Parents and the Pill

Good Muslim girls who aren’t married don’t talk about birth control or contraceptives of any kind. I’m not all that good and have been on the pill for about 6 years now.

My mother who is a physician started writing my prescriptions for me about a year ago. I finally came clean to her and told her I was on the pill. I told her while she was burning off my warts at the kitchen table. She was sticking me with injections of all kinds and I knew it was probably not the best time to come clean about something she was so against but at the same time, I had to tell her.

I had no health insurance and therefore, no doctor, but I did have my mother who writes the whole Shia community in South Jersey prescriptions so I thought, hey, why not tap into a family connection? The first time I brought up the pill I was in my freshman year at college and my friend who would get really awful cramps, just like me, was on the pill and she swore by it.

I bring up the topic with Amee and she instantly launches into a you are not like those other (gori) girls at college. Once they go to college, their parents put them on the pill and it has nothing to do with their periods but girls like that, they might have sex at any point. I could immediately see my college dorm turning into an orgiastic feast, which it never did. I did wait to see if it would happen with much interest, but no, the feasting of young female bodies did never pan out the way my mother hinted it would.

I didn’t know better when I went to college the first time around. I was too young and should never have left the house given the state of mind I was in. In hindsight, maybe it was good for me to feel so alone, so stranded, so alienated, so strange. Not much fun at the time. And it is another (sad, weird, happy ending) story for another time.

Let’s fast forward to seven years later, i.e. the present. Very different person from seven years back. Happens to the best of us, thank god for that.

Amee goes off to Hajj and as is wont to happen to an idiot, my three month birth control prescription runs out two days after she leaves the country. Ok, next best person to call is Abbu when I need other prescriptions but my god, which desi girl goes around asking her father, when she is unmarried, or even when she is married, to call in a birth control prescription? Not me, no siree. Well, OK, maybe I am that idiot.

I was in Houston at the time and standing at the pharmacy wondering if it might be better to call up my cousin who is also a doctor and be like, look, no questions, just call this in for me. I’ll owe you one. It has never been confirmed but I am pretty sure that all my cousins think I am insane. Insane in a very Muslim/Pakistani way since I write about sex, tell their young women children that they never have to get married when they dress up as brides and I have piercings and opinions that I don’t hide.

My immediate family doesn’t work that way. You got something to say, spit it out. A couple of divorces and family scandals later though and we’ve all ‘grown up’ and actually gotten lives, and therefore, the Rizvi cousin clan is now pretty cool. Calling up my cousin to write me a birth control prescription is not something I would ever have considered doing a year before. I was still hesitant but desperate though at the time and needed a doctor.

I call up my cousin. He’s post call and therefore unavailable. Ok, Abbu it is. I call up Abbu. I ask him to be Dr. Rizvi and call in a prescription that Amee always calls in for me. I don’t tell him the name of the drug yet. I give him simple instructions hoping that his too astute brain doesn’t get curious (fat chance, nothing escapes this man. I talk to him but he is never listening to my words but rather to everything that I’m trying to hide behind it). Perhaps I was too cute and simple because a minute into the conversation, he’s like, what’s the name?

Estrostep.

My father and I begin an elaborate dance. He is a much better dancer than I am.

He doesn’t ask what it’s for since I repeat about 12 times in the space of 4 minutes, Amee writes me this prescription all the time, just be Dr. Rizvi and renew the prescription. With such urgency, he knows not to ask. Ok, he says, how many milligrams do I need to call in?

Good question since I have no fucking clue. I am pretty sure there are no milligrams attached to 28 pills but here I have my father who is assuming that I am a little stupid (incorrect) and that my mother always takes care of it (correct).

“Abbu”, I say with some meaning behind my voice, “there are TWENTY EIGHT pills in a packet and I just get that packet”. There is an imperceptible pause and he says “ok, how many milligrams?” I think at this point that he is really just enjoying fucking with me.

“No milligrams Abbu”, at which he scoffs and says he’ll look it up on the internet. I panic for a quick minute and then think, ok I’m 26, I’m on the pill, it’s about time my father knows. We make a date for the next day, even though I need the pill that day, for him to find all the necessary paperwork so that he can pretend to be my mom. He’ll call me after work tomorrow and I can hand the phone to the pharmacist and he will call it in.

Next day after work, there I am, pacing around the pharmacy calling Abbu on my cell phone every ten minutes. He’s doing his daily treadmill routine and since I approve, I keep telling him I’ll wait till he’s done. Doesn’t keep me from calling him every ten minutes and hanging up quickly since I don’t want him to fall off the treadmill since he is still running and talking to me on the phone. Finally, he gets off the treadmill and calls it in.

Amee always gives it a three month renewal. Abbu went for one. I wonder if Amee ever told him that I was on the pill and if she didn’t, is he going to ask her about the prescription he called in for me. Abbu and I didn’t talk about what Estrostep is since we were still dancing but I knew he had looked it up. I tried to bring it up since I’m determined to have somewhat open conversations with my parents but we do have a don’t ask, don’t tell policy in my house. I don’t know if it only extends to me or my other sisters as well. I started with the whole 28 pill package and he says very gently, “I got it. I’ll call it in.”

I’m not sure if I felt embarrassment or just relief that the whole ordeal was over. I felt something when I very cheerily thanked Abbu for taking care of it and then hung up the phone.

We don’t EVER talk about sex in my house. EVER. Which desi parents do? In America, you are pretty much surrounded by sex (thank you advertising industry and lonely men and women who want to get laid) but still, it’s not even like we skirt the issue. It is just absent. I have become very used to be being a sexual being (sexual being has nothing to do with sex but more with awareness of one’s own prowess) and when I would go home to NJ, I was asexual.

It just wasn’t the way I dressed. It was the ways in which I talked, held my body, held myself….it was all very distant. My body had nothing to do with the other very natural inclinations of my body. That was just how it was. My being ok with being sexual in NJ, again, it is another story.

I will not answer the question as to why I am on the pill. I’m not done dancing with the Chowk crowd here.