Northwestern University and Evanston's Only Daily News Source Since 1881

The Daily Northwestern

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Northwestern University and Evanston's Only Daily News Source Since 1881

The Daily Northwestern

Northwestern University and Evanston's Only Daily News Source Since 1881

The Daily Northwestern

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V-Day offers time to reflect on the vagina

Vagina. Vagina! Vagina? I bring it to your attention because V-Day is approaching, though not the one that cupid is famous for. It’s the V-Day that Eve Ensler, creator of “The Vagina Monologues,” is famous for. If you haven’t seen them, I recommend you go. As a fan of the vagina in general, I am also a fan of “The Vagina Monologues.”

Some of them are a plain uproar, some are frighteningly witty and some are as touching as a pornographic Hallmark card. It’s an interesting celebration of femininity composed by an interesting woman. Unfortunately, during the course of one version of the play, they say “vagina” 136 times.

It is a hideous word — Ensler herself says it sounds like the name of a surgical instrument (“Nurse, pass the vagina!”) — and it has been following me around my entire life. I’m serious. My mother works in gynecology. “Vagina” has been a household name as long as I can remember. Keep in mind this is a house where the refrigerator magnets are little monsters advertising cream for yeast infections.

I must have overheard way too many conversations. One time my brother took me aside, at far too early an age, and told me, “Every girl has a penis, too. We call it the ‘little hooded sailor.'” “I know,” I replied, “that’s the clitoris.”

What I’m saying is that I knew more about the vagina by third grade than most fraternity boys know about it now. Not that it helped.

After growing up in a home where I inadvertently learned so much about the vagina, I decided to conduct some independent field research. One of my first girlfriends — we’ll call her Lolita — once told me after an appointment with my mom, “You know Tim, your mom’s gone further with me than you have.” Now, at the time, that was a big deal. A challenge. I took the matter, so to speak, into my own hands. Two days later she broke up with me; I guess I had a lot to learn.

My sophomore year at Northwestern, I dated a girl who was in “The Vagina Monologues.” I heard those pieces over and over, every which way, any way you like it. I really grew to love them. I told her I was going to write “The Penis Monologues.” She said, “Why? They’d all be two minutes long and exactly the same.” Then she cooed, “No, no, baby, you’re different.” “Ha, ha,” I said later, as I watched her fly to a different country and get married. I guess I had a lot to learn.

Now it is V-Day again, which, disturbingly, always reminds me of my childhood — Freud would have a field day — and lets me take a moment to assess the progress of my research.

Done.

Conclusion: I understand the vagina no more than I understand giving birth, Pap smears, the hidden joys of chocolate, Georgia O’Keeffe or “Sex and the City.” Screw you, Eve Ensler! For reminding me of my pointless knowledge and inability to grasp feminine sexuality!

Last Saturday, after I left the official performance of “The Vagina Monologues” at the Apollo Theater, I think I felt a tinge of vagina-envy. Why can’t I have triple orgasms? Why did I sexually peak, alone, at age 14?

But I also realized how little I knew about women. So from this day on, I swear to double — make that triple — my already substantial efforts to understand women. Come to think of it, though, I’m just not in the mood.

Tim Requarth is a Weinberg senior. He can be reached at trequarth

@hotmail.com.

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V-Day offers time to reflect on the vagina