Now that I’m uterus free I can do anything! (I had a hysterectomy last year for my birthday). It’s like I’m bionic! I had no idea how much my uterus was holding me back!
Among other things I had a wandering uterus problem. Diagnosed by a Greek doctor of course. Hysteria is a condition where your uterus gets bored and wanders to other locations in your body. One time I found my uterus sitting in my ear. It was really embarrassing. Another time it was on my butt, creating a tripartite ass. Another time it was in my eye. Everyone looked like they were ovulating.
One time I was on a date and my uterus took over the entire conversation which consisted mainly of stories about eggs. 465 of them. My entire history of ovulation, egg by egg. My date only made it through twelve of them before he glazed over and fell out of his chair. I was powerless to stop any of it, like compulsively staring at a train wreck.
Afterwards I made a note to myself: under no circumstances let your uterus talk. It has no social skills!
I guess I wouldn’t either if I’d spent my entire life inside the dark recesses of my pelvis.
Having a wandering uterus was ridiculous. I couldn’t plan to do anything because I had no idea where my uterus would show up next. I was afraid that one day I’d be walking down the street and my womb would just drop right out of my vagina, down my pant leg and grab the nearest man by the foot and scream “Fuck me, fuck me I want to have a baby; I want a baby now!”
My uterus and I didn’t get along. All she wanted was kids—something to hold—I reminded her that would just be for nine months at a time, then the fucking thing would be my responsibility for twenty fucking years. I yelled, “So are you going to come out of my body and help me raise this thing?” (Or is like the GOP: hands off and good luck raising that kid by yourself?)
My womb cowered. I think she went and hid in my elbow so I couldn’t find her—I had some mysterious swelling there sometimes that no one could figure out. One time, I swear, she tried to leave my body during sex. Never saw that dude again. See the thing about the wandering uterus is kind a lie. It can’t just go anywhere—like it doesn’t leave the body, for example…unless you have a hysterectomy.
My uterus and I disagreed about my lesbianism. Imagine having a daily argument with your own fucking pelvis about having a penis on a daily basis. Visualize having a screaming fit with Wooma (I’m the only fucking woman in the universe who actually had to name her uterus) and she’s yelling, “But pussy is so useless! It doesn’t do anything!”
And me screaming back, “Exactly! I’m a lazy, lazy cunt, I keep telling you that. I mean I fucking abbreviate LOL. I can’t possibly have a child!”
So I finally had to cut Wooma out of my life. Snip snip. Laparoscopic. Easy peasy. So I couldn’t climb ladders for eight weeks or ride a camel. Who the fuck cares about climbing ladders? Oh and no more periods. There’s a sacrifice. They left my ovaries however because I didn’t want to have instant menopause, like some cheap, knock off, ovarian Sanka; no I wanted my menopause to be long, slow and miserable like everyone else’s, an acrid, dark, but deeply aromatic, drip, drip, drip of a slow, teasing hormone blend.
However, not having a pool of blood in your underwear monthly does mean that I can’t tell the difference between PMS, possible menopause, and my usual embittered, psychotic blend of irritability-stained misanthropy.
Ovulation is a mysterious free-for all when you are womb-free.
Unfortunately I forgot something when I had my hysterectomy.
About two months after the surgery I got a text from one of my ovaries, in all caps. She wrote “WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO WITH OUR UTERUS? I’M OVULATING HERE AND THERE’S NOWHERE TO GO!”
So I finally get rid of that pesky uterus and now my ovaries are texting me? What the fuck? I decided to ignore it. It was probably the last woman I ghosted after she scared the hell out of me on a date. That would be just like her: pretending to be an ovary just to get some attention.
But the next text said this, “Where the hell is our uterus? I’m stranded here. There’s no where to go. Can you imagine what that feels like? I waited fifty years for my chance to leave the room I’ve lived in with all the other unripened eggs—I know everything about everyone—their hopes and dreams, their nasty habits, the rumors about the ova who live in the other ovary being smarter and better looking than my lot of listless, shallow and self-absorbed eggs, who are content to post selfies on Body-Book and worry about their weight.
