Roll with the Punches (52 page)

With a happy mouthful of dark chocolate truffle bar, she lugged the laundry upstairs. And clarity hit. She'd never, ever discussed her private body parts. Not with her mother. Nor her sister. Nor a cousin. Nor her girlfriends. Yikes. Her mother and sister wouldn't touch the subject, literally or figuratively. Even her best friend Melissa had resorted to code, referring occasionally to “the vicuña” on good days and “the Visigoth” during her period. Alice had ignored this whole topic completely, and didn't really plan to discuss this with her daughter Kate, either. Thank God for the school health course. So no way was she about to mourn her sad, dry vagina on stage. No way, no how, no, Ma’am. Never mind the job situation.

Alice picked up five books off the boys' bedroom floor. She realized the P-word got about as much play as the V-word at their house. The boys had “weenies”, and Alice only called Dirk “Dickface” in their hearing, not “Penishead,” which he so richly deserved. As she sat on her bed and reached in her bag for another stack of tests, something clattered to the floor.

The
Venus Monologues
DVD with its title in virulent pink. Venus, virgins, and vaginas, oh my. Well,
V
stood for many things: vast, variegated, voluminous, vivacious, vociferous, vanquished, volatile, voracious, vindictive, violet, velvet, venal, vixen, voluptuous, virile, vibrating… It was sort of a sensual, lurid letter, really: the first in vile, the second in evil. It brought back things she used to do with Dirk—or wished she'd done. Acts involving
V
s were probably all over for this lifetime. For Alice, now the equivalent of a dried up spinster,
V
was mostly for vacuum cleaner, vexing, vestige, and varnish.

She slid the salacious DVD under the bed so a kid wouldn't mistake it for Lord of the Rings and graded papers. But the giant pink
V
and
M
on the DVD case still mocked her.
V. M.
her eye. There could simply be no
V. M
. in her house, in her life. Not now. No way. No how. Then a TV ad for a new snack food, cheesy pigs in a blanket called “Velveeta Minidogs,” made her giggle. After grading ten more tests, she lay down on the carpet to stretch and hit the damned DVD with her elbow.

Okay. Fine. Whatever. It went smoothly into the player, as if greased. Hah.
V. M
. equaled the
Vaseline Monologues
. With pure clinical curiosity, Alice pressed PLAY.

In black satin tuxes and top hats, the female monologists cast a spell on their audience, and within five minutes, even Alice stopped doing stomach crunches and listened. Every aspect of womankind was covered. Menarche. Menopause. Childbirth. Dowries. Arranged marriage. Juggling work and home. Peeing sitting down. Wife beating. Human trafficking. Bad dates. All were explored in the poetic, hilarious, and moving script. She was disconcerted, she was riveted, she was aghast. She put her head under a pillow once and fast-forwarded through one part. A piece about having sex in the oddest of places had her laughing out loud when the front door slammed.

"Hi, Mom!" It was Jamey, her nine-year-old.

She ripped the DVD from the machine and shoved it and the script in the wastebasket on her way downstairs. She threw together snacks for a marathon afternoon, then ran to the bathroom, stopping short at the sight of her tummy bulge in the mirror. Cursing looming menopause and twenty-four-hour donut shops, she vowed to walk twice as far tomorrow and restart her diet.

But her stomach still hurt, and for once, neither donuts nor samosas were the culprit. Man, all that discussion of Venus in Maya's office must have brought it on—a full blown, batten-down-the-hatches, category-five period. But the bathroom vanity was empty. Three ibuprofen tablets and a real rag later, she left the house with kid in tow.

Author Bio

Amy Gettinger, a part-time community college ESL instructor, lives in her dream house in Orange County, California underneath a very noisy eucalyptus windrow with her husband and her two piteous poodles. For fun, she walks the beach cliff path at Laguna Beach. Her blog Raucous Eucalyptus, Piteous Poodles, is at amygettinger.com.

Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/Amy-Gettinger/e/B00S9Y99II/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1425584079&sr=8-2-ent

Acknowledgments

A big thank you to everyone who read
Roll with the Punches
in its infancy: Lenore Weir, Lisa Henderson, Jean Jenkins, Therese Gilardi, Rita Holcomb, Jan Buckner, Donna Brigman, Dora Nur, Dr. Gordon Grannis, Peter Gettinger, and anyone else who was brave enough to tackle it, and for all their valued feedback and enthusiasm. Also a huge thank you to my family, who put up with all those frozen dinners when I wrote all day. (Writing is such a great excuse not to cook.) Thank you also to Daniel Cox, Carole Oldroyd, and Lisa Henderson for help with cover art.

Thanks to my mother and father, who dealt with Alzheimer's in an intense form. And many thanks to everyone who supported them through that period.

And of course, thanks to Posy Mortem, Randy Stadler, the Salisbury Roller Girls, the Los Angeles Derby Dolls, the Orange County Roller Girls, and derby girls everywhere for all their spunk and determination to bout, as well as their invaluable demonstrations of feminine power and skill that inspired the skating scenes in this book.

Cover art with the help of Lisa Henderson @Do You Believe Photography

Disclaimer

This book is a work of fiction. All characters and situations are fictional. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Care was taken to create new, fictional derby names in the writing of this book. Any resemblance of fictional names of derby characters, teams, and leagues to real derby players, teams, or leagues in the U. S. is purely coincidental.

© 2015 by Amy B. Gettinger

ISBN: 978-0-9911548-0-7

The right of Amy B. Gettinger to be identified as the author of this book has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act of 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written permission from the author.