My Vagina Monologue

My Vagina Monologue

            I was searching for Michelle’s clitoris when I suddenly realized, “Oh dear, I think I’m gay.” 

The news didn’t come as a complete shock.  By the time I was a junior in high school, I already had a year-long affair with Steve Avery, our star quarterback, and several liaisons with a classmate. I was also fondled by a thirty-year old football coach in a public restroom in Mississippi, but that was just plain scary.  I never wanted to believe that I was gay, so I kept plugging at it.  Being straight, that is.  I wanted desperately to date girls but couldn’t seem to get past the friendship stage.  They wanted me near them, not in them. 

            The summer before my junior year, I started hanging out with Meredith who was a year younger than I.  Our parents were close, so we forged our own friendship.  I was crazy about her.  Not in a boyfriend/girlfriend kind of way.  I just looked out for her, made sure her outfits matched her shoes and that she didn’t wear too much blush.  Soon, our parents started letting us go out to parties together.  In Linden, Alabama, most of the parties that teenagers threw took place in pastures.  Meredith and I would load up in Mom’s Crown Victoria, the Ford equivalent of an army tank, and head over to the projects to score some Budweiser or Boone’s Farm. 

            I worked part-time at the local bank, so I knew the whole town.  For the most part, a white person could live their whole life in Linden and not know but a handful of black people.  Not me.  I knew at least twenty.  And every month, like clockwork, Eddie Lee Johnson walked up to my teller counter and cashed his SSI check.  And I never charged him a fee for being a non-customer.  So, every weekend, like clockwork, Meredith and I hunted Eddie Lee Johnson down in the bowels of the projects, and, for a two dollar fee, he bought us beer or Strawberry Hill.  On Saturday night was the pasture party.  And on Sunday, Meredith and I escaped to the Linden Country Club pool, baked in the sun, and tried not to vomit.

            Since I had never been with a girl, Meredith was more sexually versed on boy-on-girl things than I was.  We worked during the summer for Miss Nell, our school’s lunch lady, out at the baseball diamonds, selling greasy hamburgers and stale popcorn.  Meredith was joking about doing the ’69.’

            “What the hell is 69?” I asked.  I was a lot younger than I thought I was.

            “You don’t know what 69 is?”  She was skeptical.

            “Where the hell have you been?” Miss Nell piped in.  “Even I know what 69 is!” 

            We never kept many secrets from Miss Nell.

            “I probably know what it is but call it something different.”  I was trying desperately to seem cool, even though I was wearing ripped denim shorts and a tie-dyed t-shirt.

            “Come over here, I’ll show you,” Meredith offered.

            She walked over to the popcorn machine, picked out several pieces of popcorn, and delicately arranged them on the counter to look like stick figures.  It looked like stale popcorn strewn about at first, but soon the visual aid combined with Meredith’s voice-over instruction made perfect sense.  I was in awe.

            “People really do that?”

            “Hell yeah!” Miss Nell yelled across the concession stand.  “Now get your asses back over here and help me cook these fuckin’ hamburgers!”  She never minced words.

            Meredith was instrumental in helping me with a delicate transition from junior high school outcast to senior high school somebody.  I would never have gone to any of those parties by myself, and we became partners in crime.  I had the car, and she was my crutch.  But we genuinely liked each other and laughed constantly.  After she joined the softball team, she introduced me to Amanda, a bullish girl who was a year older than I.  Amanda’s tough exterior intimidated me at first, but I soon warmed up to her brashness.  Meredith sassed her one day.

            “Bitch, if you talk to me like that one more time, I’m gonna wrap that Goldilocks hair around your neck and make you smoke it,” Amanda shot back.

            Amanda also informed me that I had an admirer.

            “Michelle has wanted to go out with you for months.”

            “As friends, right?”

            “No.  She thinks you’re really cute.”

