I was so pathetic and so broke and so fucking confused I went to Wal-Mart to get it. I bought a goddam “Equate”-brand, Wal-Mart-generic-brand piss-on-a-stick pregnancy test. And then at the low of my low, uncertain who I could even possibly tell if I was pregnant, ashamed to be a girl and a statistic and just feeling like a cunt, some guy tried to pick me up in his big red Chevy halfway down the parking lot, asking how far I had left to my car. Asshole, you know what I’ve got in this bag that I’m clutching so close? Hiding it behind this great big sweater I’m hiding everything else behind, too? No thanks, asshole. No thanks, sir. Don’t you know you’re pretending to be protecting me from people just like you?
And I thought I was so fucking careful.
I pissed on a stick to find out if I was pregnant. A stick made by slave-labor in some fucking no-personal-freedom civil-war Amnesty-International-brand nation in southeast Asia, and how could I trust a Wal-Mart pregnancy test even if there was only one line and thank God thank God thank God not two pink-purple urine streak lines, anyway? But it told me what I wanted to hear, so I believed its corporate-tainted bullshit reading irregardless. I pissed on the stick and waited five minutes, all the time watching the pink patches creeping, watching one line (ONLY ONE LINE!!!) appearing, unable to believe until the full ten minutes were up. And who should call? Some girl who wanted to find out if she could do an article about me for my honor society. What kind of honor, if you knew???
It’s negative it’s negative it’s negative I can’t believe it’s negative. After the way I psyched myself out and chewed my hand and It’s negative it’s negative it’s negative barely ate and kept on checking my panties swearing every time I sneezed it must be blood It’s negative it’s negative it’s negative it almost let me down, but no. This is good.
What in the world would I have done?
Why did he have to say he didn’t believe those things work when he found out I wasn’t on the pill? Only after we fucked, only after we fucked did he know. Not that he asked me if I was, but this is my fault all the same. Always my fault. Do not come close this bitch will bite you. Do not come close. Do not try to touch me. Do not come close. How could I ever fuck again?
So now I’ve got a stick that smells like piss in my room, and I still haven’t thrown it away, too amazed, looking at the one pink line. Wondering if I should go buy another, and get the real one this time. Or wait and hope I bleed Am I anemic? or will I forget what this was like, and do it all (ALL) again.