Cunt (12 page)

Whoredom is a constant.

Perception fluctuates evermore.

I don’t know about you, but I like the idea of respecting things that have been around
a lot longer than me. I drive old cars and live in old houses. I gravitate towards
old souls and listen to what old folks say. My favorite games—chess and backgammon—are
old, old, old.

So you see, if I were to find Whoredom and the Perception Surrounding Whoredom at
a garage sale, I’d definitely buy the Whoredom.

Even if it was dented up, needed a new paint job and cost a coupla bucks more.

Thanks to the perception surrounding Whoredom in our culture, no one teaches us how
to fuck. We grow up and either figure it out for ourselves or settle into some habitual
bog of sexual expression.

Whatever.

Sexual expression must be made manifest in the physical world,
somehow.
Since it cannot be completely repressed, people sometimes hide stuff and get into
weird things like eating shit. Sexual expression is a current of kinetic energy running
through our bodies. It whirligigs up our cunts, charges through our entire being and
slam dances on out into the world back through our cunts.

Comin’ our brains out.

Sometimes we holler ’n shake the windows in their panes.

Our cunts are powerhouses.

Cuntlovin’ women who make the conscious decision to oversee the smooth operation of
our powerhouses know all this.

One of my prized possessions is my 1965 Random House Dictionary. It lived in my parent’s
house before I. Though technically it belonged to everyone, I took it with me when
I moved away. No one complained. Ever since I could read, that dictionary and I were
inseparable.

When I was ten, I invited a boy I liked very much over to our house. We hung out in
my room, mooning over each other and listening to records, until my father opened
the door. He told the boy to go home and steered me by the elbow into the kitchen.
There, at the table sat my mother and my dear friend, the Random House Dictionary.
I sensed I was in deep shit, but didn’t know why. Mom had a serious look on her face
and Dad seemed kinda pissed.

He said, “Look up the word ‘reputation’ and read it aloud.”

My father, the devout atheist with the photographic memory who knew the Encyclopedia
Britannica by heart, had us quote from the dictionary in much the same manner as children
in other families were required to quote from the Holy Book.

I read the definition for “reputation”:

I was thoroughly mystified, but after reading the definition of “reputation,” I felt
decidedly ashamed.

Dirty.

My dad looked at me sternly and said, “You must
never
have boys in your room with the door closed.”

“But we were listening to records,” I argued. “I always close the door when my friends
come over and we listen to records.”

Mom: “Inga, it’s very important not to get a bad reputation. Letting boys in your
room and closing the door is one way to get a bad reputation.”

Dad: “When your girlfriends come over, you can close the door, but when boys come
over, keep it open.”

Little did my parents know, it was me and my
girl
friends who engaged in sexual activity. At age ten, I’d
remotely
entertained the notion of kissing boys, while at least three of my girlfriends and
I had figured out how to make each other come by the time we were seven.

I’ve had the satisfaction of clueing my mom in, but I wish my dad were alive so I
could say, “Yo, Pops, if you were
really
concerned with my chastity, you shouldn’t have let certain friends spend the night
with me, ya fool.”

This isn’t to preface my anger towards my parents for instilling in me shameful associations
about my budding sexuality.

They Did the Best They Could.

I quelled any animosity I may have felt towards them the time I saw this real old
Japanese print of two people having rapturous sex while their three children peacefully
played a game with marbles at their feet. It is the epitome of the family-at-home-together
picture. The kids don’t care that the parents are fucking because fucking is as much
a part of life as playing with marbles. They are completely unconcerned with what
their parents are doing because
it’s no big deal.
They’re just fucking. The parents are playing a game that somebody taught them how
to play. By the time those kids got big, they’d know fucking like they knew the soft,
glassy chink of marbles colliding.

This was not my reality.

When my mother was pregnant with Nick, the youngest of her brood, she described how
sexual intercourse created the magic of a baby in her belly.

“You and Dad have done that
four times?
” I asked, thoroughly disgusted.

People helped me out when it was time for me to walk and ride a two-wheeler. Everyone
I knew encouraged me to talk, use the toilet, sing, draw, swim, read, write and make
lots of friends.

I am very fortunate and grateful that I got helped out quite a bit.

There was this one—rather crucial—part of my being, however, that was pretty much
left to the elements. I didn’t get nearly as much encouragement learning how to express
myself sexually as I did learning how to pronounce big words.

When I became sexually active with men, sex wasn’t what I wanted
at all.
I wanted love and affection. I had fun having sex with my girlfriends, but it was
just that: fun. Suddenly, it seems one day, I was supposed to re-enact this with boys
and it just wasn’t the same, spontaneous, jiveass, wanton fun. It’s quite the bummer—not
to mention life-threatening reality—that I didn’t figure this out ’til after I’d tested
sheets with surfers, vatos, punks, nerds and a rather sadistic wrestler-chiropractor.

