intro
Though I consider myself to be a fairly grown, independent individual, immigrating to another country has placed a lot more complications on things that I would have been comfortable doing back home in the States. Some of those things:
making a gyno appointment
renting a car / driving a car
buying a piece of furniture off facebook marketplace
It’s been on my list forever to get a general checkup Downstairs. Though healthcare is generally free here, the system is still a bit daunting to me. With every day that passed, the motes of procrastination continued to build until I had monolith of a chore.
Though I have a driver’s license, it is a California driver’s license, and therefore needs to be converted to a Finnish one if I’m staying in Finland for over three months. Now that it’s been (checks watch) just over three years, mine is completely invalid, and anyway — I don’t know what the hell a kilometer is, or even how to drive stick, which is the norm here.
Browsing Facebook Marketplace used to be one of my favorite hobbies when I was living in San Diego post-grad, my wallet full of stimulus checks and my calendar virtually empty due to lockdown. I bought all sorts of things off Facebook, driving around to get them in my mom’s red Murano. For the last two years I’ve been dreaming of a new couch for our apartment in Helsinki, but this proved itself to be quite the challenge. Almost no one has a car here, due to the public transportation system being so good (damn you hsl!!!). If you want a big piece your options are a: get lucky with the people you know, b: try your luck shimmying your wares onto a tram, or c: rent a van.
This week, in the span of 24 hours, I faced the monolith. I booked a gyno appointment, rented a van, and picked up a new couch.
gyno
Every gynecologist appointment I’ve had in California followed the same etiquette, in which the professionals try their very best to pretend like they’re not about to see your vagina. You go into the room, you’re dressed when the doctor first sees you. The doctor leaves, you take off your pants and underwear. They give you a paper blanket to put over your lap for modesty. The doctor knocks before they come back in. They announce, before the exam: “I am going to touch you now.” And then whatever happens happens. They leave you again to change in privacy. It never occurred to me that there would be any other method for this sort of exam, but evidently, in Finland, where nudity is so much more casual, things were bound to be different.
I waited in the reception area, a knot in my gut because I didn’t know what to expect. They called my number. An older woman led me into a small room with a little hallway. There were no chairs. The light was aggressively fluorescent in the way that only doctors’ offices are. In the middle of the room was the exam table. The doctor typed something into her computer with her back to me. I stood there, very awkward.
“Just labeling the tube,” she said.
“No worries,” I replied. (No worries??)
She asked me to verify my Finnish social security number. I did. When she had finished with the label, she swiveled around on her stool.
“You need to take your pants off,” she said.
“Right.” I added, as a joke, “I’m guessing my underwear as well?”
She looked at me like I was very stupid. I shrugged, then proceeded to take off my pants and underwear in the little hallway while she watched benignly. In just my shirt, I crossed the room and sat on the exam table. Without the complimentary napkin over my legs, I stared at my thighs, wide and bare and starkly illuminated. There was something quite alienating about this view, this angle, like there was a wedge between myself and myself. I wondered if maybe Americans are actually onto something with that weird, flimsy blue napkin.
In the exact moment that she did it, the nurse said, “I touch you now,” and literally jammed a giant cotton swab inside me. No speculum, no lube, no preamble.
I’ve never had a gyno exam hurt before. This one did.
“OW.”
She cranked the swab around like she was trying to open a vault door. The pain wasn’t the worst I’ve felt, but it was deeply unpleasant in a totally new way.
“Okay. You’re done,” she said, extracting it with a hot scratching sensation.
I got dressed in the hallway again. I said thank you and left. I discovered, quite soon after, that the searing pain continued every time I peed. According to Reddit, this is common. (Why is this common? We’ve put people on the moon — surely we can come up with less torturous methods for gynecological exams. But that’s another essay).
To decompress after, I went for a quick swim at Mustikkamaa, then hurried home for phase two.
couch
I promised our friend Ron that I would buy him food if he helped us drive a van to pick up the squashy blue couch I had found on facebook marketplace. His vacation had just started, and he agreed to the task much more readily than I expected. Ville, Ron and I climbed into the rather cramped front seat and set off for Herttoniemi.
I hadn’t seen Ville at all that day, and obviously I wanted to tell him about my exam. Squished between the two of them, I proceeded to share the grisly details of what had gone on with vagina earlier. They were both very quiet. Ron took a thoughtful sip of white monster, and all of us looked out at the road.
“Anyway, my urethra feels like it’s on fire now,” I concluded, with flourish. I think someone changed the subject. Maybe it was me.
We were early. Our couch guy, Timo, emailed to say he would be there soon. We parked in the lot next to an apartment building and milled about. Herttoniemi is a few metro stops away from the city center — objectively not that far, but you can really tell the difference. The air is exceptionally quiet here, and there is more of a suburban feel. I sat in a patch of cool grass and tried very hard not to think about my urethra.
Finally our guy pulled up. I knew it was our guy because I said, “Are you the couch guy?” and he said “Yes.”
He looked vaguely like Vincent Chase from Entourage. He was wearing black toe shoes. He led us upstairs to an almost entirely empty apartment. And there, practically radiating on the shiny hardwood floors, sat our couch. It was perfect, just as I knew it would be.
The boys muscled the couch downstairs. We slid it into the back of the van. I sent Timo 50 euros on MobilePay and that was that.
“Fucking toe shoes,” muttered Ron as we headed back toward Töölö.
“He looked like Vincent Chase,” I said.
“It was the hair,” said Ville.
When we made it back to our building, I made a beeline for the elevator, worried that I was about to have a white-hot pee on the street. Luckily, I did not. I came back out onto the landing as Ville and Ron struggled up the stairs. With a bit of fancy footwork we got the couch inside the apartment. Seeing it there, flush against the wall, literally the perfect size for our space, made me gleam with a metallic sort of satisfaction. I hadn’t realized how big the monolith had really gotten, until I knocked it down.
xx Sidney