This Will Be My Undoing

by Morgan Jerkins

  I did not have a chance to be afraid. For the entire duration of the car ride from my Harlem apartment to Long Island, I tried to memorize my body’s topography: every blonde hair on my arms, dry spot on my face, stretch mark on my thigh, gnawed skin on the sides of my fingers. I chose not to have my procedure in a hospital because I wanted as short a recovery as possible. In the weeks leading up to the surgery I’d had to get a handful of shots; fill a series of prescriptions for hydrocortisone cream, Vicodin, and Percocet; read through an informational packet about what I must do pre- and postoperation; and take a call with the doctor so he could elaborate on any part of the process. The packet seemed like a fair list of rules and guidelines, such as no eating before the operation and mandating that I shave my vulva before I went into the office. One page listed what might happen to me: nerve damage, sexual dysfunction, scarring, death. I swallowed a large wad of saliva as I read, figuring that this was standard practice as well. I’d had a root canal years ago, when I also could have theoretically died. The last page, however, was what almost caused me to renege on my decision altogether: it was titled “Psychological Healing.” Psychological healing? I was reducing the size of my inner left labium, not getting a hysterectomy or a mastectomy. What kind of psychological healing did I need after a surgery that would last no longer than an hour? Although I couldn’t get this out of my head, I never spoke to the doctor about it.

  As I sat in the waiting room, the receptionist instructed me to take one Vicodin and one Percocet. Afterwards I was escorted into an exam room, where I took off everything from the waist down and stood up against the wall adjacent to the door. The doctor crouched down in front of me while the female nurse stood watch in the near corner, perhaps to thwart sexual harassment accusations. He asked me to part my legs and then he pulled down my inner left labium in order to photograph its original length. I focused on the fluorescent lighting overhead, my eyes spasmodically blinking in concordance with each camera snap. I felt humiliated. But once I lay down on the exam table, I didn’t feel that way anymore. Inside, I was pulling away from my core, like dandelion seeds being stripped away from the flower by the wind. The doctor injected the local anesthesia into my vulva and praised me for being able to hold still. Truth be told, it was easy; I was not in my body.

  As the doctor cut away, my mind drifted. I thought of food and documentaries I wanted to watch on Netflix. There was not a moment where I thought, Hey, pay attention to what’s going on. I felt like I was levitating. Even when he grabbed the forceps I did not flinch. I saw part of myself wedged in between his right pointer finger and thumb, the same digits I used to adjust it. When he placed what he’d taken from me on a draped table, I wanted to twist my neck to look at it, but my head was too heavy to move.

  After I was stitched back together, he showed me how much he’d cut off. That part of my “second tongue” was about as wide as my two thumbs pressed together, its consistency similar to that of an elephant’s skin. My mother came into the room and helped me to put back on my clothes and stand up. We stopped for lunch at Chipotle on our way home.

  In March of 2016, I was allowed to attend the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) conference in Los Angeles. AWP is a prestigious three-day extravaganza teeming with agents, editors, MFA students, creative writing instructors, publicists, readers, and, of course, writers. There are an overwhelming number of panels and parties, occasioned by an industry fair that features over 850 exhibitors. I was only several months into my job as an editorial assistant, one that I had dreamed of getting for over a year, and I had stars in my eyes the whole time.

  One night, an acquaintance invited me to a party at the Silver Lake home of the writer of some Oscar-winning film. Because the friend of said acquaintance offered to drive us and one of my mentors would be there as well, I decided to go. We walked into the backyard, and the party was exactly how I’d envisioned it. Hordes of mostly white people, including a few authors whom I recognized because of their recent releases, bobbing their heads and casually sipping on vodka next to a pool. I decided to stay sober. There wasn’t a chaser to help with the vodka, and these were not my people. I had to remain professional.

