My first glimpse of sex was at Sue Handerson’s slumber party.  Sue was my idol.  She had the perfect long blonde hair and blue eyes that every girl my age wanted.  Sue was an only child and had all the coolest stuff in her bedroom.  She was the first to get everything from the shag haircut, to the Barbie hotel (you know, the one with the elevator in it) to the new Saturday Night Fever album that came with an autographed poster of Barry Gibb… and Sue was of course the first to get her period.

Sue and I  became friends mostly out of proximity.  She moved in the house two doors down from me.  I didn’t know at the time I was a lesbian.  I nodded, excited to participate in this late night ritual with just the two of us, tiptoeing between sleeping bags, following her into the bathroom.

Sue wore plain white high cotton briefs underneath her pajamas, which I still have an affinity for to this day.  I remember watching with shy curiosity as the panties slid past her muscular golden hair speckled thighs, knees, calves and ankles—trying not to look at the bare triangle between her legs.  Sue wasn’t the least bit embarrassed.

”Do you have any pubes yet?” she asks.

“Yeah,” I say, hoping I do.

“ Let me see!  Let me see!” Sue says, pulling up my nightie. There’s one.  There’s two…” she counts to my relief.

“I have eleven. See?  Same as how old I am.” (giggling)

And I want to kiss her and tell her how pretty her hair is or say something funny so she will giggle again.  But instead I smile stupidly, sitting uncomfortably on the edge of the bath tub as Sue plops down on the rug for the demonstration.

“Drumroll please.”  The plastic applicator was the same soft pink as Sue’s perfect smooth freckle-less skin and rounded at the tip like a popsicle.  I held  my breath as Sue drew her knees up to her chest, spreading her lips open with her fingers.

It was the first time I ever saw one, up close I mean.  Sue’s vee vee (as we called them back then) was like a baby face with no eyes, nose or ears—only a mouth.  It was so cute!  Like a kitten or a bunny.  I wanted to pet it. I wanted to feed it gummy bears.

“See? You just put the thing in…”

 And suddenly I feel  hungry—for powdered sugar donuts, for chocolate cream pop tarts, for French toast with peanut butter and maple syrup.

“… and push…” she says, pulling out the pink popsicle applicator which I have the strangest urge to lick.

Back then, I didn’t have language for what was going on inside me—something between awe and fear.

“Does it hurt?” is all I can think of to say.

(cheerfully) “ Nope…” Sue chirps, rolling herself up.

“Here, now you do it!” Sue dares me, reaching in the box for another tampon.

Not wanting our private world to end, I reluctantly oblige her—slowly unwrapping and examining the applicator that looks much larger than the one Sue demonstrated with.  Random thoughts flash through my head.  What if I can’t get it in and she laughs at me? What if it gets stuck in there and I can never pee again? What if tampons get you pregnant?  Or what if someone put a razor in it like they found in my cousin’s friend’s Snickers bar and I bleed to death? Sweat starts to drip from my armpits.“I can’t do this!” I finally cry out, all my fantasies of being twin tampon sisters with Sue Handerson flushed down the toilet.

“Oh don’t be a chicken!  Here, I’ll do it for you .

Do you trust me?…”  she asks, and I can’t say no.  I am spell bound,  my fears lost somewhere in the wild blue yonder of Sue Handerson’s eyes.

“Yes,” I say like Barbie says to Ken when she wants to make out .

“Yes.”  I surrender to the cool smooth strange pink feeling inside of me.  Only the coolness turns to heat and the heat shoots through my body like a volcano erupting.

“I… I…” I try to speak, but the words come trickling out between my thighs.

“E-e-e-w-w!…” Sue says, pulling out the plastic applicator covered  with white sticky goo.

“I think I have to pee,” I say, panicking.

“You might have an infection… she tells me, wrinkling her nose.

And once again, I’m reduced to a germ in Sue’s life.  My first orgasm confused with vaginal yeast.

The American women, they see the red dot on my forehead as a symbol of oppression—like I have been branded an inferior, a Hindu woman.  Some even look off to the side when I pass, as if they might catch a glimpse of their own silent shame in my eyes.  I have never been ashamed of my culture, religion or sex.  I come from a rich heritage of beautiful, strong women.  A mother who raised three children and a grandmother who raised six.  I believe strength is measured by the width and depth of the spirit.  Many people here have lost their spirits, their lives devoid or imagination and meaning.

 I will tell you the story of the red dot.  I will tell you so you will have wonder rather than judgement for things you don’t understand.Originally women of my tradition painted their foreheads with their menstrual blood.  The magic of the blood was said to open the third eye, the secret wisdom of woman.  A woman’s blood carrying the ancestral code and the collective knowledge of all the generations.  The red dot symbolizing the original seed of the family tree grown from woman.

