Tom Fitzpatrick

Is a Menstrual Cycle Powered by a Motor or Pedals?

Mary McKenna had a dirty joke and it was getting rave reviews. "Gross," said Jenny Taggart. "Really, really gross," said Colleen O'Meara. It sounded great to my twelve-year-old ears. The line, however, to Mary's seat at the back of the school bus trailed to almost mid-bus and I was afraid Mary might tire of telling it before I reached her. So I asked Patrick Byrne who already had heard the joke to tell me.

Patrick thought for a moment but declined. "No, you gotta hear it from Mary. I can't tell jokes, she is much funnier than I am."

"Oh come on," I said. "Look at the line, we will be back in Kansas City by the time I get to the front of the line." St. Pius X sent my eight grade class on a field trip to Topeka to see the seat of Kansas state government. Kansas law required teaching Kansas history. Let me sum up Kansas History for you. A lot of trouble prior to and during the Civil War, Carrie Nation's prohibition campaign made liquor difficult but not impossible to obtain in the state well into the 1970's, and Kansas is one big wheat field. As you can see, Kansas History needed some filling out here and there and Kansas teachers reacted in the same way year after year. They packed their classes up for a visit to the state capitol with expressed intention of giving the future leaders of America some information on how government was run.

The highlight of the day was climbing the stairs to the capitol dome. I am not sure how that helped the legislator but it offered an expansive view of the Kansas Plains. What we failed to learn about government we made up in creative song styling. All the way up to Topeka we had change the lyrics to the song 'They Will Know We are Christians by Our Love" to "We Will Kill All Teachers One by One." A song that in today's No Tolerance environment would have probably landed us all in jail, but in the more tolerant and easy-going sixties did not as much as raise the eyebrows of Mr. Blake and Sister Judith. As long as we made no threatening moves, they left us pretty much alone.

But, by the trip back to Kansas City , the class had lost it's enthusiasm for screaming out meaningless death threats at full volume. Some other form of entertainment was needed. This is where Mary McKenna comes in. She told a select group her joke and before you knew it a line had formed for her recitals. Instead of waiting in line, I finally prevailed upon Patrick to repeat it. Unfortunately, Patrick was right. His version of the joke was terrible. At least, as far as I could tell, it made no sense whatsoever. It was a terribly confused muddle about a couple having sex, something about a period and drinking tomato juice. To be honest, I shouldn't blame Patrick because my knowledge of sexual matters was sparse, at best and what facts I did have were only about half right. This joke was particularly problematic because I had never heard the word period used to mean anything other than the punctuation mark that ends a sentence.

My parents were old fashioned, they believed a child should learn about sex on the streets as God intended. I had an older brother and sister but unless they were locking me in the basement or engaged in any other numerous acts of sibling terrorism, they wanted very little to do with me - least of all to teach sex education. This meant that sexual information came to me in dribs and drabs from other boys and girls my age. And, I tell you, was it ever interesting. In the third grade, Debbie Myers explained that sex involved some kind of interaction between the woman's breasts and the man's penis. I knew enough about sexual organs to know what she was talking about. I, after all, had a penis and I had seen enough National Geographic's to know what breasts were but how they worked together baffled me. Something didn't seem quite right. Debbie, however, spoke so authoritatively on the subject I gave her the benefit of the doubt. To my dismay, less than a year later I began to receive conflicting information from more knowledgeable fourth and fifth graders. Sex involved deep French kissing. This required an explanation of French kissing which, from Alan Harrison's explanation, sounded very similar to the face licking that cats and dogs engaged in except that it was done face to face and at the same time. This made much more sense to me than the penis and the breasts, so I adhered to this belief until the next explanation came my way. Unfortunately every time I thought I had the final answer about sex, someone new would come along and tell me something different. This sex business kept getting more complicated instead of easier. How was I supposed to know that women's body not only looked differently but behaved differently?

I looked blankly at Patrick. "Are you sure that's exactly what she said?"

Patrick thought hard for a moment. I could tell he was straining his mind for any missing detail before he finally replied, "I think so."

"So what is so funny," I asked.