  Kristina, a young Latina from New York whom I’d met at a Halloween party the year before, was swimming in the pool along with several other guests. She spotted me and swam over to the side, urging me to come in, too. I smiled and politely declined. I was only one of perhaps four black women there, and I didn’t need to stand out any more than I already did. I wanted to explain my decision by saying I didn’t want to mess up my hair, but I didn’t think Kristina would understand this; although she was a woman of color, she could easily have passed as white because she was very fair-skinned and had blonde hair. I’m sure she had on many occasions. My second option was to say I didn’t have a bathing suit, but before I could speak, a black woman got out of the pool and told me that there were communal bathing suits in the house. (I wanted to give this woman the side-eye for even suggesting this. Growing up, I learned that black people’s personal hygiene standards were different than those of white people. We cannot refuse to wash for days, or not wash our hands after using the bathroom; poor hygiene is a privilege reserved for white people, who can eschew certain modes of decency and still be considered clean. Why would I want to put my body in a bathing suit that I couldn’t be sure had been thoroughly washed, or washed at all, since it was last used?) I sat down on an adjacent sofa, but that didn’t stop Kristina from trying a second time, and then a third, to get me into the pool. I could not tell Kristina the truth, that I was uncomfortable and afraid, because I worried that she would think that I had some kind of social anxiety disorder.

  Then again, maybe I do.

  Now that the other woman had left, there was no other black person in that pool. Some of the people in there were smoking. Men and women were making out with one another. There was a weird vibe, like the pool activities could have easily progressed further. For a moment, I felt like an extra on the set of some Entourage episode; these were the kinds of behaviors that I only saw in decadent HBO series, or read about in personal essays written by white women. To me, such hedonism was a luxury afforded to the white and privileged, and when I was in that world I could observe but never participate. At the most I could afford a glass or two of the weakest wine, but I could never indulge. White, privileged people are always considered clean no matter what they do, while I as a black woman have to constantly scrub at the filth that society smears onto my body.

  I feared that if I got into the pool half naked, with my breasts spilling out of a bikini top, my body would alter the atmosphere. I would be stared at, and men might even hit on me, asking me where I was from and if I was having a good time before offering me drugs. If I got in and didn’t participate with everyone else, I would be seen as uncool and immature. If I did, someone I knew professionally could see me, suspect that I was up to no good, and then my boss could find out that his most recent hire was fucking up.

  When I discussed this deep sense of unease with my mentor, who is also black and more than ten years my senior, he told me that I made the right decision by not swimming. He eased my worry that I was overthinking an otherwise fun situation. In fact, he argued that there is no limit to overthinking when you are a young black woman in an overwhelmingly white space.

  But a part of me wanted to fuck up. I wanted to see what it was like to be so carefree, so white. I fantasized about getting in that pool, taking off my bikini top, catching the eye of some older and more powerful editor, and having sex in a bathroom with the door slightly cracked. I thought about what it would be like to do a line of cocaine, even though I’ve never wanted to. (I have a strong aversion to taking even regular, over-the-counter drugs.) But these fantasies were the only luxury in which I could indulge. Only in my imagination could I do any of these things and remain unscathed both professionally and socially.

  I crept back into my hotel room that night so that I would not
disturb my roommate. I couldn’t fall asleep, so I decided to read and propped open Melissa Broder’s essay collection, So Sad Today. Broder is the creator of the depressing, anxiety-ridden, and self-deprecating Twitter account @SoSadToday, which has over 370,000 followers (including Katy Perry and Miley Cyrus the last time I checked). Plenty of my friends retweet her posts. I don’t, but I do read them whenever they appear on my timeline, usually half smiling at their relatability before diverting my attention to something else that won’t pull me into such a dark place. For years, Melissa’s identity as the mind behind @SoSadToday was hidden. She published poetry under her real name in many renowned magazines and journals, like Guernica and the Missouri Review. When I googled an image of her, I saw a blonde-haired woman with smoldering eyes, simultaneously inaccessible and vulnerable. Reading her biography, I assumed that she was a woman who had her shit together. She was so accomplished.

