It’s been a bloody awful day. Aunt Flo showed up for a surprise visit. She was 3 days early.
Bitch.
A lot of other women get at least some advanced warning. But nooo… not me. My discovery and mental dialogue goes something along the lines of: “I’m wet. Oh god, I’m too young to need Depends. Wait, I didn’t pee myself. Am I horny? I didn’t know photocopiers could turn me on. And Channing Tatum is nowhere in sight…
Oh. Oh shit, the red tide has rolled in.”
Because humanity is backwards and inconsiderate to angry hormonal women, the concept of providing a desperately needed service for gratis never occurs to the dink in charge of facilities. Soap? Free. Something to dry your hands on? Yep. Toilet paper? Free, I guess. Tampons? Shit, no, those things cost at least 3 cents each! Let’s make bleeding, cramping women pay premium rates to keep them from staining their clothes and our chairs.
For real? I fucking hate tampon machines. No woman would shove a cooter cork provided by a stranger up her cha cha unless she was already pretty goddamn desperate. Making us pay for these things is just adding insult to injury. Who has quarters just lying around? My wallet looks almost exactly like a bank card shoved into the back of my phone case, and of course all tampon machines work on the same 100 year old technology as a bubble gum machine. Haven’t you MBA CEO motherfucker building owners ever heard of PayPass? You should, cause you probably bought your skinny no-foam half-caff grande latte with it this morning.
So assuming we get lucky and find a quarter on the floor, there’s a 93% chance that we will still be SOL. If you are a building manager, and you only check to make sure your ancient tampon machines are stocked once every turn of the century, you should die in a fire.
Pretty much the only thing I hate more than tampon machines is no tampon machines at all. If you’re the building manager of one of these places, you should slam your dick in a waffle iron first before dying in a fire. No offence to building managers, of course.
This brings me to the point where most women find themselves sitting on the can in a public washroom, rolling their own mense mops.
What is the appropriate method of rolling one’s own? This would depend on how soon one can get to the nearest provider of a real product, and how squeamish one is about stuffing something up one’s crotch. I am not one of those. When you go into labour and delivery in a teaching hospital, the entire world gets to have a look-see. Somewhere between the 19 nurses helping me pee into a bag by means of an insertable catheter and the fleet of male residents (who looked to be approximately 12 years old) studying my unshaven va-jay-jay while I was numbed from the waist down, hoping I am not disgracing myself, I decided that nothing about that hole is sacred any more.
If you have yet to give birth, well then, you’re probably opting for the “pad”.
One can easily identify which tampon dispenser-less buildings are owned by cheap MBA CEO fuckers, because their toilet paper has the absorbency of wax paper. Such toilet paper is useless for a “pad” replacement as it will simply funnel blood randomly down your thighs, causing people to wonder if you’re haemorrhaging from your femoral artery. You must resort to the “wad and plug” method instead until you can beg, borrow or steal a proper product. This method will feel like using a hay bale as a feminine hygiene product.
If you find yourself in a tampon-less situation in one of these stalls that uses wax paper toilet paper, I strongly recommend you express your disapproval like an angry menstruating female ape, smearing blood all over the walls. They may get the hint and spend the extra two cents per roll to upgrade their toilet paper.
Or at least, they’ll install a tampon machine.