I let that sit for a beat.
“What?” I said, as casually as I possibly could.
Now I see That’s Not Your Vagina being a great title for this little one-act play, but then I didn’t see the humor.
So there we were, on the floor of a bathroom at AVAC, and Big D just slid that tampon right on up so fast I didn’t think quickly enough to be freaked out. And I was all, “Where are you going?” as if she was doing a Jacques Cousteau deep dive. And she’s going down. And I was like, “There’s something more down there? What an amazing discovery!” Finding my vagina was a moment of “Interesting. Did. Not. Know. That.” Big D was exactly the friend I needed to get me through the moment as quickly as possible. We never once spoke of it again until we were adults, not out of shame, but from a sense of “What happens in an AVAC bathroom stays in an AVAC bathroom.” Only recently, when I brought it up to her, did it seem even remotely nuts.
But how was I supposed to know where my vagina was? From a young age, most girls are not given the most basic information about their bodies. And we grow into smart women who often don’t go to doctors on a regular basis because we are too busy putting others in our lives first, and don’t share personal medical information with each other, either. People talk about our bodies solely as reproductive systems, and we remain just as clueless as The Virgin Mary’s learning she was but a vessel for something greater.
THANK GOD FOR JUDY BLUME, BECAUSE AT LEAST SHE ARMED ME WITH THE basic facts of menstruation. Nowadays, girls can Wikipedia everything—or more likely, study porn clips online.
But back then, all we had was Judy Blume. She also gifted us with Forever. We all knew and loved Forever, because it had the Sex Scene. And outside of porn (which was damn hard to procure in those pre-Internet days), Forever was the only depiction of sex we had ever seen. High school senior Katherine meets fellow student Michael, who nicknames his penis “Ralph” and teaches her how to rub one out, before they go “all the way” in his sister’s bedroom.
We were smart enough to know that Forever—not the cheesy VHS porn tapes that my trusty friend Becky had discovered in her parents’ room—taught us the more accurate portrait of how sex would unfold in our own lives. (Thank you, Judy!) Forever gave us the truth. It was about wanting to have sex, preparing to have sex, having sex, and what happens afterward. Judy Blume was our tutor.
During our freshman year, my friend Julie had sex at a house party with a boy she liked. They had planned to do it, but both were too fearful to go buy condoms. He told her he had a plan, so just before the big deed, he pulled out a plastic baggie. You read that right. A Ziploc.
A month or so later, a bunch of us were hanging out on one of the school lawns. None of us wanted to just go home and be bored, so we decided to be bored together. We were talking about how we couldn’t wait for summer when Julie started crying. She leaned forward into the circle.
“I think I’m pregnant,” she whispered.
We sort of fell into her, muffling her cries. I asked her twice if she was sure. It was such a stupid question, but I didn’t want what she was saying to be true. My friend Barbara instead snapped into action. She was always very advanced and finger-snapping efficient with her asymmetrical bob and mod clothes.
“Okay, how much money do you have?” she said.
Julie shrugged.
“Okay,” she said, looking at us all. “How much money do we have?”
Barbara said we needed about $350. That’s what she decided was the going rate for an abortion.
Over the next couple of days, like some very special Magic School Bus episode, we all, a bunch of fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds, went to our parents to make a bunch of fake requests for money to buy new uniforms or to go on nonexistent field trips. In a couple of days, we got $350. The next hurdle was scheduling the abortion within the confines of the school day. To accomplish this, the lot of us cut class to go to the Planned Parenthood in Pleasanton. There was a lone protester outside. She wasn’t crazy, as far as protesters go, but it was strangely terrifying. She had a sign and was just there, staring at a bunch of teenagers who didn’t want anyone to see us.
Imagine five terrified fourteen- and fifteen-year-old girls sitting in a waiting room, hugging our backpacks. There was a basket of condoms on a little side table by the door. As we waited for Julie, I was eyeing those condoms. And sitting in a Planned Parenthood waiting for my friend’s abortion to be over, I was still afraid of what the people working there would think if they saw me taking a condom.
Julie came out and we all hugged her. She didn’t cry, she just wanted to get on with her life. She led the way out the door, walking fast and with her eyes focused forward. I trailed behind, and in one fell swoop I dumped the entire basket of condoms into my bag.
No one called shotgun. We let Julie sit in the passenger seat. As soon as the car doors closed, I opened my bag to show everyone the condoms.
“Everyone take some,” I ordered.
They wouldn’t. Everyone was afraid of getting caught by their parents with condoms.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll hold them. But come to me, okay?”
That’s how it went. I became the condom dispensary, bringing them to school and to parties whenever I got the heads-up. Adults weren’t looking out for us. They assumed that we knew we could get pregnant and wouldn’t risk it by actually having sex. But even when you know better, it doesn’t mean you’re going to do better. That’s a lie parents tell themselves so they don’t have to admit their kids have sex. And they do. They will either live with fear and baggies and abortions, or live with knowledge and condoms.
My dad found my stash, of course, and flipped out.
“They’re for my friends,” I screamed. That didn’t help. I used the “What were you doing snooping in my room?” tactic, which actually worked for once. I think he was terrified.
These days, kids are mostly just honest with adults, which is just weird. I recently met a young woman in a teen empowerment seminar. “I told him I wanted to suck his dick so I sucked his dick,” she said. “It’s no big deal.”
Um, yeah . . . No?
Now, when I try to talk to our boys or I talk to young girls, here’s what I say:
“Are you ready to own your sexuality in a way that you can experience pleasure as well as give it? And be truly grown-up about it?”
But what kids are doing now, the way they process it and act on it, is so different. They would probably read Forever and it would be so pedestrian to them. “What kind of baby-book bullshit is this?”
But I see their “raw honesty” and I raise them.
“If you’re such good friends that you gave him a blow job,” I asked that one girl, “did he eat your pussy?”
“No,” she said, looking at her friends.
“Well, make sure he does that next time.”
“Okay.”
“And then have him eat your ass,” I said, “and see where that goes.”
“Whoa.”
“It’s called reciprocation. Otherwise, it’s a very unequal friendship. And I wouldn’t want that kind of friendship. If you’re gonna do it, then shit, really do it.”
I WANT PEOPLE TO MAKE INFORMED, JOYFUL CHOICES ABOUT SEX. Because I love sex. In the heyday of my twenties and thirties, I loved the variety. Now that I am married, I am in a monogamous relationship. But I used to think monogamy was for suckers who didn’t have options. “Some choose monogamy,” I would say, “but most people have it foisted upon them.”