To Pill or Not to Pill

Birth control pills are doing what they’re supposed to do — ruining the modicum of sexual desire left inside me. After spending years fighting off men who demanded I got on the pill — cause going raw ‘just feels so much better’ — I’ve been instructed by another man to take it at the tender age of 38. This time, the man in question has a more medical agenda than a personal vendetta against condoms. I’d been suffering from cyst-induced period cramps, and one way to solve the problem was to stop my periods altogether. So, I went on the pill, like a rule-abiding citizen grassing on their neighbour’s small-scale cannabis operation, and sexual desire became an archaic ritual I could only read in dusty old books borrowed from a derelict library nobody bothered to visit.

Now that the pill has chemically culled my passion, sex is no longer a distraction. Not that I was living in the heydays of sexual conquest before. Stuck in a long-term monogamous and monotonous relationship, I wasn’t exactly in the thralls of fervorous love. Sure, I’d entertain the idea of an affair when a certain someone was to pique my interest. There was the bread stall guy whose dimples burnt a hole in my bank account as I developed an unsustainable artisanal bread addiction. And, of course, the tall, dark and devastatingly handsome kilt-clad Scotsman who stole my heart at a ceilidh. I carried his disarming smile with me for months, hoping to bask in it one more time, to no avail. I christened him the Phantom of the Ceilidh — a fictional hero I used as a crutch while going through troubling personal circumstances. Naturally, I didn’t act on those feelings, but the animalistic hankering was all-consuming nonetheless.

The pill cured me of all my immoral sexual impulses, like a chemical priest sweeping in to perform an exorcism, leaving me cleansed of all my deviant sins. Hallelujah! I no longer have intrusive desires about other men or any man at all. My highly sterile existence would put Tibetan monks to shame. Before the pill, there was lust. Well, at least specks of it. And yes, it was misdirected and perhaps unscrupulous, but still, my body was doing what it was supposed to do, chasing after what it wanted. I miss that pining. Is it wrong to want the lust back, even though it’s been urging me to do the immoral? At 38, why do I still have boys in my head when I already have a man in my bed? Maybe the pill is the greatest invention to rein in women’s sexuality. It morphs our sexual energy into something more domestic and highly malleable, turning us into good little productive soldiers. Perhaps it’s not only pregnancies we’re freed from; the pill has also liberated us from our libidos.