CoL49 group reading ch6 - then there’s this

[Michael Bailey]

They say it’s different every time you read a great story. I came into this
reading thinking that Oedipa had slept with at least one other person
besides Metzger, but it doesn’t seem she did.

I also never noticed this paragraph before:

“Waves of nausea, lasting five to ten minutes, would strike her at random,
cause her deep misery, then vanish as if they had never been. There were
headaches, nightmares, menstrual pains. One day she drove into L.A., picked
a doctor at random from the phone book, went to her, told her she thought
she was pregnant. They arranged for tests. Oedipa gave her name as Grace
Bortz and didn’t show up for her next appointment.”




 She picked a female doctor, that’s interesting, & in the early ‘60s
would’ve been slim pickin’s.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7784804/


Waves of nausea could be morning sickness though not just in the morning,
but menstrual pains? That’s interesting and ambiguous.

Good Housekeeping says they can occur in the absence of a period:
https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/health/a41340417/cramps-but-no-period/



Giving her name as Grace Bortz - that’s also interesting. Almost as if a
paucity of identity-affirming relationships in her own name has driven her
to try to take on Grace Bortz’s.

One good reason for not showing up for a next appointment would be the
arrival of her period.
But that’s not specified explicitly.

- when she gets drunk and drives, probably that shows she knows she’s not
pregnant?