These few lines are from a conversation that Jimmy and I had in our upstairs hallway this morning.  It happened to be about menstruation, but it just as easily could have been about sex, psychopharmacology, or even double-jointedness.

Jimmy: Bodies are weird.

Jane: That may be because we think of them weirdly.

Jimmy: And that would be because of our bodies.

Touché.

And speaking of bodies…

“Tethered to the Body,” an essay on my adjustment to wearing an insulin pump and its affect on my sense of (sexual) self, appears in the fall 2008 issue of Bellevue Literary Review. The full version is not online.  You can get the journal at bookstores, or you can e-mail me and I’ll send you a PDF.  In the meantime, here’s the first paragraph:

A $6,000 insulin pump with an on-board computer chip is not alluring.  Neither is the white mesh adhesive patch on my naked abdomen or the length of nylon tubing that connects the patch to the pump.  There is only illness, and there is no way to make that sexy.  After several years as a medical device wearer, I know.