            I was flabbergasted.  But with Meredith’s insistence, we arranged a group outing.  Amanda, Meredith, Michelle.  And me.  Michelle was in my class, but we never really talked to each other.  Until I learned that she thought I was cute.  Nobody—except for Steve—had ever voiced the opinion that I was cute.  It was decided that Amanda would drive her mother’s car which was even bigger than Mom’s Ford tank.  Michelle and I were comfortable in the roomy back seat when I suggested to Amanda that we head over to the projects for beer.

            “Are you out of your mind?  We can’t go to the projects!”

            “Me and Craig do it all the time,” Meredith offered.

            “Well you and Craig are dumb asses!  You’ll come out of the projects with a bullet in your neck one night and won’t ever be able to buy beer again!  We’re going to Uncle Dick’s.”

            We drove about fifteen miles out of town to Uncle Dick’s who was of no relation to any of us in the car.  He was a Santa Clause-looking man that regularly sold alcohol to minors.  Amanda walked in and ten minutes later walked out with four bottles of Country Quencher, some sort of cheap fruity wine in a twist-off bottle.  We passed around the Dixie cups and hit the back roads, singing along with Bon Jovi and Poison.  We made it to the pasture party du jour and were already lit up.  Meredith and I immediately started making snake eyes at two cheerleaders who we considered to be our arch-enemies.  Amanda sat down in a lawn chair and began mocking people that she didn’t like.  And Michelle made it clear with a quickness exactly what she wanted from me.  Just as I turned up my cup of Quencher, she grabbed my crotch.  And that was all it took.

            We headed back out to the car and got in the backseat.  Steve and I made out in his car all the time when we were hanging out, so I was ready for this.  However, when I hit my back and waited for Michelle to climb on top of me, I got quite a look.  I shifted my brain around and positioned ourselves to where I was on top of her.  We made out for awhile, and I missed the scruffy feeling of a guy’s whiskers.  I missed the smell of Polo cologne and Listerine.  Instead, all I got from Michelle was some cheap Avon perfume and the taste of raspberry lip gloss.  Soon, we were undressed.  I’m still not quite sure what we were planning on doing.  We didn’t have a condom between us. 

            Maybe she had her diaphragm in.  Or whatever the hell those things are called.  Thank God for “All My Children” or I’d be lost.

            Now was the time to try out Meredith’s suggestion.  Only this time, no popcorn.  We got in position.  I was looking around for the clitoris, not even sure what I was looking for.  I was trying to suppress my gag reflex.  At that moment, I would have sucked my own dick rather than put my tongue in there.  But I did.  I held my breath, and I gave her head.  I always thought that when I finally got to go down on a girl, the feelings toward boys would disappear.  Simply dissipate from my brain.  Nope.  I finished up down there and still wanted a penis.  Still wanted the weight of a man on top of me.  Still hard, I had to finish somehow, and her attempt at a blow job was not working.  So I put it in her and after about five quick thrusts, I pulled it out and shot it on Amanda’s seat. 

            Shit!  Amanda is gonna kick my ass!

            “You have your diaphragm in, right?”

            “Um.  No.  I’m on the pill.  Let’s go back to the party.”

            We dressed and joined the rest of the party.  I felt weird but a little exhilarated.  Even though it was gross, I just fucked a girl.  Maybe there was hope for me after all.  Maybe I could have both…guys and girls.  It became clear, however, that I wasn’t going down on Michelle anytime soon.  If ever again.  The next day I got a phone call from her.

            “Hey there.  Meredith told me last night that you could show me how to put on eye shadow better.  I always put on too much and Mama tells me I look cheap.”

            Oh well.  Another girl, another friend. 

And a few hours after that I got another phone call.  Meredith and I were hanging out in my room listening to Belinda Carlisle.  I answered the phone.  It was Amanda.

            “You little shit ass!   I’m on my way to your house!”

            “Why?”  I was suddenly nervous.

            “You know why!  You shot your load in Mama’s backseat, and I’m gonna rub your fuckin’ little nose in it!”

            With that, Meredith and I bundled up some mixed tapes, jumped in Mom’s Crown Victoria, and laughing all the way, hauled ass to Uncle Dick’s.  Leaving Amanda alone with four empty bottles of Country Quencher and my DNA.