I did not have an abortion. But I would have.
I did not have an abortion, but I would have.
I am 16. I am vodka-oj drunk. I am happy-silly-untouchable-drunkdrunkdrunk. I am somewhere that is not my home. Someone’s parents are out of town. Out of the province. Out of our way.
There are five of us staying here. There are ten of us staying here. I don’t know who was staying there, not exactly. There is a complex web of lies cloaking our location so no parents l would know where we are—so it doesn’t really matter who is staying here, does it?
There is a wild sort of freedom in this when you are 16 and vodka-oj-funny-drunk and think you are invincible.
I don’t know him. I don’t know if I like him. But I want to be wanted. Live to be wanted. Am filled by being wantwantwanted.
There is a room in a basement somewhere. We go down there on purpose, at his suggestion. Privacy, you know, he says.
The room has a ceiling fan. Remember this. It’s important later.
It was not pleasure or desire my body experienced in that basement room, but wasn’t exactly not that either. After all, I resided in a body confused by its own conflicted yearnings. Like most 16-year-olds, I resided in a body too embarrassed to know itself.
There was pressure.
Dull/sharp/ache/deep.
Pushpushpush hard against the resistance of all things soft and tender.
Nothing as much as the absence of all that should yield.
I can’t tell what part of him was trying to gain access to the center of me.
I can tell you that my body didn’t want it.
I can tell you no, and no, and nonono.
That’s what I told him.
Confusion.
No again, but weaker this time.
Head spinning like that damn fan, blades of me whirring and blurring into one in extended slow motion-time lapse.
I shrink down to almost nothing.
I exit my body.
I watch curiously from my perch on the ceiling fan.
Two seconds. Two minutes. Two hours.
I could not tell you which it was.
I sit on the edge of the bed. Somehow his fingers are pushing into me again. I do not want this. The edges are fuzzy. Of the bed. Of the room. Of my Self. I do nothing. Say nothing. Am nothing.
Later I sit on his lap. Press my lips thin and cold against his at the door. Nobody can know. Nobodycanknownobodycanknownobodycanknow.
Wait for everyone to fall asleep. Crawl across the room of sleeping teenage girls resting wherever they fell when the cheap vodka took them down. Silently hunt for my black duffle bag in the blacker dark of that room. I am crying, my tears a vacuum of sound. My drunkgriefshame self a void of nothingness and everythingness.
It was this night, I think, that I learned how to hold my grief inside my bones.
My first grownup pair of panties - pink cotton with lace edging - stained with blood. I know it without seeing them. Know I need to change. I make it to the bathroom. Finally, turn on a light. I breathe. My head is still dizzy with drink. I lean against the wall for balance. Look down at those pretty panties between my knees. Blood. Floor. Pink. Lace. Ache. Acheacheache.
My body is now a space named betrayal.
I don’t know my cycle then. Don’t know the timing or the specifics or what might happen. So I watch and wait and luckily, finally, the blood comes.
I did not have an abortion. But I would have.
I am 17. I am in love. He was my first crush at 12 and now he is my boyfriend and I am going to graduate high school second in my class and go to the same college as my father on a full-ride scholarship and my boyfriend is coming with me and maybe we will get married and have babies one day and nothing can take away from the limitlessness of what is to come.
I am late.
I am one week late.
I am 17 days late.
I am 32 days late.
I sit in English class and all the pages of The Old Man And The Sea turn into the same words.
I am latelatelatelate.
It is a small town. A small-small-small town. I am the preacher's daughter, destined for the dichotomy of madonna purity and rebel bad girl mixed up in some irresistible mythology I’ll live a lifetime trying to fight my way out of. Everyone watches to see which side of the coin of me will land.
My mother once worked at the tiny hospital for a short while when she attempted to go back to work after all four of us were in school. It didn’t last long because her skills were outdated and it was cheaper for them to hire a new graduate than retrain her. But they know who I am. Theyknowwhoiamwhoiamwhoiam.
I cannot buy a test at the drugstore. I cannot have my doctor do the test. Small towns are composed of eyes and mouths. They are everywhere, ready to witness and take notes and tell stories about the smart preacher's daughter who got knocked up in her last year of high school. They want the coin to land on “we always knew she’d turn out like that”.
My friend’s mother runs the women’s center in town. She is a lesbian, but I do not know this yet. She is a feminist, but I cannot name this yet. She is brave, though it took me years to understand exactly how. At 17 I know only that she is our safe space. She is where we go when we have secrets we need to shield from small-town eyes and mouths. Where we go when we fear a friend is being abused. Where we go when we are latelatelate and we want to know which is the better choice - ruin our lives by keeping a baby, break our hearts by choosing adoption, or damn ourselves to hell by having an abortion.
My friend’s mother/savior/safe place meets me as I step off the bus. I carefully pass her a container of bright yellow morning pee, tucked carefully in my jacket the entire ride over bumpy roads, pavement rutted by the eternal expansion and contraction of long Atlantic Candian winters.