  Generally, I devour personal essay collections written by women in a matter of days. I’m a nosy and voyeuristic person, maybe because I have four older sisters and I know what it feels like to be banished from their conversations. I listened from the outside and vicariously lived through them. Or maybe I’m naturally curious. Whatever the reason, I love reading about women’s inner lives, traveling through the pages like a boat buoyed by a mild yet noticeable current. But reading So Sad Today was like trudging through a stalactite cave. It felt dangerous, as if I were violating Broder in some way by reading the secrets that she shared and gave permission to publish. She spent pages upon pages writing about how much she destroyed her body in her early twenties with whiskey, benzodiazepines, opiates, Ecstasy, laxatives, amphetamines, psychedelics. I sank into her accounts of blacking out all over San Francisco, waking up to blood on the walls and strange men next to her in bed who told her how much of a mess she was, going into yoga class with the alcohol oozing out of her pores, the whole time feeling more and more guilty for enjoying these darkest moments of her life. All the while I thought, How the hell is this woman still alive? Even more, How is she still alive and so successful after all that?

  Then again, I already knew how her story would end: she would not only still be alive; she would be writing and producing and traveling and talking and gaining visibility. She would rise from the ashes of the fire she’d started, like the phoenix of Greek mythology. Soon, it became clear to me why I chose not to swim in the pool that night: because as a black woman, I was never taught that I possessed that kind of regenerative power.

  Our culture loves young, beautiful, and drug-addicted white women. In the mid-1990s, heroin chic was all the craze in the fashion world. Characterized by the dark circles around their eyes, gaunt bodies, pale skin, and either drained or apathetic expressions, supermodels like Kate Moss and Jaime King rose to prominence. Of course, this trend was criticized by anti-drug groups and even former president Bill Clinton, but its timing was not an accident. Because of the scars from the 1980s crack epidemic and the fear of AIDS, heroin was seen as a “healthier” alternative due to its relative purity, and its use was glamorized not only in fashion but also in the music world. Aside from the reality that the fashion industry (like most industries) is overwhelmingly white, I am not surprised that white models popularized “heroin chic.” Growing up black, I was imbued with extreme hatred for Ronald Reagan and his administration; I knew nothing else of his impact on America besides the crack epidemic. Little black girls were traded by their parents for twenty-dollar rock; prostitution skyrocketed; an entire generation of low-weight “crack babies” was born to addicted mothers. Because of Reagan’s War on Drugs, by the end of 1999 over half a million black men and women were sitting in state and federal prisons, broadening the disparities in incarceration rates between blacks and whites.3

  As a child, I never saw black female television characters experimenting with drugs or alcohol—only their brothers. Sure, they might have had fake IDs, multiple boyfriends, and an occasional disregard for their parents’ rules, but that was it. Yvette Henderson of Smart Guy is a straitlaced teenager who has a passion for women’s rights and eventually attends Georgetown. In one episode, her younger brother, T. J., gets drunk one night. Moesha is a witty—and often boy-crazy—teenager from Los Angeles. When her brother stores a marijuana cigarette in his room, their parents initially accuse Moesha, which catalyzes a discussion about drugs. The creators of both shows, Danny Kallis for Smart Guy and Ralph Farquhar, Sara V. Finney, and Vida Spears for Moesha, chose to keep both black female teenage characters spot-clean. The same goes for Tia Landry and Tamera Campbell of Sister, Sister, and Reagan Gomez’s character, Zaria, on The Parent ’Hood.

  On the contrary, drug and alcohol use and abuse seems to have been a rite of passage of white female characters of the 1990s and 2000s. Rayanne Graff, of My So-Called Life, gets addicted to both alcohol and drugs and suffers an accidental overdose that leads to her having her stomach pumped—yet she is also a fashion icon because of her layered outfits and accessorized hair. In Degrassi: The Next Generation, Ashley Kerwin takes Ecstasy, Anya MacPherson develops a cocaine addiction (but quits on her own to join the Canadian Forces), Katie Matlin abuses OxyContin and goes to rehab, and Victoria Coyne takes crystal meth. On the other hand, Hazel Aden, one of the most prominent black female characters, never so much as lifts a bottle of vodka for the five seasons where she appears. Kelly Taylor, of Beverly Hills 90210, gets addicted to cocaine thanks to her boyfriend Colin. Andie McPhee, of Dawson’s Creek, gets accepted to Harvard and experiments with Ecstasy pills. The list goes on and on.

