I felt vulnerable, as anyone would when lying half undressed on a table with their legs spread in metal stirrups and the hands of a stranger touching them, their labia, their cervix—my body. "Try to relax," the doctor said.

My small-town modern ballet class competed and won the honor of dancing for the elevation of mankind in a pasture stocked with live animals. All expenses paid and eternal fame and so forth. Plus a token of gratitude for each.

My memories and I sleepwalk into town, arm in arm, down the street of black stockings and long skirts, our flat heels click-clacking on the cobblestones. We pass the hat shop with its window of false promises behind which forgotten…