Sopping Up Blood

Dear Nadja,

Yes, I know Chinatown very well. Did you know that Chinese women don't wear tampons? I discovered this when I went to New York to cover Jospeaux’s band. I was staying in Chinatown and walked the whole neighborhood looking for a drugstore and asking around until finally a white girl told me what the deal was. No luck.

I never used pads, did you? I got my first period during swimming lessons and if I love any exercise it's swimming so I forced myself to use tampons from the beginning. I can't stand how expensive they are and that men don't have to pay for these things. How much money in our lifetimes goes to sopping up blood? I read once about hippie girls using sea sponges. I couldn't do it because you have to remove it and wash it out in the sink before sticking it back in and I'd be too embarrassed to do that in a public bathroom, which would inevitably be a situation that presented itself.

I guess that would take the kind of self-assuredness I just do not have. Yet.  Hoping as I become older I'll become stronger. Once I had what was called a New York Fucking Attitude but I believe I lost it after all of Jospeaux's infidelity. He’s been forgiven since, and I’ve healed some but I would never had thought it would affect me the way it did and so deeply and for so long.

Have you heard about the artist Ai Weiwei? He is fighting the Communist government in China for the right to make his art. It's a big story. The government destroyed his studio overnight. Just like your busstop, one day it was gone. 

I love you.

Love,
Helena