This monologue is based on one woman’s story. I want to thank her here for sharing it with me. I am in awe of her spirit and strength, as I am in awe of every woman I met who survived these terrible atrocities in the former Yugoslavia. This piece is for the women of Bosnia.
MY VAGINA WAS MY VILLAGE
My vagina was green, water soft pink fields, cow mooing sun resting sweet boyfriend touching lightly with soft piece of blond straw.
There is something between my legs. I do not know what it is. I do not know where it is. I do not touch. Not now. Not anymore. Not since.
My vagina was chatty, can’t wait, so much, so much saying, words talking, can’t quit trying, can’t quit saying, oh yes, oh yes.
Not since I dream there’s a dead animal sewn in down there with thick black fishing line. And the bad dead animal smell cannot be removed. And its throat is slit and it bleeds through all my summer dresses.
My vagina singing all girl songs, all goat bells ringing songs, all wild autumn field songs, vagina songs, vagina home songs.
Not since the soldiers put a long thick rifle inside me. So cold, the steel rod canceling my heart. Don’t know whether they’re going to fire it or shove it through my spinning brain. Six of them, monstrous doctors with black masks shoving bottles up me too. There were sticks, and the end of a broom.
My vagina swimming river water, clean spilling water over sun-baked stones over stone clit, clit stones over and over.
Not since I heard the skin tear and made lemon screeching sounds, not since a piece of my vagina came off in my hand, a part of the lip, now one side of the lip is completely gone.
My vagina. A live wet water village. My vagina my hometown.
Not since they took turns for seven days smelling like feces and smoked meat, they left their dirty sperm inside me. I became a river of poison and pus and all the crops died, and the fish.
My vagina a live wet water village.
They invaded it. Butchered it and burned it down.
I do not touch now.
Do not visit.
I live someplace else now.
I don’t know where that is.
VAGINA FACT
In the nineteenth century, girls who learned to develop orgasmic capacity by masturbation were regarded as medical problems. Often they were “treated” or “corrected” by amputation or cautery of the clitoris or “miniature chastity belts,” sewing the vaginal lips together to put the clitoris out of reach, and even castration by surgical removal of the ovaries. But there are no references in the medical literature to the surgical removal of testicles or amputation of the penis to stop masturbation in boys.
In the United States, the last recorded clitoridectomy for curing masturbation was performed in 1948—on a five-year-old girl.
—The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets
VAGINA FACT
Genital mutilation has been inflicted on 80 [million] to 100 million girls and young women. In countries where it is practiced, mostly African, about 2 million youngsters a year can expect the knife—or the razor or a glass shard—to cut their clitoris or remove it altogether, [and] to have part or all of the labia . . . sewn together with catgut or thorns.
Often the operation is prettified as “circumcision.” The African specialist Nahid Toubia puts it plain: In a man it would range from amputation of most of the penis, to “removal of all the penis, its roots of soft tissue and part of the scrotal skin.”
Short-term results include tetanus, septicemia, hemorrhages, cuts in the urethra, bladder, vaginal walls, and anal sphincter. Long-term: chronic uterine infection, massive scars that can hinder walking for life, fistula formation, hugely increased agony and danger during childbirth, and early deaths.
—The New York Times, April 12, 1996
MY ANGRY VAGINA
My vagina’s angry. It is. It’s pissed off. My vagina’s furious and it needs to talk. It needs to talk about all this shit. It needs to talk to you. I mean, what’s the deal? An army of people out there thinking up ways to torture my poor-ass, gentle, loving vagina. . . . Spending their days constructing psycho products and nasty ideas to undermine my pussy. Vagina motherfuckers.
All this shit they’re constantly trying to shove up us, clean us up—stuff us up, make it go away. Well, my vagina’s not going away. It’s pissed off and it’s staying right here. Like tampons—what the hell is that? A wad of dry fucking cotton stuffed up there. Why can’t they find a way to subtly lubricate the tampon? As soon as my vagina sees it, it goes into shock. It says, Forget it. It closes up. You need to work with the vagina, introduce it to things, prepare the way. That’s what foreplay’s all about. You got to convince my vagina, seduce my vagina, engage my vagina’s trust. You can’t do that with a dry wad of fucking cotton.
