Whalesong

You have a condition. That’s what your gynecologist tells you. You’re seventeen and sitting in an exam room dressed in a paper robe and want desperately to be anywhere but here. The only reason that you are here is because everyone else in your grade has already gotten their period, even Jenny who has always been shorter than everyone else, which your best friend, Emily, says is because her mother chain-smoked while pregnant.

The gynecologist asks you some questions, before looking at you down there. Whatever she finds can’t be good news, because she calls another doctor for a consultation.

They do an ultrasound and you think, I’ve never even had sex, but they’re not looking for signs of life; they’re searching for water buried deep beneath the dusty red surface of Mars.

After the ultrasound, they leave you all alone in the room. Time stretches out like the roll of paper that covers the exam table; there’s a whole roll of time waiting to be used, untainted by the apprehension that swells inside of you like the child you will never have.

“There’s always adoption,” the gynecologist-turned-life coach advises you. “Or surrogacy.”

She hesitates, then reaches into a drawer and pulls out a cassette tape.

“Look,” she says. “Sometimes people with your condition, sometimes people your age, experience more anxiety than their peers when they’re being intimate. This will help you relax.”

You bury the tape in the bottom dresser drawer the moment you get home, too embarrassed to even look at it.

School is hell after that. Even though you never tell Emily about the appointment or your condition, you cannot escape it. By now, most of your classmates have had their periods for years, and they exchange pads and tampons in the locker room like prison cigarettes.

As you watch, a permanent outsider, smoking shame cooks your guts like coal. It is as if menstruation is some great sun whose gravity eventually ensnares every girl and holds her in its sway. Every girl except you. Alienated by her talk of PMS and bleeding and cramps, you drift further from Emily.

Skip ahead five months, nearly a decade in high school time. You are zipping up your jeans in the farthest stall from the door in the third floor bathroom when they come in. Jenny and Emily. You cannot leave, not without them spotting you.

Jenny is a God now. In five short months she’s sprouted, just in time for junior prom. It’s like all her hormones were waiting for this moment. Their mea culpa to her is clear-skin, glossy hair, and the biggest breasts in the eleventh grade. She is Emily’s new best friend.

“We did it last night,” Jenny is telling Emily. “I didn’t feel much, but it was nice, I guess.”

“You mean you didn’t have an… orgasm?” The word almost dies on Emily’s lips, she approaches it so timidly.

“I don’t know,” says Jenny. “I mean, maybe I did something wrong…”

As you listen to them, you realize suddenly that there is another way to be granted admittance into the world of women, and you remember the tape.

You aren’t sure why you decide to try the tape. The idea of listening to it arouses you, like when a pop-up from a porn site appears on your computer screen and you don’t close it immediately.

Slipping the tape into the boom box on your bedside table, you crawl under your sheets. Your face burns as you slide your fingers beneath the elastic line of your underwear. Listening to the guttural cries of the whales, you begin to map your body. You have never done this before, but it’s not hard to figure out.

The first time you come your legs start shaking beforehand, but the moment you reach that cliff and fall off, well, it’s like nothing you’ve ever felt before.

You don’t need a partner, but you want one. Finding a partner is easier than you think it will be. Jeffery, your lab partner from Biology, is just as eager to do it as you are. In fact, he seems even more eager than you. It gives you a tiny thrill to discuss it so frankly with him over your split-open frogs that reek of formaldehyde.

Sex becomes your lingua franca with Jeffery. Cunt and oral and orgasm fill the void where menstrual cycle and pads and blood were supposed to be.

It takes some convincing to get Jeffery to accept the tape. But you hold your ground, embracing the sense of womanhood you have finally gained. You don’t even feel naked as you undress for him.

When he touches you with his tongue, you close your eyes. And as you come, warm orange light floods your vision, as if the sun is shining directly on your face. You come against his face in tight, jerking movements, so hard you swear you pull something.

Afterwards, as you lie on your bed next to him, your fingers in his hair, you imagine yourself as a whale, gliding through the dark on your strong fins, large and solid and secure.

The next day at school you run into Jenny and Emily in the bathroom again. When they glance at you, you smile politely as you wash your hands, but don’t say anything, while underneath the water, your whale-self sings.