Bad Mama Genny

 

A green smoothie?!?!  AS IF I need a detox!  What are you implying, The Boy?! It’s not as if I’m the kind of person who gets trashed to, oh I don’t know, go to the gynecologist!!

 

Oh, wait.  Yes, I am.  And yes, I did.

 

Gather round, misfits, and I shall tell you a tale of pap smears and anxiety disorders and vodka and paper gowns that are really not designed to cover your important parts when you fall four feet!

 

It was when we were living in New York City.  The BMG had (OKAY FINE, STILL HAS) a crippling fear of the gynecologist brought on by her harrowing first visit with a gyno who had hands like giant polar bear paws and about as much finesse as one, too.  My vadge still resents being treated like a salmon swimming upstream.  As if either of us swims.

 

So anyway, I was scared as hell, but you know, not going was not an option.  The BMG was savvy enough to know that it was important for her lady bits to be assessed and manhandled regularly by someone with trained manhandlers.  And so she made the appointment.

 

And did not experience clinical sleep for weeks.

 

You see, Bad Mama Genny, for all her free-wheeling and fun-loving attitude in so many areas of life, cannot be laissez-faire about instruments in her vagina because SHE HAS AN ANXIOUS MIND, MMMKAY?  A mind that worries itself into circles, a mind that transforms unlikely worst-case-scenarios into OH YEAH THAT’S DEFINITELY GOING TO HAPPEN scenarios, and a mind that should clearly CLEARLY CLEARLY be medicated.  But anyhow.

 

The day of the procedure arrived, and Bad Mama Genny had been unable to procure roofies to get her through it.

 

Yeah, I was going to date rape myself–what of it?

 

In a moment of desperation, she ransacked the liquor cabinets.  WHAT, ONLY VODKA?!  But EVERYBODY KNOWS that vodka turns the BMG’s stomach!  Oh, well, whatever, necessity being the motherfucker of invention and whatnot.  So The Boy grabbed a travel mug so as not to make the BMG late, poured in vodka TO THE BRIM, MISFITS, TO THE BRIM, and walked her panicked ass to the subway station.

 

I swiped my transit card, sat my dainty self down, and began to gulp, growing less and less disgusted with the taste as I went along.

 

Yeah, that’s right–I was having secret liquor on the Subway.  I had become one of those people all the normals look at with disgust (OKAY FINE I had always been one of those people, back to my story YOU GUYS DO NOT LET ME GET AWAY WITH ANYTHING).  The only thing I was missing was a paper bag and a vacant look in my eyes.  But as it was, my eyes were anything but vacant–I’d say they were more like…crazed.  Insane.

 

PERFECTLY ROUND.

 

If you were riding the Subway that day and jumped at the alarming sight of me…well, now you have the back story, OH SHE WAS JUST GOING TO THE GYNECOLOGIST AND GETTING TRASHED THAT MAKES PERFECT SENSE PERFECT SENSE.

 

Anyhow, all of a sudden I notice we’re only two subway stops away from my gynecologist.  HOLY CRAP, THE BOY, WHY DIDN’T YOU WARN ME I AM NOT EVEN A LITTLE DRUNK YET!  So I slammed the rest of that vodka like my friggin’ life depended on it because I WAS CONVINCED IT DID BECAUSE HELLO REMEMBER ANXIETY DISORDER.  The Boy looked into my mug and did a double take.

 

The Boy: “Wha?  Is that empty?!”

Me: “Yes.  And?  Wasn’t I supposed to drink all of it?”

The Boy: “Sweetie, that was a lot of alcohol!”

Me: “Oh’z no’z!  Enough to kill me?  AM I GOING TO DIE NOW?!  BEFORE MY PAP SMEAR?  But wait…that’s a solution I hadn’t even thought of.”

The Boy: “You’re not going to die.”

Me: “You promish?  I mean, PROMISH?  Why can’t I say ‘promish’?”

The Boy: “This cannot be good.”

 

So we get to the stop and I become convinced that I have to buy gum so the gynecologist will not be able to smell the alcohol and will not know I’m drunk BECAUSE CLEARLY AS LONG AS MY BREATH IS CLEAN SHE WILL NOT NOTICE MY BOBBING AND WEAVING but I spill all my monies trying to pay for the gum and The Boy has to handle the transaction.  Somehow I get up the stairs and the pure adrenaline coursing through my veins gives me, for once, a perfect sense of direction.  I am hyperaware of where the gyno’s office is, and it looms above the traffic like a god-awful Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade float.  Shaped like a giant vagina.

