Bullfight

There I sat. Alone. Buttocks… bare, separated from the clinic table with a pathetic excuse for a sheet and a veil draped over my densely forested crotch, waiting for a mixture of Fluoxamine and Diazepam to transform my distrust, anxiousness, and dysmorphia into indifference.

There I sat in solitude in a room that felt all too familiar, but one I knew I had never met before, to allow time for my body’s defenses to lessen. I prayed for my vision to soon blur as I surveyed the medical trays. Unfortunately, my eyes focused on a large metal speculum. The longer I stared, the more violent it looked, and I knew I was its target. Positioned right beside it was the largest needle I have ever seen; I realized my womb was also its intended destination.

The intimate room had been arranged to have an obvious hierarchy. I still awaited the euphoria I was promised while half naked in a proscenium where, yes, everything revolved around me, but the medical instruments had more space allotted to them. The machines with no elbows had ample elbow room while I tried not to venture too far from the center of my pathetic square sheet. My comfort was not the priority.

My sober and untrained eyes identified a large flat-screen monitor perched atop a large electronics tower immediately to my left, which housed two purring rectangular machines, one tethered to an endoscope, and the other to an electric wire loop with a voltage warning tag, as well as a voluptuous bag of fluid. To my right was the barbaric speculum, impressive needle, a metal dilator, gloves, a headlamp, goggles, and cups of fluid to catch my unwanted uterine tissues.

“Minimally invasive surely needs a lot of space,” I thought.

I admitted to a nurse that the cocktail wasn’t relieving my terror, but I consented for the bulls to enter the pen knowing I wasn’t ready. For the first time in my life, I wanted to be sloppy, easily manipulated, penetrable... maybe even fuckable. I knew I was going to be fucked by two strangers with tools organized and easily accessible like weapons on a dinner table; I just wanted to make it easier to accept.

My eyes met the piercing blue eyes of the doctor. I instantly detected an ego portrayed by a linguistic bluntness, a combination I historically don’t fancy. She erected the proscenium that intimidated me. She knew what she was doing; the problem was, she didn’t know me.

As I descended and adjusted for her viewing convenience, she applied robust safety goggles, a headlamp fashioned for professional hikers, and blue latex gloves. I watched her prepare herself to fuck me. A me that was petrified and wishing I was on harder drugs.

She parted me and inserted the cold speculum, which I had spent more time with than her, into my vagina. The metal tabs emitted an unsettling clicking sound as I felt increasing pressure inside me.

This is the day I learned that my uterus never stops crying. Every exam prior had commenced with a question as to why blood would be present on my cervix. I don’t know the medical reason, but my personal conclusion is that my uterus struggles in my body just as much as I struggle having it in my body. I shed tears desperately asking the cosmos why I was given a uterus, and I believe my uterus sheds blood wondering why it was put in me. We are not a match.

Though not a match, I couldn’t help wanting to protect a friend with whom I have a complicated relationship. My ears diffused the metal-to-metal cranking of the speculum and the clanging of the instruments on the tray to hear the echoes of “don’t let them do this to her,” from the depths of my subconscious.

Not even five minutes had passed since the bulls entered the pen before I felt blood rush to my cheeks, my ears recalibrated, and I heard myself say, “I can’t do this!”

I felt utterly defeated.

While some tissue was removed for biopsy via a very wet-sounding twist, clamp, scissor operation, I couldn’t get fucked for the sake of removing a mass. Yet again, I couldn’t read my complicated friend well enough; would she have endured a traumatic fucking to relieve herself of the mass, or is the mass insignificant and tolerable enough to seek peace from outsiders? My eyes and vagina mourned a lost battle as I was left alone within the center of the proscenium once more.

I struggled to get myself to standing, but when I did, my teary eyes were met with carnage from a battle that I forfeited on the pathetic sheet and veil that once preserved my privacy. I quit before the complete siege, and yet there was blood, discharge, sweat, cauterizing fluid, and cervical tissue. I inserted my portable, plush carnage absorber into my underwear and saw a once meticulous tray completely ransacked while the menacing electronics tower awaited the next victim of a bullfight.