Another day passes. I am on Spring Break. It feels like spring, and my mood has lightened. I am ready to play. But with a pandemic, it is difficult to play…at least in the ways I was accustomed to. Visiting used bookstores. Going through thrift stores. I can still hike and do photography, but I make sure to wear my mask. I hope you are doing the same.

Tonight I give you a story that encapsulates experiences many women have encountered. I suspect they will continue to encounter these experiences until we begin to value women as something other than bodies. I give you…The Great Tampon Caper.

THE GREAT TAMPON CAPER

She opened her handbag and tipped the contents on the floor. “There. See? Nothing!”

The men knelt to paw through all the things…her personal life, her secret life, her…life. Her life. She wished she had cleaned out the bag before she left home, but she never imagined she’d be accused of…what? Smuggling secrets? She wanted to laugh. This company had no secrets, at least none that anybody wanted. If she had wanted to spy to get rich, she would need to change jobs. The only secrets of any note were the ways they got around human resources requirements to keep the place mostly men…white men, she thought with scorn.

The day had not started well. Kaitlin was nearly late for work because she got caught in traffic. She burst in just two minutes before, just in time to get to the time clock. She dumped her stuff at her desk and headed for the bathroom. When she got back, men surrounded her desk…and Jade’s desk. They demanded to know where she’d been. She resisted the urge to go back to the bathroom and see if she could get the old tampon out of the trash for them, to prove where she’d been. Like it was any of their business.

“Someone is taking things out that they are not allowed to remove”, Jade whispered.

“Like what?”

Jade shrugged. “They act like it’s some sort of top secret classified files. Like we’d have access to that even if they had any.”

They kept an eye on the men as they searched around and under the desks. One of the men dusted her desk for fingerprints, and she almost laughed. Seriously, did these men know anything? Of course they would find her fingerprints on her desk. And now, theirs, since they were   not wearing gloves. “What’s this?” One of the men held an object to the light.

“A prism.” Kaitlin wanted to grab her stuff from him.

“A prism. Why?”

“Because I like the way the colors look when the sun shines through it.”

“Bet you could use this to send Morse Code, right?”

“I don’t know. Maybe if you knew Morse Code…and you had someone to send it to…and time to waste sending Morse Code messages through a prism.” Kaitlin only thought it. She didn’t answer out loud. She kept a wary eye on the man opening and closing all the drawers in her desk. “What are you looking for? I might be able to help you find it. I know where everything is in that desk.” She smiled her sweetest smile, resisting the urge to bare her teeth.

“Nothing…well…something….but…” The man turned his back on her. “Over here, guys. I found something.” He danged her purse off two fingers.

“That’s just my purse. I carry my stuff in that.”

“What stuff?”

“You know, stuff. Money. Credit cards. Check book.”

“Lipstick?”

“I don’t wear lipstick.”

“Right.” The man laughed. “All women wear lipstick; they just want us to think they don’t, that they naturally look that pretty. And you’re pretty, aren’t you? So of course you wear lipstick.”

“Whatever.” Kaitlin had no desire to explain to this man that she would wear no make up as long as it was tested on animals. They probably didn’t care anyway.

The man started to open the purse, but Jade snatched it out of his hands. “You don’t have any right to do that!” She handed the purse to Kaitlin. “You have to have a reason…and a warrant.”

“We have a reason.” The man turned mean. “And if you don’t show us what you’re carrying, we will have a reason to yank your arms behind your backs, twist your hair through our fingers, and haul you downtown to the police station.”

That was when Kaitlin tipped the purse. “There. See? Nothing.”

One of the men swooped for something, a piece of paper folded four times. He opened it. “Nope. Just some stupid love note.”

“Let me see that.” Another man took it and held it to the light. “No secret writing. Maybe code?”

“Code? That’s a letter from a man I…used to…date.” Kaitlin reached for it, but they held it out of her way. “It’s just…a letter.”

“It’s a poem.”

“Good way to pass secrets. I hear Shakespeare did that…coded into his works. And the Bible.” The man took a pen and started crossing off every third letter. “Like this…coded.” He read out the results when he finished. “Nothing. It’s nonsense.”

