The Curious Case Of The Missing Menstrual Cup

I am classy and dignified. I AM classy and dignified.

*Prefer to Listen/Watch? I got you! Check out the video of me performing this for The Tortured Bloggers Department on 12/2/24 in NYC—hosted and spearheaded by Substack Star Cara Says It All.

I WILL NOT TELL GABI ABOUT THE MENSTRUAL CUP THAT IS LOST INSIDE OF MY VAGINA.

I WILL NOT TELL GABI ABOUT THE MENSTRUAL CUP THAT IS LOST INSIDE OF MY VAGINA.

I WILL NOT TELL GABI ABOUT THE MENSTRUAL CUP THAT IS LOST INSIDE OF MY VAGINA.

This is my inner monologue as my best friend Ruba and I Uber to brunch.

“Ruba,” I mutter as the car pulls up to GRACIAS MADRE, a restaurant that is both vegan and Mexican and could only exist in dystopian fiction or Los Angeles.

“What?” Ruba fluffs her curls.

“Don’t let me tell Gabi about the menstrual cup that is lost inside of my vagina.”

“Babes,” she hops out the car, her pedicured foot soundless against the pavement. “Why not? We’re all women. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“You don’t get it.” I husk. “You're not gay.” THUD. My heavy Dr. Marten boots smack the ground so loudly, for several seconds I’m convinced the earth is quaking beneath me.

Ruba twirls to the hostess stand, carefree and lithe, light in a way that sings: I’m definitely not a lesbian!

A lesbian can be described in a multitude of ways: complicated, smart, unstylish, cunning, catty, competitive, hard-going, opinionated, frugal, handsome, melodramatic, and ~stellar~ in bed—but no one in history has ever described a lesbian as light.

We’re heavy. Have you ever wondered why dykes are always in Dr. Martens? Because their heaviness matches our energy. Heavy is our comfort zone. It’s why we always just have to adopt the pet with the most trauma and insist on telling the story of how we rescued our one-legged, eyeless pit-bull chihuahua hamster mix from a crackhouse in Queens.

Ruba can float like a butterfly but I’ll always sting like a bee. It must be nice to be straight and think of girls as merely friendly allies to wax poetic about your period with—but that’s not the case for me and my heavy life where girls are not just girls, they’re all-consuming lovers who ruin your life.

The other day Ruba was squabbling with her boyfriend. She returned to my house an hour later. “Resolved,” she said, rosily.

“How?”

“Roadhead.”

I was stunned. To think an argument could be resolved so simply—I’d have to process for seventeen business days.

The silver lining is sex. Our sex is superior to straight sex and that’s not my heterophobia talking—studies reveal that queer women orgasm more than straights, and that’s a fact, I read it in Cosmo.

And Gabi, my girlfriend of three months, is dangerously good at making me cum. Our sex intoxicates me in a way I’ve never experienced. It’s a high I never want to wear off and I’m protective of it. I’m seasoned now. I understand the fragility of mind-blowing sex and can’t risk fucking it up by getting chummy with Gabi—oversharing unsexy details about the missing apparatus I shoved inside of myself and is now lost, floating like a ghost through the lonely uterine walls, trying to find her way back home, starting to fear she’s strayed too far, she’ll never return—home does it even exist—did she make it up inside of her head what is “home” anyway but a “group of people who miss the same imaginary place?”

By the time I reach the table, I’ve crafted a book proposal detailing the existential crisis of the missing menstrual cup—a coming-of-age novel heavier than period blood, dykes, and Dr. Martens combined.

Ruba flags the waiter and orders a bottle of rosè and I’m struck with a premonition that I’m going to drink too much and overshare to Gabi and the sex will fade faster than drug store fragrance.

The new Zara never sloshes too much wine and subsequently spills her embarrassing guts all over the floor for everyone to see. She’s classy. I remind myself.

The waiter glides back to the table. He flashes his Republican white teeth. “Who’d like to taste the wine?”

“Me,” Ruba and I say at the same time.

Gabi arrives with her two chic friends, a couple. The boy is from England and writes music and the girl is in a band.

I want to impress them. Ruba has known me since sixteen, so the impressive ship has long sailed, but I’m fresh in their eyes— there’s still a chance to read as worldly and sophisticated.

“What’s your writing process like?” I ask the English songwriter, “Also” I coo before he can get a word in, “My mom is English.”

Gabi squeezes my hand proudly, “and she’s a writer, too. She wrote a book.”

I bat my lashes at her, “Oh, stop.”

Ruba rolls her eyes. I ignore her, “books are boring. Let’s talk about music.” I say primly.

“Let’s talk about the scene in your book where you masturbate with a fragrance bottle and then think you have AIDS,” Ruba thinks so loudly I hear her. I dagger her with my eyes.

Gabi hasn’t read my book yet so she doesn’t know that it’s salacious and teeming with crass, unnecessary details—but she’s planning on reading it soon so I want to ride out this literary classy author thing while I still can.

“You wrote a book?” The cool couple gasps.

Before I can answer the room is filled with a thunderous roar, “Jess,” it bellows in a New York accent, CLINK CLINK CLINK—stiletto heels tinker against tile—” You’re the fuckin’ WORST.”

The air suddenly smells of Adderall and 711; espresso martinis and Botox; the John Varrazamo bridge and the cubbyhole bar; nail polish and red sauce; expletives and the Upper East Side: the girls have arrived.

Jessica and Michelle are my two best friends from New York who—like me—have relocated to California to pursue the delusion of happiness and year-round tans.

They’re both wearing shorts so short they’re practically denim underwear and heavily applied eyebrow pencil only Jess wears sneakers because she’s a sports dyke and Michelle wears stilettos because she’s a sociopath. They’re in an argument about something dumb—but when they clock me they abruptly stop and scream, “Did ya find the cu—”

“DO YOU GUYS WANT ROSE OR WHITE WINE?” I cut them off.