Stop shoving things up me. Stop shoving and stop cleaning it up. My vagina doesn’t need to be cleaned up. It smells good already. Not like rose petals. Don’t try to decorate. Don’t believe him when he tells you it smells like rose petals when it’s supposed to smell like pussy. That’s what they’re doing—trying to clean it up, make it smell like bathroom spray or a garden. All those douche sprays—floral, berry, rain. I don’t want my pussy to smell like rain. All cleaned up like washing a fish after you cook it. Want to taste the fish. That’s why I ordered it.
Then there’s those exams. Who thought them up? There’s got to be a better way to do those exams. Why the scary paper dress that scratches your tits and crunches when you lie down so you feel like a wad of paper someone threw away? Why the rubber gloves? Why the flashlight all up there like Nancy Drew working against gravity, why the Nazi steel stirrups, the mean cold duck lips they shove inside you? What’s that? My vagina’s angry about those visits. It gets defended weeks in advance. It shuts down, won’t “relax.” Don’t you hate that? “Relax your vagina, relax your vagina.” Why? My vagina’s not stupid. Relax so you can shove those cold duck lips inside it? I don’t think so.
Why can’t they find some nice, delicious purple velvet and wrap it around me, lay me down on some feathery cotton spread, put on some nice, friendly pink or blue gloves, and rest my feet in some fur-covered stirrups? Warm up the duck lips. Work with my vagina.
But no, more tortures: dry wad of fucking cotton, cold duck lips, and thong underwear. That’s the worst. Thong underwear. Who thought that up? Moves around all the time, gets stuck in the back of your vagina, real crusty butt.
Vagina’s supposed to be loose and wide, not held together. That’s why girdles are so bad. We need to move and spread and talk and talk. Vaginas need comfort. Make something like that, something to give them pleasure. No, of course they won’t do that. Hate to see a woman having pleasure, particularly sexual pleasure. I mean, make a nice pair of soft cotton underwear with a French tickler built in. Women would be coming all day long, coming in the supermarket, coming on the subway, coming, happy vaginas. They wouldn’t be able to stand it. Seeing all those energized, not-taking-shit, hot, happy vaginas.
If my vagina could talk, it would talk about itself like me; it would talk about other vaginas; it would do vagina impressions.
It would wear Harry Winston diamonds, no clothing—just there, all draped in diamonds.
My vagina helped release a giant baby. It thought it would be doing more of that. It’s not. Now it wants to travel, doesn’t want a lot of company. It wants to read and know things and get out more. It wants sex. It loves sex. It wants to go deeper. It’s hungry for depth. It wants kindness. It wants change. It wants silence and freedom and gentle kisses and warm liquids and deep touch. It wants chocolate. It wants to scream. It wants to stop being angry. It wants to come. It wants to want. It wants. My vagina, my vagina. Well . . . it wants everything.
For the last ten years I have been actively involved with women who have no homes, women we call “homeless people” so we can categorize and forget them. I have done all kinds of things with these women, who have become my friends. I run recovery groups
for women who have been raped or suffered incest, and groups for women addicted to drugs and alcohol. I go to the movies with these women, I have meals with them. I hang out. Over the past ten years I have interviewed hundreds of women. In all that time I have met only two who were not subjected to incest as young girls or raped as young women. I have evolved a theory that for most of these women, “home” is a very scary place, a place they have fled, and that the shelters where I meet them are the first places many of them ever find safety, protection, or comfort, in the community of other women.
This monologue is one woman’s story as she told it to me. I met her about five years ago, in a shelter. I would like to tell you it’s an unusual story—brutal; extreme. But it’s not. In fact, it’s not nearly as disturbing as many of the stories I’ve heard in the years since. Poor women suffer terrible sexual violence that goes unreported. Because of their social class, these women do not have access to therapy or other methods of healing. Their repeated abuse ultimately eats away at their self-esteem, driving them to drugs, prostitution, AIDS, and in many cases, death. Fortunately, this particular story has a different outcome. This woman met another woman in that shelter, and they fell in love. Through their love, they got out of the shelter system and have a beautiful life together today. I wrote this piece for them, for their amazing spirits, for the women we do not see, who hurt and who need us.
