Residue

I don't think the smell of latex can ever bring up any memory but me holding little plastic jars of urine and waiting for three minutes to pass by to see if there's one line or two lines on that little white strip. I've been volunteering at a health clinic in my attempts to reach that job with the World Health Organization and so far my job's consisted of filing medical charts and making bags with condoms in it. Lately though, I've been in the lab room doing pregnancy tests and strictly that. Soon enough, I'll be the one giving results. I hear all the situations, the condom broke, I missed a pill, it was my first time, and so on and so on. But there's almost nothing striking as seeing the waiting room full of 6 middle schoolers with their backpacks and their uniforms. 3 asked for condoms. 1 asked for a pregnancy test. And then you make the judgement, "You're 14. I know because you're giggling with your friends over stickers that you've put on your face. Why are you even here?" I lead her to bathroom, explain what to do but I want to tell her to go home, be jaded, sing those pop songs, follow those pop idols, but forget about this sex stuff. I think the entire staff breathed a collective sigh when I told them it was a negative. And the 14 year old became a 14 year old girl when we told her the same news. She shrunk into her chair, fidgeted, and had the doe eye look.

It makes me sad. It makes me hate our biology. It makes me wish for change, the way any sociologist would, in structural and cultural barriers. (Though I will say that there is nothing in the world like reaching into a bin completely filled with condoms and pulling a handful out.)