Expectation

by Anna Hope

They declare there are many different types of vaginal discharge: the one that leaves a white crust, the one that leaves a yellow crust, the one that floods you when you’re turned on. They discuss whether discharge – with its pejorative connotations – is itself a patriarchal term. They decide that there are as many different types of vaginal abject as Inuits have words for snow. They watch with satisfaction as the boys cringe. They feel a new power. They become electric. They become friends.

She counts her blessings, she tries to rationalize – why should it matter what her friends are doing? Why should her happiness be indexed to theirs? But it is. Somehow, it is – she cannot help but take inventory of her life; her lack, at thirty-three years old, of any of the markers that constitute real adulthood.