The following piece of fiction is a short story. Enjoy!

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Step 1: Pop the Hood

No, you can’t just pry it open, silly! Tsk Tsk. Go inside the driver’s side door and look for the little handle with the picture of a hood on it. It kind of looks like a boat. It’s near the brake—the brake for your foot, not the phallic looking parking brake by the center console and the PRNDL. Get your head out of the gutter. You should hear a satisfying popping noise, and your dad, who should be on speaker phone at this point, will hear it too and tell you to lift up the hood with your hand. It’s going to be surprisingly heavy, but fear not, it’s easy to open. It may not stand up by itself, and there should be a stick-looking-thingy with a hook that you can use to keep it propped open.

You stand there for a second observing your good work, hands holding up the hood and you start feeling some kind of masculine euphoria. If only you weren’t an oh so helpless woman who doesn’t know what to do next. Your arms are still holding up the hood because you don’t believe that the stick-thingy is gonna hold the hood’s weight, but it will. You can let go. Relax.

It’s like last week when my haggard-looking gynecologist in papery peach scrubs looked me in the eye, at the same time as her tattooed forearm with silver dog tags glared at me, and said “Relax hun, it’s just like putting in a tampon.” It was not. Have YOU ever done a wet prep on yourself? Tampons have an applicator; this long snappy Q-tip thing had no guard rails. But you’re lucky to even get tested, even if the doctor can’t be bothered to shove the Q-Tip into you herself. That’s your affair.

Anyway, the hood (and you) are open now.

Step 2: Find the Dipstick

So next you’re going to continue with this simple procedure and find the dipstick. When your father’s gravelly voice says “dipstick,” you’re not allowed to roll your eyes or chuckle. If you’re going to laugh, do it on the inside like a respectful daughter. It’s what Rev. Marcus would’ve wanted. Now you fumble your hands through the engine looking for the cap thing with the oil can on it. It kind of looks like Aladdin’s magic lamp without all of Disney’s orientalism BS. It’s like finding the opening to your vagina when you’re stuck in the cold bathroom alone, pants and underwear around your ankles, with that damn long Q-tip wobbling in your hands. Do you squat? Do you put one leg up on the toilet seat and bend over? Up to your own discretion. But, if you’re doing a wet prep as a woman, you’re bound to have a vaginal opening somewhere, just as your car should have something with a magic oil lamp on it.

Find that cosmic part of the engine and unscrew it. Voila! The dipstick is inside. They come in all shapes and sizes, but it’s not about the size, is it? No, it’s the motion of the ocean that makes it count. And by that I mean that’s what my ex-boyfriend told me before he changed the subject and said “Hmm, you should go see if you have Chlamydia.” Back to the motion of the ocean, though. In the case of this dipstick, you do have to move it a certain way, and it is long for a reason. The reason being to check your oil level. Like how the Q-tip is apparently long enough to go five inches up inside of you. Get back to the dipstick.

At this point, too, your hands will be just as oily and dirty as the floor in the Health Department’s bathroom.

Step 3: Pull the Dipstick Out and Wipe it Off

Now that you certainly have the dipstick, pull that bad boy out and wipe it off with a clean paper towel. I didn’t tell you to grab a paper towel before all of this because my dad left that part out too. And then he laughed at me as if I was supposed to know this stick that measures my oil would be covered in oil. Come on. I’m just a twenty-two-year-old teenage girl, not a mechanic.

So scramble to find a clean cloth or towel or something, and pull that sucker out. Then wipe it off. With that being all clean and shiny, now is the glorious time where you can actually check the oil level in your car. Try not to think about how you’re about to insert the dipstick into the hole because it will give you flashbacks to the clinic’s dark bathroom and the feeling of dry cotton and wood up your whatsit.

Step 4: Check the Oil Level

To actually check the oil level, slowly glide the dipstick into the hole from whence it came, and let it jiggle around inside for about ten seconds—not the thirty seconds you were supposed to rotate the Q-tip against your “inner walls” to get a good reading. Here, it takes a shorter amount of time but is still uncomfortable as onlookers at your apartment complex are probably thinking, what is this small child doing bent over an open engine with grease on her new white One Direction T-shirt. Jokes on them: your T-Shirt is from middle school. You just have kept it in wonderful mint condition all these years.

Regardless, let the awkwardness subside as you dip the stick and then slowly pull it out. You may face some resistance because the opening is kind of small (sound familiar?). Your dad’s voice on the phone will snap you back to reality when he says, “So, what do you see?” Honestly, you don’t know what you see, other than that there is definitely oil on the bottom of the dipstick. You tell him that, but he’s not satisfied. So, grab your phone with your oily hand and send him a picture. Ponder why you even called him in the first place and wish you’d used Google instead. Feel regret that it’s too late. At least the Health Department had graphics and instructions on the wall.

Here, you’re just standing outside in the damp dark waiting for the fifty-five-year-old on the other end of the line to tell you if there is in fact oil in your car, which you can see right in front of you.

Step 5: Google if the Oil Level Looks Right

Turns out, your dad has never seen a dipstick like yours before (don’t laugh! dipsticks aren’t passed down to daughters, only sons!), so you have to actually use the internet, which you wanted to do all along, to figure out if the oil level is right. But, you can only do this now that you have your dad’s permission. Hang up the phone. Damn that whole patriarchy thing.

Looking at videos of presumably other dads on YouTube checking their oil for your car’s same make and model, decide whether you need azithromycin—I mean more oil—based on how much is on the dipstick. In this case, it’s not the Health Department telling you if you have some kind of infection; you get to do this diagnosis all by yourself, and boy does it feel bad! You’re not a professional, but you’re doing your best, and that’s all that matters. Report results back to dad. Call him, and when he tells you he feels like a failure of a father for not teaching you how to do this before you moved out, hold your tongue.

You know he’s failed as a father, but now is not the time to open that can of oil. I mean antibiotics. I mean worms.

Step 6: Put the Dipstick Back, Close the Hood, and Go About Your Day

Perfect, there’s oil in your car. Hooray! Backtrack through all you’ve done so far: put the dipstick back and screw its cap on tight, unhook the stick that’s kept your car’s jaws open, and let the hood slam down into place. Don’t make the mistake of gently trying to push the hood back. No, no that won’t work. You have to let it slam like a man! No time for that womanly nonsense of gentleness. I thought I’d hurt my car’s feelings if the hood fell down too hard, but the car is fine.

After you’re sure it’s shut, you can hang up on the phone with your dad—but not before embracing the few seconds where you both feel like you’re supposed to say “I love you,” but neither one does. Now that you’ve hung up, you can go about your day, oil and all. Well, you could go about your day, but you also have to grapple with how you’ve kind of just violated your car.

Now, in the open air of the night, you can sit down on the curb and wait for the Health Department to call you back. Sure your car has oil, but do you have Chlamydia?

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