"I can't really explain it to you. You either get or you don't get it."

"And you get it?"

Patrick nodded his head. Well, I didn't and seems like a guy should be able to explain to another guy why a joke was funny. It was quickly becoming a matter of pride for me. If Patrick got it, I should be able to get it.

I became a boy possessed. I had to know what was going on in this joke. It came to me that frequent repetitions of the joke would eventually do the trick. I prevailed upon Patrick to repeat the joke numerous times but the understanding I was seeking for failed to occur. Soon Patrick, a little annoyed at my persistence and my ignorance, put his foot down, "I told you to ask Mary in the first place. Go ask her, why don't you."

So Patrick and I got in the line and waited for Mary. Mary loved the limelight that the joke was bringing her. It has to be flattering to have people line up to hear you speak. And for Mary, this could mean so much more. She was a border line In-Girl and this joke was definitely winning her points with the more secure In-Girls. When I got to her, there she sat with Kathy Harrington, the most In-Girl at St. Pius X. They were having a quick little conversation between performances when Patrick and I arrived to hear the joke.

Mary lowered her voice to a whisper although, at this point, I'm not sure why. Almost everyone had heard the joke. Still it was some kind of unwritten law of dirty jokes that they must be told in a whisper. I leaned my ear close to hear Mary's hushed tones. The problem was that it was strikingly similar to Patrick's version. There was the couple having sex, the period, the blood and the same punch line - Tomato Juice. And, for me, the same utter confusion on why it was funny.

"So why was she bleeding?" I asked.

Mary's eye rolled with impatience. "Because she is having her period."

"So?" I asked.

"Well, women bleed when they are on their period."

I looked at her blankly yet again and asked. "But, why?"

Kathy, the smart girl in the school, tried to intercede with some scientific mumbo jumbo. "It's the menstrual cycle."

At last, I thought, we are getting somewhere. This must be the missing element. The cycle. Why didn't they mention the cycle in the first place? It's this cycle that is causing all of the problems, maybe the girl fell off of the cycle during sex and this caused her to bleed.

"No, no, you goofball," Mary was losing her patience. "It's not a bike or anything it is something totally different. It's her period, she is on the rag, you know a woman bleeds once a month."

As a matter of fact I did not know this. Now this period business was starting to get little weird. To my mind, people only bled when they were hurt. Mary was saying women just start bleeding spontaneously for no good reason once a month. "But why?" I asked.

Kathy, again providing a scientific explanation, said, "She is getting rid of the bad eggs in her body."

Now this piece of information got Patrick's attention because he asked, "You mean women lay eggs?"

"No," screamed Mary so loudly that Sister Judith turned around to see what the commotion was about. Mary, regaining her composure, whispered through gritted teeth, "They don't lay eggs, it not like a chicken egg, it's different. You guys don't you know anything about the birds and the bees?"

My head was spinning. We were flying all over the place now. There was sex, period, blood, cycles, and eggs. Now they are throwing in birds and bees. I was going to have to start taking notes to keep track of all this confusing information.

"So why did you call them eggs, it they aren't eggs?" demanded Patrick

Kathy, infinitely patient and condescending, said, "They are eggs, they're just different than chicken eggs. You never see these eggs. They are inside the woman's body. If the man doesn't plant the seed that makes a baby then the egg gets bad, so before the woman can get a new egg, she has to get rid of the old egg."

"Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. How does the man plant the seed?"

Kathy, again had an answer, "He plants the seed with his you know, his," she looked both ways and lowered her voice, "his penis."

The only known function I knew for the penis was peeing, now I was going to be planting seeds with it. This led to my next question. "How do you know when to pee and when to plant?" I asked.

"Yeah," asked Patrick.

We had, at last, reached the limits of Mary and Kathy's sex education. They either didn't know or didn't want to explain what they knew. Kathy looked at Mary, Mary looked at Kathy. Mary, if only to continue her moment in the sun, said "Hey, you two dimwits are holding up the line. Move it."

 

 

Return to Volume 1.1

 

 

 

 
 

 

All files © 2005-2012 Blood Orange Review