That Takes Ovaries! (14 page)

I know, it sounds a bit
Thelma-and-Louise
-ish, but I stared them down, daring any one of them to say or do anything. But
they didn’t. It was as if they were frozen in shock, so I turned to go. I was a bit shaky—standing up to more than a dozen catcalling freaks all by myself was something I would normally never do—but I also felt this incredible rush from what I had just done, and I certainly wasn’t cold anymore. The whole thing was strangely exhilarating.

“Hey, wait a minute,” said a voice behind me.

I spun around and spat, “Why, did you think of a clever comeback, like ‘Nice tits,’ maybe?”

I looked at the man who’d spoken: about forty-five, dark eyes, dark hair, black jeans, black leather jacket.
This one probably thinks he’s Fonzie,
I thought, and suppressed an amused smile. He raised his hands to his chest in a palms-out gesture and said, “We are sorry we offended you. Some of us don’t know how to behave around ladies, see. That stuff you said, you’re right. We have no right to say things like that to you, okay? We’re sorry we disrespected you.”

“You shouldn’t disrespect
anyone
like that.”

“I know,” said Mr. Spokesman-for-the-Group. “And I apologize. We all apologize.”

I looked at him over the tops of my sunglasses, and then into the eyes of the silent, nodding others. Now it was
my
turn to be shocked at
their
response. At last I said, “I accept your apology.”

Long story short, over the next few months I got to know all of
“those
guys,” and they got to know me, and now we are friends. Sometimes they can annoy, but aside from the occasional “doll” or “sweetheart,” they have now learned some manners; they call me by my name and give me the respect I deserve. And that is the most important thing.

“Wanna be part of a rock video?”

I was pretty excited about this call from my casting agency, since the band doing the video was one of the biggest heavy-metal groups in the country and I really liked their music. They needed a bunch of girls to drink beer, get wasted, and essentially trash a house.
Hey, I can do that.

The next day I dressed in the required gear—’80s rock sleaze—and was driven to a house purchased specifically to be trashed for the video. It was deep in the boonies, a remote area of Brooklyn. In the chilly November air, I joined other extras lined up at the catering booth, got some veggie gumbo, and went to a side tent where power heaters warmed our freezing butts. There, we waited to be called for a scene.

I looked around. Though there were more than a hundred of us, I noticed immediately, and was not surprised, that I was one of only a few women of color. Many extras were in jeans; some wore revealing cutout tops and pants. The more glamorous-looking ones sported leather pants, cowboy hats, and high-heeled boots.

A handful of girls from the shoot the night before had been called back for another day’s work. One, a major glam girl with lip gloss slathered on her mouth and her hair teased up, was standing around, so I decided to find out what was happening.

“Hey,” I said, “is the band in the house?”

She gave me a haughty look. “No, they were here yesterday. Today it’s just the girls.”

I was disappointed but still excited.

As the day wore on, lots of us, including me, still weren’t called. When we saw a few women coming back after doing scenes, we all crowded around and asked what they had done.

“Did you start wrecking the house?” asked a woman in black suede boots.

“No,” answered one of the returning women, looking tired.

“We just made out with the other girls and then they sent us back to makeup for more lipstick.”

Made out?
I was confused, and curious enough to leave the warm tent and brave the cold to check out what was happening in the house.

I saw two mixed-Asian gals standing before a group of white guys. One of the men was yelling and gesturing. Then both women took off their shirts and pressed up against the wall in a tight embrace, kissing. The men ran around filming for a few minutes before waving the women away.

“What was
that
about?” I asked as the women approached me.

“I don’t know,” answered one. “I guess the director is some famous European dude, and he got this great inspiration yesterday to do a lesbian sex thing for the video.”

“Are you okay with it?” I asked.

She looked embarrassed. “I guess,” she muttered. “It felt kind of awkward. I didn’t really want to do it, but you know …” Her voice trailed off.

I found out the video was originally supposed to showcase the band playing in the house with all these women hanging off them, kinda like a whorehouse … and it gets better. They’d also had a bunch of hard-looking biker guys, but they were fired when the director experimented with having two women make out, and thus the direction of the video blossomed.

Back in the tent, women who had already done scenes were telling their stories to the rest of the extras. A few looked like they were about to cry.

“It’s not just kissing,” reported one girl. “They’re having us do heavy petting now, like real sex stuff.”

Other women nodded and added their two cents.

“They told me we were just going to trash a house.”

“Yeah, they told me that, too.”

“Where are they going to show this video, anyway? This is soft-core porn.”

“I signed a release. They can show my image anywhere,” a punk girl said, and started crying. “I was just in a scene where I
was pulled towards this girl and told to make out. They didn’t say what they wanted me to do until they started shooting. I felt pressured to do it.”

“I don’t know if I want to do this anymore,” said a woman near me. “I think I might go home.”

