In news of...I don’t know, this pandemic has caused me to buy a menstrual cup, & I’m looking at the directions w/trepidation. They’re basically “squash this cup up, stuff it into your business, here’s hoping.” I feel like a 12-year-old virgin staring at a tampon, seeing Everest.

Since this seems to have struck a chord: yes. It sucks to bleed for days every month, and the systems to deal with that are sort of universally not glorious. When I started out, it was maxi pads, which also suck! Then it was tampons, which are at least not diapers...

But the whole situation has never been great for any of us in our bleeding years, & usually we don’t scream about it in public. Go into any bathroom where someone needs a tampon & doesn’t have one, you’ll hear discussion about how the situation of period management is flawed.

Public bathrooms almost never have tampons. Nor anything except for wads of toilet paper. Guess how fun that is? Famously, a dear one of mine, at an event at Lincoln Center, once ended up sprinting through a lobby leaving a blood trail & still nothing but wads of paper to deal.

When I was sixteen or so, I was wearing in a show at a Shakespeare festival in Idaho. This was when I finally got over my terror of tampons - which in the area I’m from, lemme say, people will actively dissuade you by saying they’re akin to losing your virginity.

Anyway, I’d been suffering along, maxi pads. They’re the worst, really. But I was all costumed up in a corset when blood ran down my legs and filled my shoes. Surprise! An actress gave me a tampon and I was freaked out, but I tried it, and all was, if not great, better.

In recent years, period underwear have been invented. This seems like an awesome invention. And menstrual cups have been invented. Also an awesome invention. Anything to keep boood from running down your legs, frankly. That is some inconvenient and crummy life.

Really, all this thread is up here to do is to say: it’s chaos out there & you know people are hoardy, so if you can switch to some sort of period management that you don’t have to replace every month, do it now. I got this cup for like $17, & just having it makes me feel better.

I am haunted forever by discussions with my grandmother of wads of old cotton sheets stuffed full of newspaper, and other depression era period dealing techniques, so hear me when I say, get this sorted out now if you can.