I paint my forehead in celebration of the creative life force that flows through my female body.  The veils I wear to cover the sacred temple that I am.  Is it not the nature of mystery to be somewhat hidden?  Is not a woman’s genitalia also covered in veils?

Here in the west, women are powerful on the outside.  They hold high positions, have their own accumulated assets.  And yet, they haven’t any idea of who they are on the inside.  Many pay money to have someone help them find out who they are. This is very funny to me, actually interesting—a new understanding.  It would be like me saying to you I need therapy to find out what a orange is.  You would ask me why I would need such information.  Perhaps the confusion stems from the lack of ritual in the western culture.

When one begins to see with symbolic versus logical sight one allows for both the physical and transcendental nature of all things, including food, the body, and sexuality.    A woman walks with the grace of the Goddess incarnate, veiling her own divinity so the world will not be blinded by her glow.  Such is her radiance.  Such is her compassion.  A woman whose genitalia is not merely an orifice, but a holy portal—who is herself a living, breathing portal to Nirvana.

Perhaps my actions can be traced to the memo that said flex time was being eliminated and all employees were required to be sitting at their desks by eight a.m. sharp or we would be issued a warning. (Three warnings was grounds for automatic termination.)   Or maybe it was the equally dehumanizing memo that said paid maternity leave was being cut from three to two weeks.  Or the memo announcing the promotion of the pig brother of the company’s founding family, who had been convicted of sexual harassment just a few years back.

(The woman’s name was Lydia Crow.  She had since left the organization.  I never met her, but I’ve always admired crows.  In Native American traditions they are said to carry the medicine of divine law or the law above the law.)

Maybe it was the visual assault of the corporate mission statement

posted on every bulletin board throughout the building, which summed up said: “Make more money.”  Maybe it was the monotony of gray, black and blue which made me think the place could use a little color.

The timing was ideal, as it was a heavy-flow day. Yes!  I would bleed for the feminine creative spirit that was being squashed by rules and regulations!  Bleed for the mothers that had to leave their babies in day care ‘cause they couldn’t afford to miss a week’s pay!  Bleed for all the women who spoke up and won, only to be slapped in the face!  Bleed for the loss of meaning in peoples’ lives when we only work for the money.

Padless and pantiless, I leave for work that morning feeling a sense of purpose I haven’t felt in a long time.  I pull into the corporate parking lot with a secret smile on my face.  My purple gypsy skirt swishing around my ankles, as if to say, “Nah nah nah nah nah nah,” as I make my way to the main lobby entrance.

“Badge,” the security guard grunts.

“I’m waiting for someone,” I lie, walking over to the reception area and sitting down on a mango designer sofa.

As if on command, my blood flows full force into the fabric.

“My appointment must have canceled,” I tell the guard after a few minutes.

He does not see my bloody masterpiece. He only sees the numbers on my id card and waves me in. I walk slowly, careful to leave a little Hansel and Gretel trail, pausing briefly at the corporate bulletin board. When no one is looking  I tear down the mission statement and use it to wipe the inside of my thighs.  After pinning the newly revised flyer back up on the wall, appropriately, the words, “Eliminate” “Innovation” “by” “100%” are highlighted in red.

I remember reading that the body always tells the truthand I feel somewhat  protected as I swish down the hall, stopping to peek inside the executive planning room.  A hundred perfectly empty rows of chairs sit waiting for me.  I seize the opportunity, sneaking inside, this time dispersing small liver-like chunks onto several of the seats.

My blood is thick and meaty—vital, alive.  The earthy smell of her permeates the stale gray air.   The smell of fertility, of creativity—of an alpha female marking her terrritory.  I feel intoxicated, driven by a force  that is larger than me.  My hand is shaking as I turn the door knob. My senses are heightened, animal, instinctual.  I exit slowly, discreetly—a spy guerilla girl on a mission.

“Mam, mam,” a woman taps me on the shoulder at the drinking fountain.  “Do you know you’re bleeding?” she whispers.

 “Yes, thank you,” I say, to which she looks at me funnyas if I’ve just insulted her. And I want to ask her if she knows she’s bleeding, maybe not on the outside, but in her soul.  I want to take her by the hand and say, “Come bleed with me.  Can’t you you envision it— hundreds, thousands of women bleeding across corporate America?! “

Security cameras are only as good as what they’re looking for.  But today I am a purple bird, invisible free! Swish!  Swish!  Swish!  I flow fearlessly through the halls, power-bleeding in and out of meeting rooms, giving birth to little red hieroglyphics—a  kitty here, an armadillo there, a a t-rex, a space ship, a high-heeled shoe.  I feel like a child finger-painting.  I never know what my imagination will bleed next.

