Truth and the Tampon Story

He wore a tampon in his rectum.

I sat in my corner, a little drunk, a slight slant to the world, and one shoulder slipping slowly down the lead paint. Big night. The air so thick with the fog of weed that everything was in soft focus. The alcohol acidic, cheap bottles lying in the centre of the room, still spinning distractedly. Nobody cared where this last one would land, we had all decided to choose 'truth'. Not a dare left in the room.

"So I put a tampon in and wore it all day."

Okay.

"To feel what it's like to be a woman."

So.

"I think that now I'm just a little closer to that."

Then.

The bottle swings to a stop at my knees and it's all truth truth truth and I've been telling all my secrets all night and the guts of me are exposed and gory. These people aren't even my friends really. I blink up through the candle light at the flushed expectant faces. My candlelight, my flat. And I wonder why I decided to invite them anyway.

"Truth," someone says, "Truth".

I pull myself up the wall a little. Settle the glass of vodka into my lap.

"I only invited you here so that I could get Aaron to come. I didn't want to have a dinner party at all, I just wanted to see Aaron again and he wouldn't come if it was just me, didn't come anyway, but you guys were kind of the lure."

They are silent. They stare. The man who put the tampon up his arse shifts uncomfortably as if he were still wearing it.

"Tell us about the junkie with the rope burns around his neck that you had sex with."

I look at her. She knows me better than the rest of them. She knows my stories and that I have many of them.

"Tell us about the Rocky Horror Picture Show girl and the vibrator."

I sigh and take another swig of vodka. I am drunk and sad and lonely amongst so many people I barely know.

So I tell them another true story and then another, because none of them really want to know the truth.