Mentors & Menstration

OCTOBER 27, 2020

Mentors
Men-Tor
Tor, Toro, the bull
Bulls, bullies, bull-headed
There have been many men-tors in my life.
Earliest was my dad.

He taught me the value of hard work, of being honest, and having a good sense of humor.
I believe he was the earliest recorded metro-sexual to hit Baldwin Hills, way back in 1962, when being gay was called being fey. Or worse, feygellah. And my dad never said he was gay, but he sure would have been called metro-sexual by today’s standards. And we have a lot of gay men on that side of the family. So gay, fey or straight, he was metro and of that I am sure. That’s why I’m attracted to tall, thin, clean, metro-sexual men with a great sense of humor and a gorgeous smile. I was a daddy’s girl, until I became a “woman” at age 13.

Ma, I yelled, I think I got my period! She came into the one bathroom we all shared, she slapped me across the face and said Mazel Tov! And then she kind of laughed and kind of cried. And when I said, ARE YOU INSANE? She laughed harder and said “I don’t know, that’s what grandma did to me.”

She then proceeded to pull out a large wrinkled brown bag stuffed way back in the ugly blue vanity drawer, a heavy old wood drawer that you had to coax and wiggle open. The bag was a thousand years old. Had she saved this bag all 13 years of my life, waiting for this moment? Inside was a lace “belt”, and several large safety pins, the actual SAFETY type pins that you used for a diaper back then, along with a giant box of Kotex. These Kotex could stop a brain hemorrhage.

I was a wild and juicy skin-tight-white-jeans kind of girl back then. Fully developed, curvy, tall, thin and had great tits - at least that was the buzz on the school quad. (No one had touched them yet). I was in 7th grade, Junior High and I wasn’t a baby anymore AND now I was a woman. I had my period. My “friend.” Along with an old brown bag of special supplies.

I was still sitting on the toilet when my mom came into our small bathroom. She opened the bag and said here, you pull this belt on, and then put the ends of the JUMBO Kotex thru the belt clips, and then using these huge safety pins, you pin the ends of the “napkin” onto the lace belt. Okay, I got the pad, the belt, the pins and my underpants all pulled up. And when I pulled up my jeans, I started to cry.

I can’t wear this thing. This is like wearing diapers! I can’t wear this! I can’t go to school. I cannot leave the house. HOW OFTEN DO YOU GET A PERIOD? HOW LONG DOES IT LAST? No, this is completely unacceptable. I want to wear Tampax - give me your Tampax.

Tampax? NO, my mother exclaimed! You can’t wear a Tampax until after you’re married and have had a baby. Married with a baby???? I cannot wear this fucking thick diaper every month for the next 20 years. MA!!!!! My mom never discussed sex with me, and she was uncomfortable discussing menstruation. She never once in my life said the word vagina. "Schmunny" was as close as she came. And that was in context to cleaning, as in “don’t forget to wash your Schmunny”.

The next day I made her write an excuse for me to skip gym class. And I had her take me to the Guild Drug store. While she waited in the car, I went in and bought a box of Pursettes, tiny Tampax for 13-year-old virgin vaginas. At home I took the box into the bathroom and unfolded the “how to use” diagram, clearly the early work of IKEA. With one leg up on the toilet seat like the diagram showed, I tried to align my body with the light blue line drawing of a side elevation of my private parts. What was that loop? And where in the loop did the pursettes fit in?

It was confusing as hell. Why did one leg need to be up on the toilet? I went thru try after try, unwrapping and wasting more than half the box. I decided to lay flat on the floor, seemed more natural for insertion and FINALLY I got one of those little fuckers up there. But it wasn’t really up enough so while it was better than the pad, it was giving me a very painful pinch with every step and I definitely couldn’t sit down. After my mom saw my pained expression and limp, she finally said, “give it a good shove and push it up higher, and it will be comfortable!”

She was right! That was a real game changer. From that point on I became the Mentor, the Pursette’s Mentor.