I pay a visit to the VP of Marketing’s office, leaving him a puppy, a platopus and a PT Cruiser.  For the Director of Personnel, a ghost, a Great White and a flock of geese.  When I reach Mr. Sexual Harassment’s office, I have to urinate as well.

“This one’s for Lydia,” I say, reupholstering his tan suede sofa.

Around the corner I spot an unsuspecting left-brain who notices the blood on the floor.  He stops, looks puzzled, then steps off to the side around it—as if avoiding a rattlesnake, as if he could fall into a giant man hole.

My blood is a beautiful dark, rich, red—the kind that doesn’t come out of carpeting easily or blend in with neutral colors—the kind that scares the pants off men in gray, black and blue. In the elevator I’m standing in between three of them, who stare straight ahead, anxiously waiting for the doors to open.  I don’t know which is thicker—the silence or my blood.  The smell overpowers both their after- shave and coffee.  The red liquid trickles down my leg, filling me with urges.   When I can’t resist, I begin rubbing the inside of my calve and ankle up against Mr. Gray’s suit pant, who coughs, jerks away, bumping into Mr. Blue, who spills his coffee on Mr. Black’s very important papers.I bite my lower lip, suppressing a giggle.  I am a wicked wicked girl to be having so much fun!

It’s amazing what happens to a person on the other side of crazy.  Words, gestures come to me like in the movies.  I’m suddenly the hero of my own life.  I’m faking out security guards, posing as “the niece from Texas.”  I’m having salmon alfredo in the executive dining room on Uncle Mory’s tab.

It’s two o’clock in the afternoon and I’m painting the town red!  And with the exception of frustrating the waitress, who wonders why I keep switching tables, I don’t feel the least bit guilty…..until….. on my way out, one of them stops me.

“Is that your blood all over the furniture young lady?” I think I hear my father’s voice.

“Was it accidental or intentional bleeding?!” I hear the lawyers arguing at the trial.

“Intentional bleeding is grounds for automatic termination,” I see another memo, another appendage to the employee manual.

It’s hard not to laugh when the whole circus flashes before me.

Fortunately, suit man has only mistaken me for the department  secretary.   I shake my head and smile politely while dripping on his shoe.“No, suit man, I don’t have time to type your memo.  I have places to go, people to meet and things to bleed on.”

There is an old medicine woman who lives in the underground of every woman.  Part winged, hooved, clawed, scaled and hairy, with both antennae and stinger coming out her rear end, she is all of creation in one body… which may explain why she stays in her cave until a girl is about 11 or 12 years, as her somewhat grotesque appearance is said to have frightened even polar bears from their stripes, leaving the poor things remaining white as ghosts to this day.

The old creature woman, whose name we shall call, Sangra, is not herself dangerous, though she makes more animal than human sounds and looking into the black holes of her eyes is like looking at death.  In fact, when she wakes inside a young woman it often feels like a death.

“Ohhhh,” Sangra moans, rolling over from her long sleep.

“Ohhhh,” the thick husk of her breath echoes off the cave walls as she slowly lifts the great mass of arms, legs, hooves, paws upright into a sort of squat.  Listening, Sangra begins rubbing two hands together to the young woman’s rhythms.  Faster and faster until heat sparks and sparks turn to flames.

Hers is a special fire—the kind that changes things from one shape to another.  The fire spirits pop and leap around her like excited children, waiting to be born—and she scoops them with her hands, packing them together until they form a single perfectly round red orange sun in her palm.

Then Sangra begins to weep.  She weeps from her heart,  from the soul of the world, which was made from her body. She weeps not out of emotion, but out of primal need and instinct.

If you asked her, Sangra, why are you crying?”

She would look at you curiously as if to say, “Why do you eat?” 

Her tears are her food, her sustenance.  They fall at first one by one, then a hundred by a  thousand, then a thousand by ten thousand.  And as she weeps the ball of light swells like a red water balloon, a ripe pomegranate.

“Ohhhhh,” Sangra cries, her heart flooding, her tears fleshing fireinto fruit.

“Ohhhh…”  and when the fruit can hold no more, it, too, begins to weep, only in red.

Red, the color of magic, the color of life, the secret elixir of the cosmic imagination.  Sangra catches a drop of the fire water nectar on her tongue and spreads it across her teeth to taste.

She tastes for purity and potency.  Tastes for what purpose or task she will give this woman.  And when she feels satisfied that the alchemy has been just right, Sangra gives the young woman and blood seed her blessing, within which all knowledge, power and love of life are contained.  And as the seed falls from the inner to the outer world, it rains… and somewhere in the dessert blooms a succulent flower that wasn’t there before.