Free Mother, Can You Not? by Kate Siegel Page B

my hooha for the first time and took this as an opportunity to rehash the safe-sex lecture I had heard a thousand times over. “Now, Dr. Weiner, just so she hears it from a doctor too…can you back me up? College guys are some of the horniest, most disgusting herpes-riddled liars on the planet. And it’s important to make them get tested for STDs before she decides to have sex, right?”
    Dr. Weiner, who, just as a reminder, is wrist-deep in my vagina at this point, looked up at me.
    “Well, I can’t speak to the first part of that, but I do agree that it’s very important to be safe, and a lot of girls feel intimidated about asking a guy to get tested.”
    PUH-LEASE!
I smiled. STD testing was as integral to my sexual fantasies as moody music and chocolate-covered strawberries (my understanding of sex at thattime was a mash-up of ’90s romcom montages and Nora Roberts’s futuristic mystery-romance novels). I glared at my mother.
    “Well, you need to hear it from a professional too—you don’t listen to me. NO STD TEST, YOU WON’T BE GETTING SEXED! Think about herpes, and HIV, and CRABS…Do you want me to show you the pictures again?”
    Dr. Weiner smiled and looked up at me. “I think what your mother is trying to say is that it can be tricky sometimes when you’re in the moment and a guy doesn’t want to get tested. But if it’s a guy worth your time, he will understand and be happy to respect what you want.”
    “Exactly!” My mother nodded emphatically as Dr. Weiner continued. “Sometimes you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you meet your prince.”
    “Yeah, and college man-children frogs have WARTS. Genital warts!”
    “They can.” Dr. Weiner smiled with her straight, blindingly white teeth, and I tried to imagine herkissing a genital-wart-ridden frog to make the situation less mortifying.
    “Speaking of princes, where did you meet yours? Your ring is beautiful.” My mother gestured toward the simple diamond engagement ring that was lying on top of Gloria.
    “I met him in college.”
    “Oh, really? That’s fabulous! What does he do?” Dr. Weiner removed the finger that had been rooting around my lady parts and reached for what looked like a medieval metal torture device, which, as it turned out, was just a speculum.
    “Okay, honey, this is going to be a little more pressure.” She pushed the cold device inside me and responded to my mother, “He’s a theater producer.”
    My mother perked up in her seat and immediately sprang into Drone Mom mode. With college admissions behind us, she had already begun thinking about internships that would set me up for a career in the arts, though she was still campaigning for me to go to law school. This was the one and only subject that couldhave distracted her from the STD campaign of terror. I was grateful for Dr. Weiner’s choice of husband and felt a pang of guilt about forcing her to kiss the genital-wart frog.
    “Really? A producer? Kate’s a very talented musical theater writer! She’s a songwriter and performer too!”
    Dr. Weiner looked up at me, still just fully immersed in my vagina. “Oh, really?”
    My mother sat forward in her chair. “Kate, why don’t you sing one of the songs from the musical you wrote?” If the speculum weren’t halfway up my vagina, I would have leapt off the examination table and strangled her.
    Dr. Weiner shifted the metal device. “No, no, honey, don’t clench. Breathe.”
    Apparently I hold all my tension in my vagina. My mother charged ahead, speculum and swabs be damned! “Come on, Kate, sing ‘Asian Boy’s Lament’…Dr. Weiner will love it, and it’ll relax you…relax your lady bits!”
    Context: The musical I wrote in high school was about college admissions stereotypes, and one of the characters was called Asian Boy as part of the satire.
    When I did not begin singing, she nudged my arm. “Come on!” And then she began belting out the lyrics to Asian Boy’s big number, “Why Not A