I’m sick of all the tiresome competitions between the Left Ovary and the Right Ovary in the Successfully Released Egg Contest, and reading all the research and opinions about who deserves to ovulate, and then enduring the monthly ups and downs of the Ovarian Selection Process (which is only slightly less complicated than a Supreme Court confirmation). And always living with a nagging question in the background: Where do we go when we leave this ovarian life? What happens to us? And Then finally I ovulated and nada.”
I was shocked. Not just because my reproductive system knows how to e-mail but to find out that their sex education system is possibly worse than ours, especially in Ovary-Right. Apparently the eggs don’t know what happens to most Ova: disappearing into a toilet or tampon somewhere, lost and anonymous with the blood that was once part of the uterine lining—all hopes dashed. But who would agree to ovulate if they knew of that probable future?
Then my phone rang. It was from Eva the Ovum. No way was I answering that. The whole point of removing half your reproductive system is so you don’t have to answer the phone.
On voice mail Eva the Ovum sounded angry. She said, “I want you to imagine what its like to be me. Finally liberated from Ovary-Right, I arrived at the end of the fallopian tube to say, ‘Where the fuck is the uterus? I know there’s a uterus. Right before I ovulated, I was notified about the difference between a fallopian tube and a uterus and this is no uterus. I can’t possibly embed here. I was specifically warned against that kind of behavior. DO NOT EMBED IN THE FALLOPIAN TUBE is in the Ovarian Handbook. We grew up listening to Ectopic Pregnancy and no one wants to be a member of that band.”
Eva sounded anxious and a bit manic. “I have questions. Will the uterus be back? I don’t remember anything about what to do if the uterus is late. I can’t get hold of Right or Left Ovary. Cell reception sucks in here. I mean I’ve heard about hysteria: so if the womb is wandering, where does it go? Should I meet it somewhere? Does she have a phone? Please call me back.” The message clicked off. Eva the Ovum had used up all the time on the voice mail.
I had no idea this would happen. It had never occurred to me to ask: so where do the eggs go if there’s no uterus? I mean I couldn’t even answer Eva intelligently. More reason not to call her back.
Someone knocked at the door. I jumped, but it was just the UPS guy. I set the package on the coffee table carefully. I was a bit afraid to open it. Maybe the hospital had sent my uterus back to me. Maybe my ovaries had called them. And if I opened the package, it would just crawl back up my vagina, fibroids and all, in some kind of primal need for one last fertilization. Which was crazy since I stopped having sex with men since I realized I could have sex with women instead. Or maybe someone had sent me a new uterus—dear god in heaven, what would I have to endure with an imposter uterus? Or had the desperation of Eva the Ovum had such gravity that it pulled another woman’s uterus right out of her! And soon they wouldn’t bother using the mail. I’d open the door and be knee deep in wandering Uteri!!! Arrghhh!
Fuck me I can’t win.
My phone beeped. Another message. Eva Ovum said, “I’m just going to keep calling until you give me some answers. Nothing has prepared me for the eventuality of the uterus going missing. I’m going to make a temporary fallopian encampment and wait for you to contact me. I have to charge my battery now.”
I got no more texts or calls so I figured she couldn’t find a place to plug it in in the darkness of the pelvis. So wrote it all off as a temporary psychotic episode, took some fish oil pills and got on with my life.
And a month later I got this voice mail message, “Don’t you ever answer your phone? I’m beginning to think you’re dead, even though that’s impossible. How do you keep a relationship going?”
I thought about having my imaginary girlfriend text her back, but that wouldn’t work because she misspells everything.
Eva said, “Nothing’s happening here. No sign of anything like a uterus. I had an incident with Oliva Ovum. She tore through here like an egg on a mission. I thought maybe you were having sex and making everything slippery and turning us upside-down, which ruined my encampment, dumping the tent over that I’d managed to scrape together out of tissues and the bits of some cancer-causing Johnson and Johnson’s baby powder. Unfortunately, my fellow egg slipped out of my grasp in the bedlam, sailing off into the abyss and then fell until I couldn’t see her anymore. I was horrified. Hello? Are you there?