I didn’t even really think about my formal, heterosexual awakening until years after
the fact, when two of my hometown friends and I talked about it.

Why did we fuck those boys who never exactly made our clits pound out the Bohemian
Rhapsody in the first place? What were we doing? Did we love ourselves at all? We
certainly mustn’t have, or we would
at the very least
, have practiced safe sex. Why didn’t we understand that our quest for love and affection
could have easily killed us, and why didn’t it? Was the Goddess magnanimously smiling
upon the truly ignorant?

Toni Childs sings this really cool song I wish I had heard when I was seventeen. It’s
called “I Just Want Affection,” and it’s one of many beautiful songs on the album
The Woman’s Boat.
This song taught me about the difference between erotic closeness and fucking.

Lots of girls grow up thinking the way to be loved is to fuck because our culture
holds that affection is part and parcel to gettin’ down. But in my mind, and in the
minds of many, many cuntlovin’ women I know, it is dimly related, but not the same
thing at all.

Had I been left to my innate feminine wiles, I would’ve found a much safer and supportive
way to procure affection, love and acceptance, starting with myself.

The happy ending is, though, that through trial, error, forgiveness and willingness
to accept my ignorance, I learned that I’m the Cuntlovin’ Ruler of My Sexual Universe.

Which leads to the story of Mademoiselle Precious, my cousin’s daughter.

When Mademoiselle was seven, her parents granted her a premier waltz with independence:
a visit to the city to stay with my musical concubine and me for a week one summer.

We were a little nervous. Neither of us had been around kids for long, parentless
durations of time. Our home was not designed around the premise of a child’s entertainment
requirements. We didn’t even have a television set. What if she was bored with our
lives?

But we needn’t have worried. Mlle. Precious loved all our friends. She loved going
to the coffee shops, the river, everywhere we took her. She loved the Free Box in
our apartment building and insisted on visiting it first thing every morning.

We all got along quite famously.

One day, my musical concubine said, “I’ve seen Mlle. Precious jiggling under her covers
on the couch. Do you think her parents have talked to her about masturbating?”

I said I didn’t know.

“Do you think you should talk to her about masturbating?”

I thought about how embarrassed I was that time my sister barged into the bathroom
while I was whacking off with the shower massage. I also thought about how I probably
wouldn’t have had such a baggage-load of negative beliefs to dispell as an adult if
just
one measly person
had told me it was fine and dandy to bandy my clit when I was a kid.

But,
jeez
, talking to Mlle. Precious about masturbating? What if it embarrassed her? What if
it scarred her for life and it would be all my fault? What would I say?

I said I didn’t know again.

It was quite the preoccupational quandary in my mind all day long.

We went to the river, played in the mud and the water.

When we came home, my musical concubine made phone calls and Mlle. Precious and I
took a bubble bath. We were busy getting clean and shiny and suddenly, it just jumped
out of me.

I said, “Hey, Precious. I don’t know if you ever do, but if you ever play with your
wahchee (that’s what her family calls cunts), I just want you to know it’s okay.”

She turned crimson, looked at me and then down at the water. “I don’t do that. I don’t
play with my wahchee.”

Shit.

Goddamn.

I spluttered, “I
know.
I mean, it doesn’t matter. I just wanted to tell you that
if
you ever
did
, it’s all right. Everybody plays with their wahchee, I swear to god.”

She glared at me. “Well,
I
don’t.”

I hastily changed the subject and we splashed more bubbles to life.

After a few minutes, Mlle. Precious says, “Everybody plays with their wahchee?”

My heart leaped in my chest. Oh, how I smiled inside.

“Yeah. Everybody.”

“Do you?”

“Yup.”

“Does your musical concubine?”

“Yeah.”

“My mom?”

“Probably. I mean, I would
imagine.
Just about everybody does, Precious. And it’s
perfectly fine
if you do, too. Even if people tell you it’s bad, they’re just scared or stupid.
It’s not bad at all and
everybody
plays with their wahchee.”

She laughed crazy, absolutely thrilled, and yelled, “Everybody plays with their wahchee?”

I screamed, “Everybody plays with their wahchee!”

We chanted, yelling at the top of our lungs, “Ev-ree-body plays with their wahh-chee!
Ev-ree-body plays with their wahh-chee! Ev-ree-body plays with their wahh-chee!”

My musical concubine, still on the phone: “Jesus Christ! What are you two screaming
about? What the hell’s a wahchee?”