Next, they became ordinary. Mundane. Neutral. Their thick thighs and sagging bellies were just bodies, like any other. Their lives were just lives, like any other. Like mine.
Then, one day, they were beautiful. I wanted to look and be like them—I wanted to spill out of a crop top; plant a flag in a mountain of lingerie; alienate small, bitter men who dared to presume that women exist for their consumption; lay bare the cowardice in recoiling at something as literally fundamental as a woman’s real body. I wasn’t unnatural after all; the cultural attitude that taught me so was the real abomination. My body, I realized, was an opportunity. It was political. It moved the world just by existing. What a gift.
The Red Tent
In August of 2010, the Stranger got an e-mail from an organization called “Vashon Red Tent,” advertising that “A Red Tent Temple Sisterhood Is Coming to Vashon.” Vashon is an island, accessible by ferry from Seattle, mainly populated by NIMBY-ish hippies, NIMBY-ish yuppies, boutique farmers, and wizards riding recumbent bicycles. A full quarter of the children in Vashon schools are unvaccinated. The “Red Tent Temple Movement,” the press release read, “envisions a gathering honoring our stories and promoting healing in every town across the country where women of all ages meet regularly to support one another and monthly menstrual cycles.”
The only thing I knew about Anita Diamant’s novel The Red Tent, which inspired the movement, was that one time my college roommate read it and then announced to the rest of us that she wanted to go “bleed into the forest.” It didn’t feel like a good sign. This event, clearly, was my worst nightmare. The paper, clearly, RSVPed for me immediately.
I dragged my friend Jenny along with me, and we barely made the ferry. On the bench next to us there was a woman with long frizzy hair and high-waisted jeans. She was wearing a T-shirt with a picture of cats in sunglasses playing saxophones, and above the picture it said, “JAZZ CATS.” “There are a lot of different ways to be a woman,” I wrote in my notebook. Jenny and I were running late for menses tent, but we stopped by the grocery store anyway to buy some boxed wine and anxiety jelly beans. We sat in the parking lot and wolfed beans and got as tipsy as we could in the time allotted.
My sister is into this sort of thing. She loves ritual. She’s forever collecting shells for her Venus altar, or tying a piece of ribbon to a twig in a secret grove, or scooping magic waters up into very small vials to make potions. Being around my sister feels magical. When we traveled through Europe together (following the path of Mary Magdalene, doyeeeee), we didn’t miss a stone circle or a magic well—tromping over stiles and up tors and always leaving little offerings for the fairies. Once, in Cornwall, we looked down into an aquamarine cove and she said, “Do you see the mermaids? They’re sitting on that rock.” I said no, and she looked at me with pity. On the way to the Vashon Red Tent Temple, I texted my sister for advice. “I’m on my way to a new moon celebration at a menses temple,” I said. “Liar,” she said. “It’s true! Any tips?” “Stay open to a new flow and wave good-bye to the blood of old that nurtured you well.” I knew she’d know what to do.
I almost didn’t go in. It was too intimate and foreign, and I am clinical like my mom. I like magic as escapism—I barely tolerate fantasy books set in our universe (the first time I cracked a Harry Potter novel I was like, “Yo, is this a documentary?”)—pretending that the supernatural is real just drives home how much it’s not. But we did, we walked in, removed our shoes, and joined the circle of women seated on pillows beneath the homemade canopy of red scarves. It wasn’t really a “tent” so much as a pillow fort inside a community center, but it did the job.
The women were talking about chocolate, which was such an adorable cliché that I fell in love with them instantly. “There is definitely a goddess of chocolate.” “I read somewhere that the molecular makeup of chocolate is so unique that it was probably brought here from another planet.” One woman passed a Hershey’s bar around the circle. “This chocolate is even better now that it’s passed through the hands of so many goddesses,” said the woman next to me, appreciatively.
There was chanting.
Isla, the leader of the circle, said that right now there is an astrological configuration—the Cardinal Cross—that has not occurred since Jesus was alive, and that she and the other local angel healers are very busy “holding that energy.” She explained that the media tells us that things are terrible and violent, but that this is actually one of the most peaceful times in history. We should not focus on the negative. Later, I asked my sister what an “angel healer” is, and she said, “Well, you know, angels are just the same thing as aliens. They’re probably the ones who brought the chocolate.” I asked about the Cardinal Cross, and she told me, “If you’re going to have a baby, have it like tomorrow. It’ll be a superbaby. Dude, remind me to send you a picture of the cosmos right now. It’s fucking out of control.”
We went around the circle and stated our “intentions” for the coming moon cycle. Most of the women had intentions that I didn’t understand, that involved “manifesting” and “balance” and “rhythm.” One woman said that her intention was to “end rape.” I said I intended to organize my apartment, and felt mundane. The women totally approved. Total approval is the point of menses tent. The press release had promised “a place where young women can ask questions and find mentors in absolute acceptance,” and menses tent delivered.
“You look different today,” said one woman to another. “Oh, I know,” she replied. “It’s because I did the twenty-four-strand DNA activation yesterday. I feel like a completely new person.” The women around me tittered with excitement. I asked what that meant. She explained that in addition to our two physical DNA strands, we have twenty-two spiritual DNA strands, which can be “activated” by a specially trained lady with a crystal wand. The process took ten hours. “There’s also a golden gate that you can walk through,” she said, “but that’s more for larger groups.” Then another woman explained that DNA activation has something to do with the Mayan calendar. I still didn’t understand. My sister didn’t know anything about DNA activation, but she did tell me a story about the time she went to see a shaman and the shaman had a spirit jaguar eat a ghost off her back. That sounded cooler than the DNA thing.
Jenny and I thanked our hostesses and hobbled out to the car, thighs asleep and buzzing with pain after hours of sitting cross-legged on pillows. We ate some more jelly beans and talked about our feelings.
It’s true that I don’t believe in most of this stuff—and I suspect that believing is the secret ingredient that makes this stuff work. But it does work for the gracious ladies on the pillows under the red tent, and it was surprisingly nurturing to sit cross-legged in their world for a few hours. And even though I would never phrase it like this, I agree that women don’t always get a chance to “fill our own vessels.” My dad worked all day. My mom worked all day, then came home and made dinner. Women do a lot. Women are neat.
Back at the office, I knew my job was to make fun of menses tent, but I just didn’t want to. They were so nice and so earnest. What was the point of hurting them? Sincerity is an easy target, but I don’t want to excise sincerity from my life—that’s a lonely way to live.