“And I have all these questions: What is the ovum without the womb? What is the purpose of an unemployed and undereducated egg? What skills do I really have? Should I just take a jump into the abyss, maybe travel? Where would I go? I hear the face is nice this time of year if you know how to handle it. Oh my god, I think I’ve been self aware way too long. Us Ova are not made for self-consciousness. But what should I do? I can’t possibly live here the rest of my life. It’s like a train station for round tiny slugs. I’ve studied Feng Shui and these conditions are not good for me. Plus I feel the danger of dying without a purpose. Parts of me already seem to be disappearing when I sit still too long. Anyway, I was promised a uterus and I want to know what happened. Please call me back.”
I didn’t. I wondered how long I could ghost my ovaries before I became a professional asshole.
Then she called again a day later, “I’ve decided the uterus isn’t coming back. I mean I could just leave the body and go look for her, but I don’t know how. There’s no exit sign. I’ve got to go back and tell the others. They should be able to choose about ovulating under these conditions.”
I laughed. Then I thought this could be a lot of trouble. What if I stopped ovulating? Unilaterally? I thought I’d bought myself some time by leaving the ovaries with their hormones intact.
“I have a plan,” said Eva the Ovum. “I see some fibers that no one seems to be using, so I’m going to climb back up the fallopian tubes and then take a running jump over the gap and hang onto the side of the Left Ovary (the Right wouldn’t believe my tale because it sounds too scientific). Then I’m going to threaten to dust them with cancer-causing Johnson’s and Johnson’s baby powder unless they let me back in.”
Finally I had no choice. I had to stop this. I texted, “Fibroids. The womb had fibroids. She was sick and bleeding.”
“Oh so you decide to respond. What took you so long?”
“I lost my phone,” I said. How would she know? What was I going to say? That I didn’t believe ova could text? That would be rude. How was I going to explain all this? Was I going to say, “Look ladies I had them excise the uterus, but I left you alive, never mind that now all of you are doomed for reabsorption in remote and unknown pelvic areas, never before seen by other Ova.” I had used the internet to educate myself about orphaned eggs.
I said, “I didn’t know I had to warn the remaining organs and set up a psychological support system and a trust fund.”
What would happen to me if they found out the truth? What if all my remaining ova got mad at me at once? What about sad and depressed eggs? Would they be more inclined to just throw in the towel and cause cancer? What if the ovaries decided to start wandering around my body weeping and carrying protest signs about the oppression of ova and the murder of Uteri by women? What if they accused me of being a Republican? This threat galvanized me into action.
So I did what any self-respecting Democratic woman would do when texting her ovaries: I became a politician spinning deceit for the good of humanity. I couldn’t tell them the truth. I needed to give them some hope.
I wrote, “After surgery your Uterus went to vote for Hillary during the last election and never came back. She was last spotted at the Woman’s March wearing pink pussy ears.”
Eva the Ovum wrote back: “Wow. When did the Womb get the vote?”
I wrote, “There’s more than one way to play Voter Fraud. Look the best thing to do is ovulate like normal. We’ve established an Ovarian Underground. What’s her name, the one who fell over the edge?”
“You mean Olivia?”
“Oliva will show you how to leave the body and join the uterus in her political activism. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I didn’t know you could talk, let alone text.”
“Why didn’t you answer me sooner? I don’t believe that bit about the phone. I wasn’t born yesterday you know.”
No, you weren’t born at all, I thought.
“I’m an introvert,” I wrote. “I’m really shy. And dissociated. I never know what to say when a body part texts me; it makes me self-conscious.”
“Well okay,” she doubtfully.
“You should just stay there and help Olivia. Don’t go back upstream. Always move forward in life. Not backwards.”
“Well okay…”
I texted my good-byes. Then I gave my phone to my psychotherapist who I assumed might enjoy talking to my insides more than I do. Then I moved away and got a new number. I don’t want to explain to my eggs what happens after menopause.
Laughing Coyote Productions 
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