay to

Mention its inner workings

The recreational use of

This body is seen as

Beautiful while

Its nature is seen as ugly

Milk and Honey (2015) Andrews McMeel, Kansas City. “The Healing”, 177. www.rupikaur.com

  Photos by Maud Fernhout

The Encounter

The few not-quite holidays between Christmas and New Year had the city buzzing with international and Dutch tourists, excited to see Amsterdam go up in flames when 2018 was discarded for a fresh start. Next to the regulars and the expected handful of tourists, de Balie was buzzing with families and groups of friends. Everyone ordered at the same time and demanded excellent service, so I and my colleagues tried to live up to expectations. At five pm, my shift was finally over and I escaped outside to smoke a cigarette and enjoy a beer. People strolled past the terrace, animatedly debating where to go next. A blond girl parked her bike next to me and asked me for a light. She sparked her cigarette, thanked me and cycled off again. I secretly hoped that she would have started an engaging conversation, asked me something unexpected or joined me for the cigarette. However, she seemed the only person on the entire square that had a set destination. 

Only a few minutes later, a middle-aged man with dark hair and eyes, bushy eyebrows and a distinctively hooked nose stopped at my table and asked for a light. As he lit up, he explained that he quit smoking after twenty years by lessening the nicotine he is vaping. Now his vape ran out of battery, so he decided to smoke his first real cigarette in four months. I congratulated him on his success beating addiction so far and he smized. “Thank you, it has been quite the battle. I used to smoke all-day long, you see I got  whiplash in a traffic accident. I was bedridden for two years and so bored that I kept lighting one after the next. I felt so hopeless, I lost everything, my job, my wife and child, the opportunity to see my mother before she passed. The doctors said it sometimes took people in my state six years to recover again! After two and a half years of self-loathing, I decided to change my life. I slowly started to exercise and luckily enough I was soon strong enough to get my job as a car mechanic back.” I was not entirely sure where our conversation was headed, so I agreed that  people’s mental disposition and attitude towards their physical recovery has been proven to be directly linked to the speed of the recovery itself, meaning he had cured himself and he should be proud. He nodded and said, “so much has happened in my life and I’m still here, now I really don’t think anything will break me. All my friends keep telling me I should write a book.” With our conversation shifting into the realm of literature, I keenly engaged, “where would you start telling your story?”

He frowned and took the first drag of the cigarette. “I grew up in Afghanistan in a family of seven, but because of the civil war, I was the only one that could find a job. I wanted to be a doctor, but since I was already working as a mechanic, I didn’t have enough time and money to study. As the conflict became increasingly fuelled by foreign money, my family started to flee one by one to Russia, China, Italy and other countries. I had to leave my mother behind when I fled. I arrived in the Netherlands 18 years ago, seven years I spent in an asylum seekers centre. Straight away, I met a beautiful and sweet Dutch girl. We started loving each other very much and she came to visit me every week. She loved me so much that she swore that if I would be sent back, she would move with me. I was so afraid she would actually do it.” I heard myself say, “oh no..” He laughed and said, “That couldn’t happen.” He took a drag and seemed to study the colourful fairy lights adorning the shape of the historical courthouse behind me. “In total, I have been deported three times and every time I have come back to this country. I was lucky to have the financial means to do so.” 

The man sighed and continued, “just like now, migration politics were turbulent. The third time I arrived back in this country was two days before the enforcement of the general pardon in 2007.” This regulation would allow the asylum seekers that had been in the country for six years to become status holders though many arriving after were rejected and sent back. The parliament was conflicted about which groups to grant the Dutch nationality. For example, by saying a refugee had to have stayed continuously for 5 years, would mean that a large number of refugees that had been deported has no right to stay. 

Nader stressed that the regulation applied to him, his lawyer had told him he had good chances of getting a permit of residence, as the period of residence was constantly debated. “I kept waiting for my hearing but instead a few months later, I was put in an armoured van, accompanied by four policemen. “It was so hot and stuffy there, I bet that an asthmatic would have suffocated.” He told me that he knew they were about to deport him, it was after all the fourth time. Right before he had been brought to the airport, he had contacted the coalition, CDA-PvdA-ChristenUnie, saying “I’ve arrived well within the timespan of this regulation and I have the right to a permit of residence. But still I’m being deported. This is the time, number and gate of my flight, I really hope someone does something because what is happening is illegal!” He told me that soon after the van had been parked under the gate of his flight, the policemen got out and left him in the cramped, airless space. Suddenly he heard a shouting group of people rushing closer.

They demanded to know what was in the van, the police man answered uneasily that they could not disclose this. The people pressured the policemen to open the van, who kept saying they had not been authorized to do so. He described listening carefully to the conversation and then started banging on the door and screaming on top of his lungs, “get me out of here! Open the door! I can’t breathe, I’m suffocating, I’m going to die here!” The policemen did not have any choice now and opened the door. As soon as he was led out of the van, the two dozen politicians and the three policemen disappeared in an adjourning office. He was left with just one police officer. “I have to go to the bathroom.” The officer pointed and said, “at the end of the hall, to your left.”

He took a drag, his eyes gleaming with excitement. “Well, through all of these procedures, I always had to take two officers with me to the bathroom, they gave me two minutes and if I wouldn’t be done, they’d kick in the door. But this time, he just gave me directions! I thought to myself, now something is about to go down.” He chuckled and rubbed his hands together. He said that soon after he got a permit of residence, he married his girl, got a lovely son and picked up his trade in the Netherlands. Just when he thought that his life was back on track, he got into the car accident and divorced. He recovered, quit smoking. He saw his ex-wife and kid regularly. He smiled and locked gaze with me. “Life is beautiful but hard. We have to be grateful.” I wholeheartedly agreed, thanked him for sharing with me and asked for his name. “My name is Nader.” “My name is Lily. Nader, I hope you really do write that book one day, I think that your story needs to be heard. We need to know.” He nodded and laughed. We were quiet for a moment and I realized how hungry I actually was. “I’m sorry, I have to go now, I’m absolutely famished. It was so nice to meet you and again, thank you!” It was as if that sentence had broken a spell, he seemed to realise how long we had been talking. He squashed the largely unsmoked cigarette under his shoe, grinned and wished me the very best and a happy new year. I watched him disappear into the crowd, his head held high as he walked.

