I went to planned parenthood today for a regular old girlie checkup. The clinic over here is on the Santa Monica Promenade which is strange but interesting. I've only been to a couple of PP clinics but they've all been very different.

The first one that I ever went to was in Brattleboro, Vermont and I was pregnant and 18. The clinic was in a lovely old white clapboard house with comfy arm chairs in the lobby and a team of motherly lesbian doctors. I remember pulling into the gravel driveway of that clinic, in my old beat-up red Saab, Portishead in the tape player, my hair cut into a pixie shape. It was January and there was frozen snow on the ground. I dropped my cigarette and listened to it fizzle out with a satisfying hiss.

Earlier this year I went to a PP clinic in Hollywood on Vermont. PP is really the best place in the world to go if you don't have insurance and you're a girl who needs expensive birth control. The clinic in Hollywood was on the second floor of a run down strip mall. There was a bullet hole in the tinted glass door. Inside on plastic chairs sat half a dozen pregnant Hispanic teenagers.

I took a book today because even if you have an appointment you always have to wait at least two hours. I think it might have to do with emergency appointments involving the morning after pill but I could be wrong. Anyway, like I said, I brought a book but I didn't intend to read much. There's too much people watching to take advantage of in these situations.

At the Santa Monica PP the waiting area is always full of young girls wearing ripped off jean skirts and rockstar belts. There are always a couple with their boyfriends. I always assume that they're the pregnant ones. The boys always do fine until the girl gets called back and then they sit alone, trying to look cool, trying to look they know what they're doing, like they're not scared.

After two hours, I got called back and I followed the nurse into one of the exam rooms. She left me alone to change into a plastic gown. I sat on the table and swung my legs back and forth. I looked at a poster on the wall depicting the male sex organs and then across the room to the poster of the female organs. And then I started to cry. I always cry when I go to the doctor. I don't know why.

I only ever go to the gynocologist, doctor-wise that is. But inevitably, when they leave me alone in the room for those 20 minutes before the exam, I start crying. Today while I tried to get myself under control, I tried to figure out exactly why I always cry. I think there are a couple of reasons. The first is that, over the last ten years, I've spent countless hours in hospitals and doctor's offices and waiting rooms, but never for myself. I'm always accompanying someone. And I guess when I'm sitting there in my plastic gown I start imagining what it must have been like for my mother or for Julie, sitting there in their plastic gowns while some doctor told them that their insides were eating them up.

The other reason is that going to the gync always reminds me of my mother. I guess that sounds weird but my mother and I were so close and we always talked about everything in the world, especially female stuff. The doctors at Planned Parenthood are always so motherly. They come into the room and smile at you, looking you in the eyes. They ask you questions about your body, about your sex life, if you have a boyfriend. If you do they say nice things and always ask in a subtly concerned way if he treats you well.

It's been so long since I had a mother figure in my life, someone who is really interested and concerned with my being a young woman. I've gotten used to it and I never think about it...except at the doctor's office.

And then the doctor always starts in with the health questions....history of cancer in your family? I just want to pour out the whole story. Usually I downplay it all a bit...I mean it's really a bit much to tell someone that in the last six years I've lost a mother, a best friend and a father to cancer. But when I'm sitting in that exam room, only a plastic sheet separating me from my youthful femininity, I desperately want the motherly sympathy.

But today all went well. I had my cry and finished in time for the doctor to approach me with dry eyes. I'd already filled out the form with my medical history so we didn't have to go into it today. When I left, I walked out into the bright California sunshine and did what most 25 year old girls with a free afternoon do: I went shopping.
5:40:31 PM     comment []