“How?” demanded another woman. “We’re in the middle of nowhere. Do
you
know where the closest subway stop is?” Most of us shook our heads.

Just then the production supervisor, a short woman with headgear attached to her walkie-talkie, pushed her way into the tent and called my name and three others. We were led to a room and left there. I was trying to figure out how I felt about the whole setup. Unlike a lot of the others, I had no problem kissing girls. But I felt bad for the straight women: They’d never kissed girls before, and now they looked traumatized, being made to do it for the first time with total strangers, in front of all these guys. Besides, did I want to be part of a bunch of straight white boys’ sick lesbo fantasy?

Though I still felt some of the thrill of being in a real live music video, it was fading fast.

When a production person came in, I asked, “Am I expected to pull my pants down for this scene?” He nodded. “Then I’m out of here,” I said, making up my mind. “Who do I talk to?”

“The production supervisor,” he said.

I went back to the tent and spoke with the other girls who were also feeling uncomfortable. Dozens of us decided to voice our complaints to the supervisor as one united front.

First she tried to convince us we were turning down the chance to be Art. “The director is brilliant,” she said. “This video is his vision of the world’s chaos culminating in a lesbian group-sex scene.”

Great,
I thought.
Lesbian sex is part of the world’s chaos?

“If you walk off, you’re not getting paid,” the supervisor insisted.

I was livid and reaching my boiling point:
Some of the girls are crying. This is enough already!

Together, as a group, we argued with the supervisor: “You brought us to the middle of nowhere and then pressured us to perform sexual acts that were
not
in the job description. We’ve been here since 11:00 A.M.” It was now 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning. “You are going to pay us.”

In the end, with fifty women crowding around her and demanding to be paid, the supervisor gave in. She paid us and arranged a van to take us home. By the time we were dropped off in Manhattan, we all felt as if we’d known each other for years. As the van pulled away, we broke into a group scream, howling out our frustration and triumph in the cold city night.

Ever wonder how doctors learn to do pelvic exams? Well, I can answer that question for more than six hundred medical students: I taught them—on my body.

At some medical schools, students learn to do the exam on cadavers, women under anesthesia, or with “pelvic models” (women who function simply as bodies for professors to demonstrate on). Students on the campuses where I teach learn from “pelvic educators,” women who instruct students in anatomy, physiology, palpation techniques, and various emotional and cultural issues that arise in a clinical setting.

When I first heard about the job, it sounded amazing. I’d already been working to overcome negative feelings about my body (the same body-image crap most women internalize growing
up in our culture), and this seemed like a good next step. More important, I felt that teaching future doctors to do sensitive, thorough pelvic exams could positively impact the lives of many female patients down the line. I thought of Joan Rivers’s joke that there should be a commemorative stamp of a woman on an examining table, feet in the footrests, to honor those who keep their annual appointments. I remember thinking at the time,
Joan is right: Many women do dread the exam. But it shouldn’t
have
to be horrible.
Now, years later, I take pride in teaching my students the many details that can make an exam a positive, comforting experience.

I was scared at first. I’d take the hospital gown into the bathroom to change, and then climb onto the table, holding the johnny tight to make sure nothing extra was exposed. I felt shy about opening my legs to strangers (especially without any foreplay!), so as I did this, I avoided looking students in the eyes. I steeled myself by acting nonchalant and businesslike, and held onto the idea that this was important to women. Now, after six years, I simply turn my back to change (yes, in front of students), wrap a sheet around me, and casually hop onto the table.

Working with two to four students at a time, I first go over psychosocial issues. I tell them that though their patient may be an adult, it could be her first exam. I suggest they offer her a hand mirror so she can see what they are doing, and that they explain what they’re doing as they do it. We discuss asking questions without making assumptions about a patient’s sexual orientation or practices; looking for signs of sexual abuse, and, if they suspect it, how to handle it; words patients use to describe their anatomy; and culturally specific sexual customs.

Then it’s time for the physical exam. I undress from the waist down and sit on the exam table, feet in the footrests (“Not stirrups; it’s not a saddle”). I teach draping technique (“Expose only the area you will be examining”), the physician’s first touch (“Put your hands by the outside of her knees, and ask her to bring her knees to meet your hands—that way
she
touches
you
first”), and subsequent touch techniques (“Clinical touch
should feel as different from sexual touch as possible”). We start with the external exam, checking beneath the pubic hair for redness, lice, and scabies (“Don’t mention lice and scabies unless she has them”). The external exam includes inspecting the vulva, perineum, and anus (“Always avoid touching the clitoris”).

The internal exam is next. I teach them to insert an index finger to find my cervix and check my glands for infection and my vaginal walls for laxity. I demonstrate how to put in and open the speculum (“Warm it first, for patient comfort”). Then we view the cervix (a first sighting and a thrill for most students) and practice the Pap smear.