The Vagina Monologues (6 page)

(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.

One night, my husband and I were in the act. He called out to her, “Come here, my little Itsy Bitsy,”

and she did not respond. It was as if she suddenly wasn’t there. “Itsy Bitsy, it’s me, your biggest fan.” No word. No motion. So I called to her.

“Itsy Bitsy, come on out. Don’t do this to me.”

Not a word, not a sound. Itsy was dead and mute and gone.

“Itsy Bitsy!”

For days she did not come, then weeks, then months. I became despondent. I reluctantly told my friend Teresa, who was spending all her time in this new women’s group. I said, “Itsy Bitsy will not speak to me, Teresa. She won’t return my calls.”

“Who is Itsy Bitsy?”

“My Bitsy,” I said. “My Itsy.”

“What are you talking about?” she said in a voice that suddenly sounded much deeper than mine.

“You mean your vulva, girl?”

“Vulva,” I said to Teresa. “What exactly is that?”

“It’s the package,” she said. “It’s the entire deal.”

Vulva. Vulva. I could feel something unlock. Itsy Bitsy was wrong. I knew this all along.

I could not

see Itsy Bitsy. I never knew who or what she was, and she did not sound like an opening or a lip. That night, we named her—my husband, Randy, and I. Just like the frogs. Dressed her in sparkles and sexy clothes, put her in front of the body chapel, lit candles. At first we whispered it, “Vulva, vulva,” softly to see if she’d hear. “Vulva, vulva, are you there?” There was sweetness and something definitely stirred.

“Vulva, vulva, are you real?”

And we sang the vulva song, which didn’t involve croaking but kissing, and we danced the vulva dance, which didn’t involve hopping but leaping, and all the other body parts were lined up—Betty and Gladys and Shorty—and they were definitely listening. VAGINA FACT In some places, Africans seem to have been quietly putting an end to the tradition of genital cutting. InGuinea, for instance, Aja Tounkara Diallo Fatimata, the chief “cutter” in the capital,Conakry, used to be reviled by Western human-rights groups. Then a few years ago, she confessed that she had never actually cut anybody. “I’d just cinch their clitorises to make them scream,” she said, “and tightly bandage them up so that they walked as though they were in pain.”

—from the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy “What does a vagina smell like?”

Earth.

Wet garbage.

God.

Water.

A brand-new morning.

Depth.

Sweet ginger.

Sweat.

Depends.

Musk.

Me.

No smell, I’ve been told.

Pineapple.

Chalice essence.

Paloma Picasso.

Earthy meat and musk.

Cinnamon and cloves.

Roses.

Spicy musky jasmine forest, deep, deep forest.

Damp moss.

Yummy candy.

The South Pacific.

Somewhere between fish and lilacs.

Peaches.

The woods.

Ripe fruit.

Strawberry-kiwi tea.

Fish.

Heaven.

Vinegar and water.

Light, sweet liquor.

Cheese.

Ocean.

Sexy.

A sponge.

The beginning.

I have been traveling with this piece all over America (and now, the world) for years. I am threatening to create a vagina-friendly map of all the vagina-friendly cities I have visited. There are many now. There have been many surprises;Oklahoma Citysurprised me. They were wild for vaginas inOklahoma

City.Pittsburghsurprised me. They love vaginas inPittsburgh. I have already been there three times.

Wherever I go, women come up to me after the show to tell me their stories, to make suggestions, to communicate their responses. This is my favorite part of traveling with the work. I get to hear the truly amazing stories. They are told so simply, so matter-of-factly. I am always reminded how extraordinary women’s lives are, and how profound. And I am reminded how isolated women are, and how oppressed they often become in their isolation. How few people they have ever told of their suffering and confusion.

How much shame there is surrounding all this. How crucial it is for women to tell their stories, to share them with other people, how our survival as women depends on this dialogue.

It was after performing the piece one night inNew York Citythat I heard the story of a young Vietnamese woman who, when she was five years old—recently arrived inAmerica, unable to speak

English—fell on a fire hydrant while playing with her best friend, and cut her vagina.

Unable to

communicate what had occurred, she simply hid her bloodied underpants under her bed.

Her mother

found them and assumed she’d been raped. As the young girl did not know the word for “fire hydrant,”

she could not explain to her parents what had really happened. Her parents accused her best friend’s brother of raping her. They rushed the young girl to the hospital, and a whole group of men stood around her bed, staring at her open, exposed vagina. Then, on the way home, she realized her father was no longer looking at her. In his eyes she had become a used, finished woman. He never really looked at her again.

Or the story of the stunning young woman inOklahoma, who approached me after the show with her stepmother to tell me how she had been born without a vagina, and only realized it when she was fourteen. She was playing with her girlfriend. They compared their genitals and she realized hers were different, something was wrong. She went to the gynecologist with her father, the parent she was close to, and the doctor discovered that in fact she did not have a vagina or a uterus. Her father was heartbroken, trying to repress his tears and sadness so his daughter would not feel bad.

On the way

home from the doctor, in a noble attempt to comfort her, he said, “Don’t worry, darlin’.

This is all gonna

be just fine. As a matter of fact, it’s gonna be great. We’re gonna get you the best homemade pussy inAmerica. And when you meet your husband, he’s gonna know we had it made specially for him.” And they did get her a new pussy, and she was relaxed and happy and when she brought her father back two nights later, the love between them melted me.

