I am not crying in the gynecologist's office, wearing a paper dress--I tried this once before, in the boarding high school, when news papers and shower curtains stitched into skirts sufficed for rebellion--on the sterilized counter a birth control company has sponsored a larger-than-life model of my reproductive system. It looks like something you’d find in a biology class. It can be taken apart in chunks and the tubes are color coded in the same hues as It’s a Girl! and It’s A Boy! gifts. But something is off, so I inch forward feeling like a pervert at the edge of the paper-covered table, leaning in to see the anatomy more clearly.

We’re driving off campus in school uniforms and Ashley’s new-to-her Jeep Wrangler. It has zippers around the windows and I am in awe of them: Zippers. To hold windows. Even though I can feel the inefficiency of the design in the February cold I think: I could sew a car.

I already know all about this, but Ashley says: “Did you know that your pee hole is different from your fuck hole?”

Distracted by her terminology I pause. Recalling my own fascination, roughly twelve years before while dressing myself after a bath, I consider these holes. “Of course,” I say finally, thinking not of the holes but of her discovery of them, and so late. “Didn’t you?”

As I say it I know it sounds snobbish, but we’re in biology together, she’s had a vagina nearly two decades by now, and it’s a rare moment when I know more about the function of these body parts than she does--I can’t help but enjoy it.

“No.” She admits simply, without embarrassment.

“How did you find out?” I’m thinking about books, and the internet is becoming a thing. I am notpicturing her finding out on her own.

“I--you know. Just looked.”

I nod. Despite the inexplicable delay in curiosity, this makes sense. I can’t quite imagine her picking up our text book after a shift at K-Mart, so the image of her crystalizes: her in the same hunched position I’d been in as a five-year-old, pushing things around and taking inventory, the picture feels only a little awkward with her near-adult body: the pubic hair and breasts I could not have imagined as a child. But to discover something so new in your body as an adult, I thought, must have been terrifying.

The model is labeled with fine print and I slide down and off the disposable sheet to get a better look. I am already nothearing the news I’m sure the doctor will give me when she comes back to study my cervix like I am studying this giant plastic organ. I convince myself that by reading and rereading the scientific names I can learn my way out of my own body, I can stitch together my too-generous flesh with this unfeeling one, where no cells grow into horrifying masses.

Finally the name next to the speck that caught my eye comes into focus: Urethra. No, I think, getting up for a closer look: It’s not quite the right place, it’s too small, I look down at my paper lap and think about what I’ve seen there. But there’s no mistaking the small black lettering, and like that, I have to let it go.