Lucky for me they have the kind of ADHD that can’t be stifled with prescription speed so they get distracted by the wine and Gabi is distracted by them (they’re objectively distracting) so no one follows up about my shameful menstrual cup.

Gabi puts her hand on my thigh and I burn with desire to scream, “Babe! Everyone! LISTEN UP! My menstrual cup is LOST inside of my vagina.” I squeeze my eyes shut and mantra: I’m classy and dignified. I’m classy and dignified.

I take a sip of wine, it velvets my throat. I gaze into Gabi, her sultry eyes glitter like moonbeams. She notices me admiring her and her lips stretch into the kind of smirk that can’t be manufactured, not that she would manufacture anything. She's the most herself person I’ve ever known which turns me on and terrifies me at once. I really should tell her that she terrifies me and turns me on at once. She’s an intense cinematic lesbian, like moi, she’ll appreciate the drama.

Also how pretty does “terrifying and turned on” sound? Alliteration. Wild juxtaposition Art.

How lucky am I to be so lyrical on the fly?

I part my lips and say: “My menstrual cup is lost inside of my vagina!”

Gabi’s eyes get as wide as the Holland Tunnel and that’s when I realize it wasn’t just a bad dream.

“Are you sure?” Gabi rolls up her sleeves. “Is there ANY WAY you could’ve taken it out and not remembered?” I can tell by the furrow in her brow that she’s strategizing. Which would be cute. If it wasn’t about my pussy swallowing up silicone cups, like the Grim Reaper.

“ZB!” Jess perks up like a meerkat. “I just spoke to my girlfriend about your cup lodged inside your vag and guess what?”

“What Jess,” I say flatly. This is exactly what I *didn’t* want to happen.

“The same thing happened to HER. She thinks you have a tilted uterus.”

I cross my arms. Tilted uterus. Hot. I’m sure Gabi has never wanted to fuck me more.

“You need help getting it out. You can’t keep it in there.” Ruba warns.

“You need Gabi to go down on you,” Michelle says brightly, “It’ll relax you.”

“I’m on my period—she’s not going down on me,” I snap, which I know is unfeminist, but the sex is so good I’m willing to compromise my integrity.

“Why not?” Jess and Michelle and Ruba and Gabi and the chic couple and the hostess and waiter and a handful of patrons all belt in unison.

“Not my thing,” I grit. I don’t know what’s worse. Being looked at as a not-sex-positive tightwad or as a hot mess with insides so vacuous a sizable menstrual cup is missing in the abyss?

“I love it when girls go down on me when I’m bleeding. I also like it when my lovers eat my skin.” Michelle shares.

“I love going down on girls when they’re bleeding, I don’t love it when people go down on me, but that’s not just when I’m on my period, it’s always. My ADD is too bad. Not enough mental stimulation, I dissociate.” says Jess.

“I heard dissociating during sex is a trauma response.” Ruba squints her eyes and looks profoundly into the distance. “But then again, who doesn’t have sexual trauma.”

“I’m sexually traumatized,” Michelle says gravely. “From having sex with a girl who looks like I drew her with my left hand!” She cackles.

I will myself to disappear. Not only is everyone going on about my un-glam condition but they’re cracking jokes about sexual trauma. We’re getting kicked out of California, I knew this would happen. I envision blondes with glowing skin rounding the Easter Coasters like cattle, herding us to a strip mall parking in Jersey.

I gulp my wine. “Babe,” Gabi says with great intensity, “Let me get your cup out.”

“I was going to offer, but I’d much rather Gabi do it,” Ruba is visibly relieved.

“Hell no.” I snap.“If you think I’d ever let you do that, you’re high.”

“Why?” Gabi asks, her eyes big and hurt.

“Because I want you to think I’m perfect!” I shrill.“And perfect girls don’t misplace menstrual cups inside of themselves. Nor do they write about masturbating with fragrance bottles!” Gabi looks puzzled but I can’t stop, “I just want you to want me.”

“I do want you,” Gabi’s voice is cloud-soft, “all of you.”

“Even the messy parts?”

“Especially the messy parts.”

“Come on,” she takes my hand and leads me to the bathroom.

I follow her into a stall. “Put your leg up,” she demands. I haul one leg on the toilet paper canister. “ I’ve done this before and it’s all about getting the right angle.”

I am rabid with jealousy—she’s done this before? But I keep my mouth slammed shut because I don’t want to be that girl. Gabi shoves her fingers far inside of me, going so deep she touches my soul. I am raw and vulnerable; turned on and teetering on orgasm, embarrassed and in love. Maybe this is what love is, I wonder. Letting someone in, even when it’s bloody and unglam.

“I can’t find it,” Gabi affirms. “You must’ve taken it out last night at the gay bar. You probably left it in the bathroom.”

“Sounds like something I’d do,” I giggle, no longer ashamed of who I am. “I bet some poor gay boy saw it and had no idea what it was—probably thought it was like a cocaine holder or something, and is carrying it around in his purse.”

Gabi’s eyes light up. “We should write a musical about the adventures of the menstrual cup.”

“Oh, yes,” my heart races. Dreams do come true. I take a deep breath. “I just have one tiny question?”

“Sure.”

“You mentioned that you have pried a menstrual cup out of another girl before?”

“Yeah?”

“I was just wondering—” I pause. “Was my outfit at least more stylish than hers when you attempted to pull her cup out?”

“Way more.” Gabi smiles.

My heart beams like the sun. Suddenly I’m certain of what love is: it’s letting someone in even when it’s bloody and unglam, yes—but mostly it’s being understood.