Then there was the night inPittsburghwhen a woman filled with passion rushed up to tell me she had to speak to me as soon as possible. Her intensity convinced me, and I called her as soon as I got back toNew York. She said she was a massage therapist and she had to talk to me about the texture of the vagina. The texture was crucial. I hadn’t gotten the texture, she said. And she talked to me for an hour with such detail, with such sensuous clarity, that when she was finished, I had to lie down. During that conversation she also talked to me about the word “cunt.” I had said something negative about it in my performance, and she said I didn’t understand the word at all. She needed to help me reconceive it. She talked to me for a half-hour more about the word “cunt” and when she was finished, I was a convert. I wrote this for her.

I call it cunt. I’ve reclaimed it, “cunt.” I really like it. “Cunt.” Listen to it. “Cunt.” C C, Ca Ca. Cavern, cackle, clit, cute, come—closed c—closed inside, inside ca—then u—then cu—then curvy, inviting

sharkskin u—uniform, under, up, urge, ugh, ugh, u—then n then cun—snug letters fitting perfectly together—n—nest, now, nexus, nice, nice, always depth, always round in uppercase, cun, cun—n a jagged wicked electrical pulse—n [high-pitched noise] then soft n—warm n—cun, cun, then t—then sharp certain tangy t—texture, take, tent, tight, tantalizing, tensing, taste, tendrils, time, tactile, tell me, tell me “Cunt cunt,” say it, tell me “Cunt.”

“Cunt.”

I ASKED A SIX-YEAR-OLD GIRL: “If your vagina got dressed, what would it wear?”

“Red high-tops and a Mets cap worn backward.”

“If it could speak, what would it say?”

“It would say words that begin with ’V’ and ’T’—’turtle’ and ’violin’ are examples.”

“What does your vagina remind you of?”

“A pretty dark peach. Or a diamond I found from a treasure and it’s mine.”

“What’s special about your vagina?”

“Somewhere deep inside it I know it has a really really smart brain.”

“What does your vagina smell like?”

“Snowflakes.”

THE WOMAN WHO LOVED TO MAKE VAGINAS HAPPY

I love vaginas. I love women. I do not see them as separate things. Women pay me to dominate them, to excite them, to make them come. I did not start out like this. No, to the contrary: I started out as a lawyer. But in my late thirties, I became obsessed with making women happy. There were so many unfulfilled women. So many women who had no access to their sexual happiness. It began as a mission of sorts, but then I got involved in it. I got very good at it, kind of brilliant. It was my art. I started getting paid for it. It was as if I had found my calling. Tax law seemed completely boring and insignificant then. I wore outrageous outfits when I dominated women—lace and silk and leather—and I used props: whips, handcuffs, rope, dildos. There was nothing like this in tax law. There were no props, no excitement, and I hated those blue corporate suits, although I wear them now from time to time in my new line of work and they serve quite nicely. Context is all. There were no props, no outfits in corporate law.

There was no

wetness. There was no dark mysterious foreplay. There were no erect nipples. There were no delicious mouths, but mainly there was no moaning. Not the kind I’m talking about, anyway. This was the key, I see now; moaning was the thing that ultimately seduced me and got me addicted to making women happy. When I was a little girl and I would see women in the movies making love, making strange orgasmic moaning noises, I used to laugh. I got strangely hysterical. I couldn’t believe that big, outrageous, ungoverned sounds like that just came out of women.

I longed to moan. I practiced in front of my mirror, on a tape recorder, moaning in various keys, various tones, with sometimes very operatic expressions, sometimes with more reserved, almost withheld expression. But always when I played it back, it sounded fake. It was fake. It wasn’t rooted in anything sexual, really, only in my desire to be sexual.

But then when I was ten I had to pee really badly once. On a car trip. It went on for almost an hour and when I finally got to pee in this dirty little gas station, it was so exciting, I moaned. I moaned as I peed. I couldn’t believe it, me moaning in a Texaco station somewhere in the middle ofLouisiana. I realized right then that moans are connected with not getting what you want right away, with putting things off. I realized moans were best when they caught you by surprise; they came out of this hidden mysterious part of you that was speaking its own language. I realized that moans were, in fact, that language. I became a moaner. It made most men anxious. Frankly, it terrified them. I was loud and they couldn’t concentrate on what they were doing. They’d lose focus. Then they’d lose everything. We couldn’t make love in people’s homes. The walls were too thin. I got a reputation in my building, and people stared at me with contempt in the elevator. Men thought I was too intense; some called me insane. I began to feel bad about moaning. I got quiet and polite. I made noise into a pillow. I learned to choke my moan, hold it back like a sneeze. I began to get headaches and stress-related disorders. I was becoming hopeless when I discovered women. I discovered that most women loved my moaning—but, more important, I discovered how deeply excited I got when other women moaned, when I could make other women moan. It became a kind of passion.

Discovering the key, unlocking the vagina’s mouth, unlocking this voice, this wild song.

I made love to quiet women and I found this place inside them and they shocked themselves in their

moaning. I made love to moaners and they found a deeper, more penetrating moan. I became obsessed.

I longed to make women moan, to be in charge, like a conductor, maybe, or a bandleader.