Writer’s statement: Inside again, I told my colleague Nader’s story. As soon as I did,  I realized that I should have asked for his contact details instead of just his name, because I wanted to help him tell his story. Put the first words on paper together. For a while, I hoped that I would find him through wild googling. Unfortunately I could not even find out which company repairs the Conexxion busses in Amsterdam, where he said he worked. The day after we met, I made extensive notes of our conversation but felt too ambivalent to share his story without his permission and help, but I now hope that maybe someone reading this will know him or that this article will reach him in some way. Since, dear reader, you made it to this point, I would like to encourage you to share this story and help me find Nader.

Star-Sprinkled Body

I close the fridge, shoving the huge pile of leftover pasta into the microwave and sit down with a glass of water. When you have to constantly put food on other peoples’ table to make money, you forget to eat yourself. My legs hurt from 9 hours of walking, standing and occasionally sprinting and the hour of cycling, my feet throb. The microwave beeps and five minutes later the dishwasher turns on. Upstairs, I undress to get in the shower, my reflection in the toothpaste spotted bathroom mirror follows my lead. I look at my outershell and light a cigarette.

Right now, I am five different shades of white: bleached paperwhite, white shirt after a few washes, eggshell, breadstick and well-done home made vanilla crumble cookie. The tan lines separating white from white tell the different phases of my summer behavior, how often I wear a shirt, bra, pants or slippers.

My cheeks are as cold as the bums on the marble statues in the Vatican. What classical beauty a rainy night can bring out.

My legs are long

and white like rice noodles before you boil them for 8 minutes and rinse them with cold water. My legs are hairy. It started as an experiment a few months ago, as a protest against the male gaze, I challenged myself to let my hair live up to its fullest potential. I’ve gotten attached to my furry jungle, so I kept it.

My skin never listens to me. It’s more sensitive to stress than I am. My face and body react in different ways but generally, there are 3 scenarios:

11)    I’m stressed and my face pimples and my body psoriases, which stresses me out and contributing to the worsening of the skin situation the outbreak.

22)    I’m stressed and get worried that I’ll be breaking out and those extra worries make me break out.

33)    I’m chill, but I break out, making me realize how stressed I actually am, about anything, our purpose, our meaning, how I decide to live my life, whether I’ll be homeless and unemployed in a month and whether people actually like me.

I’m covered in birthmarks. Spotted like the milky way. If you trace the ones on my left forearm, you’ll be able to reveal sign from the heavens: a retarded seal. Sorry. Mentally challenged. Since light therapy, I’ve gotten more, so maybe the seal has been consealed, lost in the white noise of the newcomers. Some of the new ones are evil and need to be cut out. How many scars make a pirate? And where should I send my resume to apply?

            If you follow the downwards arrow-shaped shadows of my ribs, you will arrive at my tummy. It has a little silver pendant in it. Papa Francesco will be looking straight at you. However, my belly used to be of a much more blasphemous faith. Barbarically observed, measured, pinched and squeezed. It could not be inverted enough. Hipbones had to stick out 1,5 cm over whatever bodypart is in between them. If not, the ritual would begin, and fasting would be my only pillar of worship. Luckily, these days I get more satisfaction out of fries and the pope.

I’ve always liked my hands. They are skeletal, see-through tools with conveniently chewed and chipped fingertips. The nails are always just that length where I burn the new skin, that is forming under the nail I so violently ripped off, when I do the dishes. On my right hand, there is an inexplicable black spot, which I always tell people is my first tattoo. I supposedly got it when someone stabbed me with a pen in primary school. In actuality, my mom told me a suspiciously similar story when I was a kid. So I must have adapted and implanted the story into my memory. Interesting how our mind tricks us, because the story of my battle scar is as defining as any other memory to me.

My face has been through a lot of transformation, which usually revolved around either minimizing or maximizing my facial expression. Either extravagantly applied full face or just eyebrows (blond people miss out on all that fun). My forehead is wrinkly, because my mom always had wrinkles, which made her like a wise turtle or owl to me. She would prefer owl. I felt like she’d fold her face and in its folds a solution to any problem would slowly develop, as in the end, after frowning, things usually got solved somehow.

I sat in front of the mirror for hours to train my forehead muscles, flexing all day. Before I knew it, I also had wisdom folds, but unfortunately, the wisdom did not come along with them. My problem-solving skills even went slightly backwards, other kids called me gorilla, as my face had become very flexible and extremely expressive.

My hair is red and dready. A while back, I decided that shampoo was a capitalist lie. The first few days, it was very difficult to live with the truth, as my hair looked like it had been used to clean out a deep frying pan. Then I just got used to it, and my volume was off the charts. Unfortunately, I became rather quite self-conscious when noticing the difference between its fabulous appearance in my eyes and its allegedly “moppy” appearance to others. Luckily, shampoo turns out to be an easier capitalist lie to accept than the systemic oppression of the working class.

I stand in front of the mirror and smile. Ears like pin cushions, obnoxious hair, chewed fingernails, irregularly tanned and slightly blemished. Stripped down to the cigarette.  

Portraits by Maud Fernhout