baby's first loop electrosurgical excision procedure (LEEP)

reading 'sex and rage' at the gynecologist

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I was reading Sex and Rage when I got a call from my doctor that my Pap smear came back abnormal. It felt like a poem. The book in my lap. The massive fur-coat I had worn over my pajamas all morning to gas myself up while I worked on the proposal for a new book — the third in a trilogy of memoirs that would end full circle. From Wild to Child to Wild again… a fusing and reclaiming of twenty-years of disjointed selves, bookended by raising babies and then adults. The battle between Madonna and Whore ending in their love story. A meet cute of mes in the margins of cultural criticism. A motherfuckingsexmemoir.

It was one of those days where I felt so high on my own supply I had to take breaks to do Arsenio Hall fist pumps and take selfies in the sun to send my friend who had, a few weeks earlier, insisted on buying me a giant fur coat after I tried it on at a thrift store and immediately became the kind of woman who wears fur coats over t-shirts in the middle of the afternoon.

“This is so you I’m buying it.”

“No, dude.”

“YES. Dude.”

All of this to say, I was in the throes of a very STARSHIP-NOTHING’S-GONNA-STOP-ME-NOW-type-moment which I should have known would be precisely when something absolutely was going to stop me now.

***

Up until the phone call that came in as I sat on my little chair reading about Jacaranda, ‘her hair, parted in the middle, hung straight down untangled,’ I had never had a Pap smear come back abnormal. I had never tested positive for anything except an accidental pregnancy.

Somehow, slut that I have undoubtably been off and on since birth, I managed to skirt STIs — including the one everyone else seemed to have — for the entirety of my sex life.

Which is why I insisted on NOT WAITING the recommended three years between paps. Because I realize that I am precisely the kind of woman who needs one. High risk, yes, but also a person, a place and a thing. Especially these last few years.

Beyond recognizing a life that has always humbled me, I was about to turn 44. The age that people in my house have historically gotten cancer and died.

***

I was not due for a Pap for another year and a half which is the part I keep coming back to now that I know the extent of my situation. (I’m six weeks post Colposcopy procedure and one week post LEEP which I will get to in detail later sorry but you’re going to have to hear the whole story first because this is a very common thing that happens to MANY women and as per my last six weeks of online-rabbit-holing, IS NOT REPRESENTED ANYWHERE outside of anonymous reddit threads. Which, what the fuck you guys. HOW IN THE YEAR 2025 with THOUSANDS of sex positive newsletters and memoirs and and and and… is this still being whispered about, identities masked, advocates for sexual health reluctant to share their own experiences. The only way to destigmatize this shit is to stand unapologetically in our ferociously fallible bodies — to become each other’s lighthouses so we don’t keep crashing into the rocks.)

via my stories

The amount of women who believe they will become unlovable or a disgrace to the people who love them if they reveal that they enjoy casual sex and/or carry a sexually transmitted virus that upwards of 80% OF ALL HUMANS CARRY (including men who CANNOT BE TESTED FOR IT) should tell you everything you need to know about women and our collective shame, as well as men’s lack thereof.

It should also tell you how many women prioritize the way they are perceived over community and peer-education. Protecting the reputation/social standing of the self over LITERALLY EVERYTHING ELSE because that is what we have been conditioned to do for our own social survival. Which will answer every question you might still be asking yourself about the state of our country and also the world.

One cannot fight a patriarchal system while trying to appeal to it.

One cannot protect her sisters or educate her sons if she is unwilling to tell them what she has gone through in a body that has historically been tended to in secret.

except it does, actually. CERVICAL CANCER IS QUITE LITERALLY SEX CANCER.

Which is why I want to make sure I don’t deprive anyone of information you may want or need regarding ANY OF THIS, so if you cannot afford to up your subscription and would like to access less TMI/equally informative material you can do so via my Instagram where I have been posting about this since last week. (YOU CAN GET VAXXED FOR HPV IF YOU HAVEN’T ALREADY EVEN IF YOU ARE MIDDLE AGED. And while the limit says “45 and under,” I am hearing from women whose doctors have vaxxed them over 45 as well.)

You can also join me for an Instagram live about HPV/Colposcopies/LEEP and middle-aged sexual health this Thursday at 10am PST with OBGYN PA-C and founder of Take Back Trust, Nikki Vinckier. (And if you have specific questions for her, you can DM me with them between now and then!)

But first, story time, because I wasn’t even “due” for a Pap for another year and a half, but requested one anyway. Explained to my doctor that, it had been years since I’d had a physical and wanted to come in for an all-of-the-above health-check because I felt anxious about turning 44…Explained that I was refused a Pap smear when I had my new IUD inserted last year; denied because it was too soon…