 

So we’re walking toward imaginary vagina float and it hits me that I am, like, really stinking drunk all of a sudden.  Somehow we are propelled up the building and into the office and I am handed a clipboard and it’s a friggin’ war in my head between the alcohol and the anxiety.  I am told that I filled out the intake form extremely fast, with extreme accuracy, and extreme politeness to the front desk staff.  I guess I’d become paranoid that everyone could tell I was inebriated, so I tried to do my most extreme impression of extreme sobriety and probably just ended up extremely scaring everybody.

 

So I go into the appointment, successfully put on the gown (after unsuccessfully putting it on three times and leaning my head out of the office to scream “Help!  Help!  I’m having wardrobe malfunctions!”), then finally manage to get up onto that UM, ALL OF A SUDDEN REALLY HIGH table.  So I’m sitting there, and sitting there, and it’s taking forever, and I’m sitting there, and everything’s spinning, and I’m staring at the instrument case and I’m sitting there, and I’m all, WHY is the instrument case leaning sideways THAT’S NOT VERY HYGIENIC when I realize, much too late, that the instrument case is not leaning, but I most certainly am and right about when that realization hits me is when I crash onto the floor and drag a lamp down with me.

 

That’s right.  I fell off the table.  Without provocation.

 

As funny as I’m sure it would’ve been to watch me fall over with a completely unconcerned look on my face, it would’ve had to be 37 times funnier to watch me struggle frantically to get my bearings and get myself and the lamp back up.  Every time I felt like I was making progress, I realized I was flashing my fancy bits and stopped what I was doing to snap that gown shut and steal a suspicious glance at the door.

 

As if there were anybody who could possibly walk in on me that wasn’t already getting paid to cop a feel.  Please, BMG.

 

So I somehow get back on the table and proceed to wait for another eternity, marveling at the fact that despite the quickly forming ghastly bruises on my legs, I FEEL NO PAIN HAHA HA AND LALALA I FEEL NO PAIN.  I’m thinking this is boding very well for my upcoming manhandling when the doctor opens the door and, all of a sudden, I remember the other downside to drinking mass volumes of hard liquor.

 

“Hi, Genevieve, I’m Dr. Marshall, how are you?”

“I HAVE TO GO TO THE BAFFROOM!”

“…”

 

Yeah, I did that.  Le sigh.

 

Off I run, flashing my goodies to god knows how many other patients as my gown flaps jauntily in the breeze, to find a ladies room.  When I finally return, the doctor is gone.  You mean I wasn’t the only vadge in the house that day?  YOU MEAN THE WHOLE WORLD DIDN’T REVOLVE AROUND THIS AWFUL, UNSPEAKABLE ATROCITY THAT WAS ABOUT TO HAPPEN TO ME?!

 

My self-pity didn’t last long, however.  Or maybe it did.  Either way, I don’t remember.  I have a vague recollection of the doctor’s eventually arriving, asking me to put my feet in the stirrups, and laughing at my vagina.  Okay, so maybe she was just laughing at something I said, I don’t know, but my vagina doesn’t remember either and is still paranoid about it to this day.  Then I have a vague memory of…oh wait…no, I didn’t…I couldn’t have….yes, I HUGGED MY GYNECOLOGIST AND THANKED HER FOR THE BEST PAP OF MY LIFE yes I did those ARE the words I used.

 

Everything after that is a blur.  Something in a diner.  The Boy telling me that no, people were not staring at me.  Me, insisting that yes, yes, they were and everybody knows I just had the best pap of my life AND THEY ARE FUCKING JEALOUS.  Something where I ask The Boy if I should give all the women in the diner my doctor’s phone number so they can have the best paps of their life, too.  The Boy telling me I should probably refrain.  Me asking The Boy if I should just maybe give people a knowing wink and then when they wonder why I look so happy and say MAYBE SHE’S BORN WITH IT OR MAYBE IT’S MAYBELLINE then and only then can I give them my doctor’s phone number?  No, I shouldn’t do that either?  Then there was…oh yes…a drunk dial to a coworker at my very corporate job at the time (speaking of which, CAN YOU IMAGINE, ME?), a call in which I informed her that OH HEY did she know I was drunk and just had a pap smear?  Because I did.

…

So anyway, here’s the smoothie The Boy made me the next day.

 

The Boy’s Green Smoothie
Makes 2 large or 3 medium smoothies

Go Get:
1 whole apple, sans core
1 whole banana, peeled
1 handful whole almonds
3 cups chopped kale, loosely packed
6 large ice cubes
enough orange juice OR plain whole milk yogurt to blend

Go Do:
Pile in the fruit and ice, pour in the juice, and blend until smooth.  You may need to pulse on and off, or stop to scrape down any chunky bits.  Serve!

 

© 2011, Genevieve P. Charet. All rights reserved.

Copyright protected by Digiprove © 2011 Genevieve Charet