  What all this taught me as a child was that drug and alcohol use was an “oopsy” mistake for the vast majority of middle- and upper-class white girls, who might indulge if they got bored on a Saturday night. Even if they did experiment with drugs for a little while, white girls would still go on to great colleges; they would marry well and have children, regaling their teenagers with stories of their past. Wash, rinse, and repeat. That’s not to say that white girls and women do not succumb to drug addiction. They do many times over. But as a black girl, if I so much as touched a pill there was no coming back. There is no space for “experimentation” in the world of young black women, for there are already too many obstacles to overcome. Unlike with white girls, our inherent innocence is not assumed. We don’t have the space to be reckless and carefree and then “healed,” regenerating and then returning to regular life. Blame is already draped upon us like a cloak, but not one that can be shed at will.

  When I see my white female contemporaries post pictures of their asses, or facetiously call each other sluts, or share their exploits on weed, LSD, or Klonopin on social media, I know that if I did the same I would embody a historically entrenched belief that I, as a black woman, am nothing but an immoral and filthy animal at my core. I knew this quite well at that Silver Lake party. As a black woman, I knew I could not afford to make a mistake. Fulfilling the expectations of society’s white imagination would be to self-inflict an injury from which I could not recover.

  Once my mother and I had returned to our family home after my surgery—she was not comfortable bringing me back to Harlem, where no one would be looking out for me—I felt that I was dirty and that I needed to take a shower. The anesthesia was wearing off, and so she gave me another Vicodin and another Percocet. Almost as soon as I’d swallowed both pills and stepped into the shower, the soapsuds barely beginning to form on my body, I told her that I needed to get out because I was going to slip and fall. I crash-landed into her king-size bed. Bleeding and blabbering characterized the next forty-eight hours, which passed in an opiate haze. I felt as if someone had unplugged me. Fuses were blown out throughout my entire body. I was never vertical for longer than a few minutes, and I barely spoke because I did not have the ability to do so. As soon as the pills traveled down my throat, I began to slip away. I couldn’t feel a thing, and I hated it. I wanted to feel the pain because it was mine, mine to bear. I was afraid that I might get hooked on the pain meds. I was
terrified of the desire to disconnect from reality, the root of much drug abuse—and that was really the last thing I wanted. I had fought so hard to both survive and thrive, and I didn’t want anything to soften or eradicate the intensity of life altogether. After two days, I swore off the Vicodin and Percocet. I wanted to feel the stitches in my body. I wanted to have some kind of sensation to remind myself that I did go through with a labiaplasty procedure, and that I was alive. So I opted for Advil, which was enough.

  After the extended weekend was over, my mother begged me to take the rest of the week off work to recuperate, but I adamantly refused. I was still working at my hard-won entry-level job in publishing, and although I’d informed my (male) boss that I was having a procedure, I didn’t go into details; I wasn’t about to stay home for a week and refuse to provide a full explanation. I had to prove myself not only because I was new, but also because I was a black woman in an industry where minorities make up less than 5 percent of the workforce. I dreamed of success, and that started with me being strong and pushing through whatever pain I had. I’d chosen to get this procedure and I had chosen to deal with the consequences. I’d be damned if I presented as weak in front of my coworkers. As a black woman, I knew I had to be twice as good, stitched vulva and all.

  Her name was Irie Thomas, and she was an older cousin of one of my former best friends. Six years my senior, she had grown up with her grandmother in an apartment that my real estate agent mother had sold to them. Like many teenagers, she was rebellious, and I never had much to say to her when I was young, partially because I was afraid of her. Her most striking trait was her eyes: intense, dark brown, able to focus without blinking.