“Code.” Another man took the paper. “We should take it to a…a…lexicographer.”

“That’s  a person who puts together dictionaries.” Jade didn’t bother to keep the scorn out of her voice. “You want a decoder. Sure, take it. They’ll tell you it’s nonsense.”

The men pawed through the rest of the stuff. Coins lying loose in the bottom of the purse, the book she was reading, the book she lost before she finished reading it, three photographs of Kaitlin’s dog, and…the man picked up the box of tampons, realized what they were, and dropped them as if they burned him. “Eww!”

“Come on, guys. We’re barking up the wrong tree. Nothing to see here.” The men turned as a unit, trying to look military, and headed back to their offices, their turn as Sherlock Holmes ending in embarrassing empty hands.

“Shh.” Kaitlin motioned to Jade. “Don’t say anything. Meet me for lunch.”

The women sat down, finally able to begin their morning routine. Computers made the little noises computers make, keyboards clacked, and papers shuffled. Somewhere down the hall a phone rang. Nothing disturbed their work all morning.

Lunch. The café on the corner?  “Too public”, Jade whispered. “Let’s go…to the women’s room.”

“Not here.” Kaitlin worried that the walls had ears. “Meet me at…the bus station.”

The bus station was only about a minute walk from the office, and it was a beautiful day. Kaitlin and Jade kicked off the heels they were required to wear at work and donned sneakers, more suitable for walking. They walked together, chatting about friends and movies…they kept the tone light.

There were three other women in the ladies room. Kaitlin ducked into a stall and sat, pretending to pee. As soon as the women left, Jade locked the door. “Well?”

“I got it.” Kaitlin pulled out the tampon box. “See for yourself.” She pulled out the paper she hid in there last evening before she left. “It’s all there.”

Jade read the memo, the memo that laid it all out. The memo that told human resources not to do anything to the men who had sexually harassed her. Not just Jade, but many women. Kaitlin had a wicked left hook, and the men at the office knew it; she had never been treated to the abuse the other women received. That’s why she was selected to sneak into the boss’s files and see if she could find anything. Not just because of her college boxing career, but because of her status as the only unabused female in the company.

“This…wow. It’s…worse than I thought.”

“Yeah. They knew…they had the evidence…they could have fired him, you could have prosecuted. But…”

“They decided to blame me…”

“Yeah.” Kaitlin remembered the hullabaloo in the office when Jade decided to report the executive who trapped her in the lounge after giving her a job that required her to stay late. No one else was there. Jade had no way to get away from him. She left in tears, her dress torn and her heel broken…but that was far from the worst of the experience. She called Kaitlin that night. She told her in whispers. Kaitlin urged her to go to HR. Neither of them expected they would reprimand Jade, calling her a liar, a slut, and threatening her with termination.

The memo was only one thing Kaitlin had discovered. “There are a lot of files”, she said. “I couldn’t bring them out. I only had room for one, so I brought yours.”

“Can you get the rest?” Jade held the memo as if it were a lifeline. “How long are you on your period?”

The women laughed. They returned to the office lighter in spirit than they had felt in a long time. The memo was tucked back into the safe place she tucked it. Over the next few nights, she would collect a few more, enough to demonstrate it was a pervasive pattern.

When the story broke, the papers liked to refer to it as the Great Tampon Caper. They emphasized the attractiveness of the women, the way the women were dressed, and Kaitlin’s boxing career. The actual allegations were buried several paragraphs down in every article.

The DA decided against filing criminal charges. “Hard to get a conviction”, he shrugged when Kaitlin confronted him. “Even with evidence.”

The Civil Rights Commission was not so sanguine. They had the evidence; they filed the case. In the end, the women won against the company; they were found guilty of sexual misconduct and violating the civil rights of the women. Everyone in the office was sent to training courses on sexual harassment. The office paid Jade…and the other women…a month’s salary as a settlement. When the dust settled, the office returned to normal. Nothing changed. Kaitlin and Jade handed in their resignations the same day.