I don’t think I'm very good at being a woman. The first time I got my period I was 11. I was in ballet class and my stomach felt weird so I went to the bathroom to check. I was at that age when everyone tells you you’re about to get it. My friends had it, and everyone talked about tampons, and my mom gave me the talk. So I sat down on the cold porcelain toilet seat and stripped out of my leotard and tights. 

I always hated being naked, even behind a closed, locked door. 

I still do. 

I hate locked doors.

Nonetheless, I looked down and the red velvet goop that was on my underwear. Size 10 underwear from the Children's Place. 

I still have them, they're pink and green with different colored butterflies scattered all over. 

The goop even got on my tights. In a panic, I gathered a bunch of toilet paper and started scrubbing. I didn’t even wet it, though in hindsight that probably wouldn't have done much either. So I scratched and scrubbed and the toilet paper started pilling on my underwear. After a few minutes I got worried that people would think I was gone for too long so I just gave up and let myself bleed. I knew about tampons and I knew about pads. One of the moms of the other girls even put a basket in the bathroom with all that stuff. 

I knew all of this and I just let myself bleed. 

After that I started to wake up every morning wondering how to do it right. You know, be a woman. I always knew I wanted to be perfect so I started working on the puzzle of how to be the perfect woman. In my extensive research over the years I decided that she would first, be smart. The kind of smart men don’t like but respect. The kind of smart some women have but most women envy. I wouldn't crave approval from men but I would get it anyways. I wouldn't be the most beautiful woman in the room, at least not at first glance. But after a while everyone would notice my effortless beauty and striking intelligence, and all the things that made me bad at being a woman would be tucked away, neatly in boxes tied with ribbons, in the back of my closet. I’d be so perfectly imperfect that nothing would throw me off track too far, but I’d call every shit thing to ever happen to me a learning experience.

Learning experience.

What a load of shit. 

That dream died when I discovered lesbian porn at age 13. 

I thought, as I got even older, that if I can't just be a woman all on my own I have to fall in love.

Yes, that was it, I thought I cracked the code. Falling in love will make me a better woman. But what I didn't know was that a mind so preoccupied with something adjacent to love had little time to think about being a woman. 

I was never very good at being a woman anyways. 

With her I was a girl. 

I mixed her in my morning coffee and swallowed her whole.

She became the goop. 

A sticky and striking discovery. Girl goop has to cover you from head to toe before you even realize that you're drowning. It's a goop so crimson red you have no other choice but to cover your hands in it. Whether or not that leaves you at fault or means you were just trying to clean up your own mess doesn't really matter, because the goop is everywhere and the odds are stacked against you. It gets stuck in the drain, mixed with the thinly clumped strands of hair that the drain can barely choke down. So it stains the bathtub.

She stained me.

Girl goop stains like permanent ink. 

But girl goop stains pink. Girl goop goes silent on the car ride home. Girl goop knows you haven’t reached your full potential. Girl goop knows you're not enough. 

It’s dirty. It smells of roses, salty skin, and unwashed hair. It smells like laundry that's been left in the washer to soak in its own filth. It tastes like wax from an old chapstick tube, a sour patch watermelon, and dry white wine from your mothers cabinet. It feels like sandpaper between your teeth, and cold bathroom tiles. It sounds like a song you heard once and still can't find. You know if you found it it would be your favorite, but everytime you think you hear it it's not quite right. It’s being held in a twin sized bed, covered in crumbs and goop. And even after you washed your sheets and cried yourself to sleep, even after you scrubbed your bathtub, skin, and sewing needles, you still get dressed every morning to match the goop. As time goes on you’ll get used to it, you might not even notice it's there. 

Now, after months of cleaning, I walk into the bathroom and turn on the shower. I look at myself in the mirror as I undress. The mirror gets foggy and the air gets hot. I make sure to lock the door. I step into the bleached tub. I can't help but notice how fast the tub is filling with water. I check the knob above the drain a few times. Flicking it on and off and on and off and on and off. 

Why isn’t it working? 

Now I'm down on my hands and knees. I'm pushing, splashing through the cloudy water. 

Where is the drain? I can't find it, where is it?

My arm reaches further into the water, up to my shoulder now. I can't see past the surface and my face is getting closer to the water. My long hair is half soaked by the shower head and the tips are drenched from the pool of water beneath me. Something tugs at my hair.

It has me! It grabbed my hair! 

I’m gripping the strands, pulling and pulling but it won't come out. My head gets pulled underwater and I'm getting washed down the drain. I’m fighting back! I’m being a good woman and fighting back. I am being a strong woman and fighting back. I keep pulling but it won’t work! 

Goddamnit!

I’m losing my breath and then it rips. I pull hard enough that I pull my hair out and all the water drains in an instant. I hit my head on the side of the tub and just lay. And then the drain, with all her might, spits up the goop. The dark red clots, the thin crimson red liquid, the brown sticky clumps, and long strands of hair cover me. They stain me. They drown me head to toe. 

But now I’ve convinced myself I’m drowning perfectly. I’m drowning with my legs crossed, with a head full of intelligence.

And goop.