THE LITTLE COOCHI SNORCHER THAT COULD
[Southern woman of color]
Memory: December 1965; Five Years Old
My mama tells me in a scary, loud, life-threatening voice to stop scratching my coochi snorcher. I become terrified that I’ve scratched it off down there. I do not touch myself again, even in the bath. I am afraid of the water getting in and filling me up so I explode. I put Band-Aids over my coochi snorcher to cover the hole, but they fall off in the water. I imagine a stopper, a bathtub plug up there to prevent things from entering me. I sleep with three pairs of happy heart-patterned cotton underpants underneath my snap-up pajamas. I still want to touch myself, but I don’t.
Memory: Seven Years Old
Edgar Montane, who is ten, gets angry at me and punches me with all his might between my legs. It feels like he breaks my entire self. I limp home. I can’t pee. My mama asks me what’s wrong with my coochi snorcher, and when I tell her what Edgar did to me she yells at me and says never to let anyone touch me down there again. I try to explain he didn’t touch it, Mama, he punched it.
Memory: Nine Years Old
I play on the bed, bouncing and falling, and impale my coochi snorcher on the bedpost. I make high-pitched screamy noises that come straight from my coochi snorcher’s mouth. I get taken to the hospital and they sew it up down there from where it’s been torn apart.
Memory: Ten Years Old
I’m at my father’s house and he’s having a party upstairs. Everyone’s drinking. I’m playing alone in the basement and I’m trying on my new white cotton bra and panties that my father’s girlfriend gave me. Suddenly my father’s best friend, this big man Alfred, comes up from behind and pulls my new underpants down and sticks his big hard penis into my coochi scorcher. I scream. I kick. I try to fight him off, but he already gets it in. My father’s there then and he has a gun and there’s a loud horrible noise and then there’s blood all over Alfred and me, lots of blood. I’m sure my coochi snorcher is finally falling out. Alfred is paralyzed for life and my mama doesn’t let me see my father for seven years.
Memory: Twelve Years Old
My coochi snorcher is a very bad place, a place of pain, nastiness, punching, invasion, and blood. It’s a site for mishaps. It’s a bad-luck zone. I imagine a freeway between my legs and, girl, I am traveling, going far away from here.
Memory: Thirteen Years Old
There’s this gorgeous twenty-four-year-old woman in our neighborhood and I stare at her all the time. One day she invites me into her car. She asks me if I like to kiss boys, and I tell her I do not like that. Then she says she wants to show me something, and she leans over and kisses me so softly on the lips with her lips and then puts her tongue in my mouth. Wow. She asks me if I want to come over to her house, and then she kisses me again and tells me to relax, to feel it, to let our tongues feel it. She asks my mama if I can spend the night and my mother’s delighted that such a beautiful, successful woman has taken an interest in me. I’m scared but really I can’t wait. Her apartment’s fantastic. She’s got it hooked up. It’s the seventies: the beads, the fluffy pillows, the mood lights. I decide right there that I want to be a secretary like her when I grow up. She makes a vodka for herself and then she asks what I want to drink. I say the same as she’s drinking and she says she doesn’t think my mama would like me drinking vodka. I say she probably wouldn’t like me kissing girls, either, and the pretty lady makes me a drink. Then she changes into this chocolate satin teddy. She’s so beautiful. I always thought bulldaggers were ugly. I say, “You look great,” and she says, “So do you.” I say, “But I only have this white cotton bra and underpants.” Then she dresses me, slowly, in another satin teddy. It’s lavender like the first soft days of spring. The alcohol has gone to my head and I’m loose and ready. I noticed that there’s a picture over her bed of a naked black woman with a huge afro as she gently and slowly lays me out on the bed. And just our bodies rubbing makes me come. Then she does everything to me and my coochi snorcher that I always thought was nasty before, and wow. I’m so hot, so wild. She says, “Your vagina, untouched by man, smells so nice, so fresh, wish I could keep it that way forever.” I get crazy wild and then the phone rings and of course it’s my mama. I’m sure she knows; she catches me at everything. I’m breathing so heavy and I try to act normal when I get on the phone and she asks me, “What’s wrong with you, have you been running?” I say, “No, Mama, exercising.” Then she tells the beautiful secretary to make sure I’m not around boys and the lady tells her, “Trust me, there’s no boys around here.” Afterward the gorgeous lady teaches me everything about my coochi snorcher. She makes me play with myself in front of her and she teaches me all the different ways to give myself pleasure. She’s very thorough. She tells me to always know how to give myself pleasure so I’ll never need to rely on a man. In the morning I am worried that I’ve become a butch because I’m so in love with her. She laughs, but I never see her again. I realized later she was my surprising, unexpected, politically incorrect salvation. She transformed my sorry-ass coochi snorcher and raised it up into a kind of heaven.