It’s a hand-off worthy of a spy movie, and I congratulate myself. We make eye contact. Without words, she tells me that it will be okay. She has connections. The test will be anonymous. The eyes will not know and so the mouths will not speak. My latelatelate secret will be safe.
In the cafeteria, my friend D and I hatch a plan. We get a map and calculate drive times. We jot down parents’ weekend schedules. Who will be where when. We figure out when to leave and when to return. We will “borrow” her parent's Jeep, the punishment of a cross-province joy ride preferable to the legacy of teenage pregnancy. We will make the 8-hour drive to the big city which is the only place that we know of where problems like this can be taken care of in the early 90s. Whatever happens, we will be together.
But we must minimize the crime. Leave at night, out the open window and into the dark, just like we’ve done so many times for shenanigans and garden-variety teenage mischief. We don’t know much about how all this works or even exactly where we go when we get to the city. But we have a plan and D has my back.
After school, the phone rings.
Negative.
Deep breath. Deep breath. Deepdeepdeeprelievedbreath.
Negative-negative-negative.
The late is stress maybe or mixed up hormones but it is not pregnancy making me latelatelate.
I call my boyfriend. I call D.
We all cry.
I still get to graduate second in my class and attend my father's alma mater and maybe we will still get married and have babies one day when we want to and it will all be okayokayokayokay.
I did not have an abortion. But I would have.
Now I am 44.
Did you know that when I was 32 I left my marriage? My safe, secure, upper-middle-class heterosexual bubble of a marriage. Blew the closet to smithereens and burned down a life. Turns out you can’t squish yourself back into the closet if only ashes remain, so I lit a torch and took the whole thing down.
To do this, I needed to be the gayest gay who has ever gayed. Wrapped up tightly in a rainbow flag and placed carefully on the top of the pride float. It must be the world's biggest imperative, otherwise, how could I have done what I did? So whatever feelings I once had for men, I buried them in the ashes and ran forward into the light.
More than a decade later, I wonder if I had simply traded one box for another. Perhaps my sexuality isn’t a closet or a box, but instead an open door? There is a call to the masculine that begs exploration, and so I answer.
I am single and I am rooted in my sovereignty and finally, the shame has been shed. I switch my dating app profiles to "everyone" and I explore my edges and my limits. I learn new ways of coming home to myself.
My friend sets me up with him. She assures me he is safe. Trustworthy. Respectful. I go to his house. I am not interested, not attracted, or compelled in any real way. Not by him. But I want this experience. Want to know what my body has to teach.
We talk. We have sex. It is not groundbreaking or earth-shattering or life-changing, but it was an experience claimed and chosen, and for a moment that was enough.
After, I realize the condom is missing. I look. I reach down to check. I go to the bathroom and hunt around deep inside of me to find and extract it.
Embarrassment.
Resentment.
Anger.
How could he be so involved in his pleasure not to even notice the absence of my protection?
How could I not have taken more care with myself?
I dress quickly. Get me out of here. Get me out of here. Get me the mother fuck out of here.
My head is filled with numbers on my drive home:
My Age: 44
Years since I last had sex with a man: 12
Children: 13 and 17.
Cycle day: 14
Cycle day: 14
Cycle day: 14-14-14-14-14-14
I wake up the next day curling into my left side. The telltale twinge of ovulation. I was 21 and on the pill when I met my husband. More than two decades have gone by. I realize how little I know about safe heterosexual sex. About my options. About the risks I had just accepted.
I always wanted another baby. Wanted it so bad it is a grief lodged in my bones. But too much time has passed. That was another life. I do not-do not-do not want another baby now. But I feel that egg release deep inside me. Picture his escaped sperm still swimming within me.
I shudder with revulsion.
I freak out.
I panic.
I panicpanicpanic.
My friend deep-breath talks me through it. Tells me about Plan B. Tells me my options.
IhaveoptionsIhaveoptionsIhaveoptionsthankthefuckihaveoptions.
I go to CVS. Can’t find what I need and have to ask, embarrassed, voice barely above a whisper. I am in my mid 40’s. I am strong and independent and I am a walk of shame teenager as I approach the cashier. I think for sure she knows what I have done. Think for sure she is a right-wing conservative catholic and is judging me. Think that lights and sirens are blaring and an announcer is saying ‘she did a dumb thing dumbthingdumbthingdumbthing”
I feel a flush of an ancient fear suffusing my body. Feel my teenage friends sleeping around me as I search in the dark for panties not stained with blood. Feel the small-town eyes watching me again as I wonder why I am latelatelate.
Feel that I cannot believe what I have done.
What the fuck have I done?
14 days later.
I bleed.
I cry.
I get tested and my body is safe. My body is safe. My body is safesafesafesafe.
I never talk to that boy again.
I am disgusted when I think of him, of myself, of all of it.
I did not have an abortion.
Or maybe I did.
But I would have.
And I would have.
And I would absolutely again.
Thank you so much for reading the outpourings of my heart.
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