Alright, I've always wanted to blog about this since it's such a ridiculous experience that I know many women my age have shared. I guess modesty and shame have kept me from writing about it before but fuck it, I'm 24...and who am I kidding with the secrecy.

So I'm driving along home after a crappy Monday at work when I remember...I have my mofo-ing "well woman" exam today at 4:30. Joyyyyyy. I rush to my apartment to take a shower and change since I had been up since 5 AM and headed out. I hate the doctor's. And even worse, I hate the gyno. Like many underpaid twentysomethings, my insurance doesn't cover hardly anything, so I just go to planned parenthood for this crap.

For the mostpart, PPH is a great establishment. Everything's a flat rate based on your income; if only all health care could follow suit. However, a lot of people think they're synonymous with UNplanned parenthood and abortion. So, depending on how liberal your town is ( unless you're S. Dakota, ha ), it will be disguised in an inconspicuous shopping center on a sideroad with tiny signs and mirrored windows...or like my town, where it's in between a bar and a Bennigan's.

It's like a normal doctor's office except there's usually a lot of teenage girls there...they go in flocks. When I filled out my paperwork a bunch of them from the local rich kid high school gabbed about homecoming. I wondered if that's why they were there...too much fun at the dance?

I watched some octopii swim by on the waiting room TV while a tall and pretty girl poked her head out of the door to her sig other who was half asleep, "we're pregnant, babe." That's the only really awkward thing...sometimes you get the hysterical or angry " What the fuck?? You mean it didn't work??" I dunno, I've only seen that once or twice. Some people like spectacles.

So it's then my turn...and I guess the only sensation I can describe is coldness. Cold examination room, cold scale under my bare feet, cold hands....eek! The nurse practitioner is always a grey-ing, hippie type lady, with mules or birkenstocks. She's friendly, but looks down at you over her glasses, and has no problem saying all those lovely gynocologist words.

I like being a woman. Women are beautiful and got a better deal when it came to body parts. But there's a lot of pain and maintenance and humiliation that goes along with it. This was probably the only time I didn't worry about cancer, because I hate my job so much, getting cancer would give me a valid excuse to quit before May. Is that sad?

After I excaped the stirrup's icy grip, I got out of there as fast I could...and the high school girls were still in the waiting room playing with their pamphlets and birth control pills. I tried to keep a straight face at the cash register when I notice that in front of a medical poster of female and male anatomy is a display of flavored lubricant.

Safe for another year. Next hurdle....the dentist. The perils of humanity are endless. :)