During the course of my run in New York, I received this letter:
As the honorary chair of the Vulva Club, we would be more than pleased to make you a member. However, when Harriet Lerner developed this club over twenty years ago, membership was predicated on the understanding and correct usage of the word vulva and being able to communicate that to as many people as possible, especially women.
Warm regards,
Jane Hirschman
THE VULVA CLUB
I have always been obsessed with naming things. If I could name them, I could know them. If I could name them, I could tame them. They could be my friends.
For example, I had a large collection of frogs when I was a little girl: stuffed frogs, china frogs, plastic frogs, neon frogs, happy battery-operated frogs. Each one had a name. I took time to know them for a while before I named them. I sat them on my bed and would watch them in daylight, wear them in my coat pocket, hold them in my sweaty little hands. I came to know them by their texture, their smell, their shape, their size, their sense of humor. Then they would get named, usually in a splendid naming ceremony. Surrounding them with their frog friends, I would dress them in ceremonial coats, put sparkles on them, or gold stars, stand them in front of the frog chapel, and name them.
First, I would whisper the coveted name into their ear. (whispering) “You are my Froggie Doodle Mashy Pie.” I would make sure the frog accepted the name. Then I would say it out loud for the other excited frogs, some of whom were waiting for
their own names. “Froggie Doodle Mashy Pie.” Then there would be singing, usually the name repeated over and over, joined by the other frogs. (make up a song) “Froggie Doodle Mashy Pie. Froggie Doodle Mashy Pie.” This would happen with dancing.
I would line the froggies up and dance in and out of them, hopping like a frog and making general frog noises, always holding the newly christened frog in my hands or arms, depending on the size. It was an exhausting ceremony, but crucial. It would have been fine if it had been limited to frogs, but soon I needed to name everything. I named rugs and doors and chairs and stairs. Ben, for example, was my flashlight, named after my kindergarten teacher, who was always in my business.
I eventually named all the parts of my body. My hands—Gladys. They seemed functional and basic, like Gladys. I named my shoulders Shorty—strong and a little belligerent. My breasts were Betty. They weren’t Veronica, but they weren’t ugly either. Naming my “down there” was not so easy. It wasn’t the same as naming my hands. No, it was complicated. Down there was alive, not so easy to pinpoint. It remained unnamed and, as unnamed, it was untamed, unknown.
We had a baby-sitter around then, Sara Stanley. She talked in this high-pitched voice that made me pee. When I was taking a bath one night, she told me to be sure to wash my “Itsy Bitsy.” I can’t say that I liked this name. It took a while even to figure out what it was. But there was something about her voice. The name stuck. Yes, there it is, my Itsy Bitsy.
Unfortunately, this name followed me into adulthood. On our first night in bed, I informed the man I would later marry that Itsy Bitsy was a little shy but eager, and if he would be patient, she would surely reveal her mysteries. He was a bit freaked out, I think, but as is his nature, he went along with it and later would actually call her by name. “Is Itsy Bitsy there? Is she ready?” I myself was never happy with her name, and so what happened later is not really surprising.