Cunt by Betty Dodson Inga Muscio Read Free Book Online

floral air freshener to a lady who lives in a rose garden.
    Also, excuse me, but what’s so clean about dicks?
    One never hears of sanitary jock straps, deodorant condoms, perfumed Hershey-Squirt
     protection pads or hygienic ball wipes, whereas I’ve heard tell of need for such products.
    So anyway, with thoughts such as these playing through my mind, you can imagine my
     dismay on tampon-buying excursions. If I happen to be in a good mood, it’s simply
     annoying. If I happen to be in a bad mood, I am a green monster who lives in a trash
     can with a grand piano. On this occasion, I was in a bad mood.
    I grumbled down the aisle, openly sneering at all the products on the shelves. New
     Freedom this and Light Days that.
    Comfort, security.
    Plastic applicators.
    Discreet disposal pouches printed with flowers that do not exist.
    I positively fumed as I scanned the prices. Five, six, seven bucks for a box of cotton. Sixty, seventy bucks a year.
    Why the flying fuck should a woman have to pay some huge corporation over and over because the lining of her uterus naturally, biologically sheds every month?
    Amongst my small circle of friends, I tally seven hundred dollars spent on tampons
     and pads a year. I estimate the women in my apartment building spend thirteen thousand
     dollars a year to swell the already enormous profit margins of “feminine hygiene”
     companies.
    Reluctantly, I made my selection: a box of Tampax Slender Regulars for $7.19. I stormed
     my way to the check-out line. In front of me was a young man who said hello.
    I replied, “Do you realize that I will have barely three dollars in the whole wide
     world after I purchase this box of tampons because my period is coming and I find
     it unsavory to bleed in all my clothes and on every seat I occupy for the next few
     days?”
    He told me that he’d considered this very conundrum. His girlfriend had bitched about
     the same thing at length.
    We fell into a check-out line conversation on the matter, comparing men’s hygienic
     expenses to those of women and also, how the moon is totally disregarded in our culture
     in relation to womb-type activities.
    The couple behind us—a well-to-do looking pair in their lawn-bowling sixties—kept
     clearing their throats, saying ehh-hemmm and harrummphh. The woman, especially, gave
     me extremely disdainful looks for speaking so tactlessly and loudly in the Anystore
     U.S.A. check-out line.
    A few days later, I related this experience to my friend Panacea Theriac, who, at
     the time, had just organized a small women’s health collective in Olympia, Washington.
    She said, “Oh, Inga! I’ve been using sea sponges! Have you heard about them?”
    I said no.
    Panacea told me all about them. She bought three sea sponges for $1.59 apiece. Besides
     their obvious economic virtues, she said, you use them over and over, so they’re more
     ecologically desirable; when your sponge gets soaked with blood, no matter where you
     are, you just haul it on out, wash it real good with hot water and mild soap, then
     pop it on back in; you never have to trouble yourself with remembering to bring a
     tampon reserve; they’re totally comfortable and fun to play with in the bathtub. Also,
     you can squeeze the blood out into a jar, fill it with water and feed it to your houseplants,
     who, Panacea assured me, “absolutely adore the stuff.”
    I asked her about Toxic Shock Syndrome and whether sea sponges harbor yucky things
     that can make a girl sick.
    Panacea said that it is very, very important to keep your sponge super duper clean , washing it thoroughly every time you use and re-use it.
    Trusting my friend as I do, I bought a couple of sea sponges at the local health food
     co-op and gave them a whirl. The only problem I’ve had is that when a sea sponge is
     full, it is full . If you laugh or yell when the sponge has absorbed its maximum capacity, your nice
     white panties will get a big red how-do-you-do on them.
    Other