Winter of 2005, Corvallis, Oregon

By Kirsten Gustafson

For the first time in my life, today I wished for a midterm instead of a lecture.

While my human sexuality class isn’t exactly home economics or elementary algebra 101, I wasn’t really expecting to break into a cold sweat among 900 horny college students loaded up on Dayquil and Red Bull.

I can remember the nauseating feeling when I sliced open my finger as a child on a small pocketknife. You might think that the pony beads and ribbons that adorned my tiny knife would render it useless against my 9-year-old flesh, but this did not prove to be the case. Much to my cat’s surprise, it took only a split second for the sight of blood to cause my brain to begin hopscotching in and out of consciousness, resulting in the unfortunate mixture of my own blood and bright orange fur. Clarence was not pleased.

Other memories come to mind of doctors’ office visits that for some reason usually required the invasion of my body with a long, sharp needle. Quick to learn, I soon realized that I should never again watch as the nurse tried to tell a joke or comment on the weather while she drove a five-inch needle into my arm. This situation, which posed only a very mild threat of blood entering the scene, usually resulted in clammy hands, drinking ridiculous amounts of orange juice, or me passing out into my mother’s arms.

As I grew older, I learned to avoid blood and all hypodermic activity at almost any cost. Since I had naturally ruled out any sort of doctor, nurse, or mortician work for my future career, this came fairly easily. But it always proved difficult to avoid the topic of blood or injury in conversation. I’ve heard my share of the “Where’d you get that sweet scar?” stories, and of course the “and then this one time when I stuck my thumb in the lawnmower…” gems.

These stories, however, are almost impossible to avoid when the person telling the story is not only important to you, but also emotional. They prove even harder to ignore when you are genuinely interested in the story.

For instance, when my friend Anna described to me in great detail her first gynecology visit following her miscarriage, the story came with a lot of bloody strings attached. And as I sat on her blue home-made couch in the middle of her living room listening to Anna recount the endless list of things that came out of her uterus that day, it became very apparent that I was going to have to find a bathroom very soon. Five minutes later I found myself two feet from the toilet, pressing my face against the dirty linoleum.

I have spent an unknown amount of time trying to figure out why exactly the thought or sight of blood sends me into an instant panic beyond all hope of a quick Tylenol fix. But over the years I have come to realize, mostly through trial and error, that gushing blood is my main vice. Gushing, spraying, bubbling; any larger than average gathering of the stuff makes me crazy. This personal knowledge really came into fruition in the most uncomfortable college classroom scene mentioned earlier.

My friend Mak and I entered the auditorium, carefully checking our small area for holes, glass, sticky spills and chewed gum before taking the plunge into the graffiti-laden chairs. The oversized, WWE-style Titantron of a projector screen quickly showed us our plans for the next hour and a half. GENITAL MUTILATION screamed from number three on the list of topics to cover today, as if such a subject could possibly be unimportant enough to escape number one status. The creaks of my ancient folding chair echoed the uneasiness I felt as my over-excited professor began to talk.

Let’s be honest. I let it get to me. I knew what was happening; I couldn’t help it. It only added to my fear and personalized the matter when the topic was later refined as female genital mutilation. I silently prayed for a fire alarm or miracle healing and took out my notebook. The feeling spread over my body as the professor neared the dreaded third topic, as if discussing STDs and going over a comprehensive list of sex crimes wasn’t torture enough.

As she began to go into a little too much detail about how some cultures condone the practice of men unmercifully taking the blade to young girls, my symptoms leapt from eerie queasiness to just plain sick. It was at this point that I realized it was too late to bother asking my neighbor where a restroom might be found.

After a quick decision, the result of a mixture of nausea and embarrassment, I bent over and set my head on my lap. My goal: to get some blood to my head. The sickness continued as I sat there, paralyzed, fearing that if I made any sudden movements I would certainly vomit, therefore creating my new most embarrassing moment of all time and space.

I couldn’t convince even my smallest fingers to make any gestures to those around me indicating that I needed help. My thankfully oblivious friend sat next to me, confused, but thinking I had gone to sleep. What could she have done, anyway? She was seriously lacking the paper towels and Simple Green she was going to need to clean up this mess.

Not only were my palms sweating, I could now feel a wet patch beginning to form on the small of my back. A lump the size of a small squash grew inside my throat. My limbs had lost all utility and function, as if a faint mist had clouded my nerve endings. The professor’s voice seemed echoed and far away.

My dry mouth was suddenly flooded with a wave of saliva that my lips could no longer contain. I complied and let the excess bleed into the unfinished words on my notebook.

I was fighting the promptings of my stomach to give up everything inside of me when I suddenly found it hard to see the back of the chair in front of me. The chatter around me faded, as did the booming, reverb-heavy voice of my professor. The topic now seemed strangely irrelevant.

My eyes went black, and my ears fell deaf soon after.

I woke up nearly three seconds later. It couldn’t have been more than five. I looked around. The same faces, the same voice reciting statistics on the same dreadful topic. Only now I found my skin to be covered in a thick layer of sweat from head to toe. My face was sweaty, my arms were sweaty, even my legs. I reached for my coat, finding that it now had another use as a large green towel to soak up the chilly sweat all over my body.

The episode was over, the nausea gone. I shifted uncomfortably in my chair as I sat up and reluctantly returned to my class, in body if not in spirit. Sideways glances in my direction and unheard conversations no longer bothered me. I was no longer my body’s captive. I silently re-fixed my gaze ahead to the projector, and class went on.

Kirsten Gustafson is a recent college graduate, aspiring writer, and eBayer. Soon she will be moving to Spain with her husband, where they will spend the next year continuing in these endeavors, serving God, and deciding whether or not to come back.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Friday, March 16th, 2007 | Email This Post

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