Today is my Aunt Helen's birthday. It might have been my birthday too, a bunch of years later, but I guess I decided to wait a few extra days. Meanwhile, half-asleep in my mother's womb, I cast a little magic spell that caused Mount Saint Helen's to erupt. It's my fault. It really is. I'm not sorry though; I'm a big believer in the beauty of destructive forces.
(About half of you are vigorously nodding and rolling your eyes and saying things like, "yep, that's Helena...")
Yeah, well...
I had some blood tests today at my doctor's office. I didn't get to see my doctor (whom I love boundlessly for not treating me like a freak despite some of my freakish complaints); I just got drained of a few gallons of blood. They were testing me for anemia. If I wasn't fucking anemic before (which I don't THINK I was), I sure as hell am now...
They're also testing me for HIV. I know that sounds kind of scary, but I asked them to do it. I just like that little piece of paper in my folder that says I'm okay. I had a transfusion a little over a year ago, and even though my six-month blood test came out okay ("...except you have the red blood cell count of a MAN!" -- I SWEAR the woman on the phone said this to me...), the last time I checked, you were supposed to get yourself rechecked at one year. So, I did. I don't expect to have anything particularly wrong with me, especially not something awful like HIV, but I am a somewhat neurotic girl, and if somebody's going to call me and tell me, "Helena you DON'T have such-and-such wasting disease," that's one less thing I have to lay awake worrying about.
I still don't know what it means to have the red blood cell count of a man. I swear I'm a girl, really. Sometimes I wear boxer shorts to bed, and sometimes I say things like, "oh yeah? well, suck my balls!" But I'm a girl. I think maybe I just eat more meat than girls are supposed to, according to, like, the CDC or somebody. Aren't red blood cells made out of meat?
I have never given blood. The Red Cross wouldn't have it for a long, long time. I had a good conversation about that one day with a female friend of mine:
Me: "Hey, Martha! How's it going? Are you going to the blood drive in the library right now?"
Martha: "Fuck no. I'm smoking cigarettes out here in the sun until I have to go back to class. Are you going?"
Me: "Heh! No. They won't have my blood."
Martha: "Really? You either? Why not?"
Me: "Well, I had mono a couple of years ago. And also I'm a 'lifestyle risk.'"
Martha: "Me too!!!"
Me: "Really? Sleeping with a bisexual guy or something?"
Martha [hemming and hawing a little]: "Is that why they won't take your blood?"
Me: "Yeah. Well, that and the tattoo. I'm a slut."
Martha: "Yeah, see, I have a problem with the wording of their questionaire. There's this one question, 'have you ever accepted money for sex?' I mean, am I any less likely to get some gross disease if he'd KEPT his money?"
I very nearly shit myself. Martha chain-smokes, but other than that, I'd always considered her pure as the driven snow. Maybe she was kidding or something, and at this point, I really don't care, but I laughed so hard, I really almost shit myself.
The very first time I knew anybody who exchanged sex for money was in 1994. I was 14 years old, and that girl's name was Christie. She had pretty blue eyes, and she always wore a Nirvana t'shirt. Come to think of it, she looked a lot like Courtney Love, only pretty. And slightly less fucked up.
Christie asked me one day if I wanted her to buy me some cigarettes. She was only 14, or MAYBE she'd turned 15, but she "KNEW people."
"Where will you get the money?" I asked her. Cigarettes were expensive for kids who only got a couple of bucks a week for an allowance.
"I've got twenty bucks left over from the other night with my friend," said Christie.
"What did you do?" I asked. I expected that maybe she'd robbed a gas station or sold her mom's TV, or stolen it from her drug-dealer boyfriend. None of these things would have surprised me about Christie.
"We were down by the train tracks -- you know, where I live, in Endwell... -- and this guy drove up and said he'd give us money if we showed him our titties. So, what the hell, right?"
"Christie! You didn't! You showed some STRANGER your boobs for MONEY? Don't you know that makes you a PROSTITUTE?"
(I was a naive kid... I've shown my boobs for money, too... Granted, it wasn't to a stranger at some train tracks in Endwell; it was to a class of art students, and it was a couple of years ago... But still... Now, showing one's boobs for a few bucks doesn't actually seem very awful at all... Then, however, it seemed appalling...)
The last time I saw Christie, she was smoking a cigarette -- I think it was a Marlboro, but it may have been a Camel -- in downtown Binghamton. She was telling me a story about how she'd done acid a couple of nights earlier, and how she didn't remember much of it, but she knew she'd slept with three or four people, and she was pretty sure that my supposed boyfriend had been one of them. I never spoke to her again, even though my supposed boyfriend had an airtight alibi.
In a really strange way, I sort of miss that girl. She made me seem stupid a lot of the time, but she also made me seem awfully wholesome.
I've been eating a lot of cheese lately. It's a good source of calcium without having to drink milk, which is only good in coffee. Of course, I don't think I've properly gone to the bathroom in about a week. I hate nutrition.
Maybe if I could mix the cheese with some fiber, like strawberries or something...
Yeah, and I guess they call that yogurt. I mean, basically it's all the same.
Whatever.
When I lived in New Mexico, my friend Marianne called me every night for awhile. She lived in L.A. then. She had two boyfriends and called me to gripe about them. And sometimes she called me to whine that she was horny. She told me all about her masturbation habits. I don't remember as many details as I'd like to -- the kind of details that would make this entry scandalous -- but I do remember being appalled at certain points.
Sometimes I miss Marianne for the same reason I miss Christie. Marianne frequently made me look like a moron, but she also made me look very sweet and pure. Then again, Christie was just fucked up. Marianne was the way she was very deliberately. I miss her sometimes, but I don't want her back, ever.
One night, she called me and told me we should be girlfriends. What the hell; we were young, we were cute, we liked each other... I honestly don't remember what I said. But she never called me again from L.A. The last time I saw her, she was wearing something skanky and hitting on a guy in a skateboard shop. Marianne alone was allowed into the back room of the store. She said they had a "business transaction." I don't know what it was. I don't THINK it involved anything that would preclude her from giving blood... But one never knows, I guess...
I would like to feel pure and wholesome and untainted.
Maybe they can take the rest of my blood out of me and clean it somehow -- dialysis or something. Maybe that would purify me.
I'm tired and I have to pee.
"Goodnight, Seattle!"
~Helena*