Memoirs, Ink

Frankenvag

by Erin Hart

 

I contracted my vaginal muscles, seeing if I could create a ripple of movement, even a tiny wave. Half submerged in the bath, I stared into the tap spout making fun house faces, moving my head up, down. Sitting up quickly I sloshed foam onto the floor. "I don't see what you're complaining about," he said. "You hardly ever do your exercises."

It was true.

But how does one think about clenching their crotch muscles in the whirlwind day of raising two kids? Write it on the day planner? I sighed, noting that if you sit close to the spout with your breasts hanging down, you can make yourself appear like a four armed hulking sea hydra. My husband finished brushing his teeth.

"I'm sure you could strengthen those muscles if you tried. Aren't there some women that can peel bananas with their vaginas?"  I stared at him, blank. He stared back, reddening. "Oh c'mon, Erin, YOU told me that story. You know, Scott, Amsterdam?"

Oh yes, it came back instantly.  I smiled. I'm not sure she was actually peeling it, but no matter, he was off the hook. He'd obviously not been searching the internet for Amazon/extraordinary/fruit peeling vagina. My own vagina was as far from fruit peeling as it would ever be. My babies had big heads, and the first ripped me from here to no man's land.

I was left feeling cavernous, enormous. I could be screwing up sonar for submarines, the giant sounding board of me. I search the aisles of drugstores looking for flare gun sized tampons, mourning the loss of my previous and much tinier vagina. This is odd, really, considering how long it took me to love my vagina in the first place.

 

If I had been given the choice, I wouldn't have chosen to have a vagina at all. That was how my childhood self felt. Growing up in 70's America, I thought being a woman meant wiping noses, cleaning messes, cooking. It meant making babies and raising neighbourhoods and holding up husbands. Being a woman drove you to sneak cigarettes on the porch late at night while the children slept, weeping over troubles borne without credit. Men, on the other hand, seemed to wade effortlessly through the muck of everyday life. Denim clad, side burned individuals, they plotted fishing expeditions and drank pull tab beers and strong coffee. They went to work, came home and washed their large, oily hands, shot hoops with the kids and were served warm meals. I'd have chosen that route.

To get there, I decided to deny my womanhood in as many ways possible, and out sprung the tomboy of the neighbourhood. I scraped with boys, climbed the highest trees. Instigator of dirt clod fights and tree fort raids, I plundered for treasures in the nearby forests. I hid my long red hair in caps, sported bruises proudly and shunned all things "girl". The furthest this went was to wear my older brother's pyjama bottom shorts under my jeans. This way, when I absolutely had to use the girl's bathroom at school, I could pull down my pants and pretend, secretly, that I wasn't a girl at all.

This denial lasted only as long as it could. When my friends started to get breasts, they were happy, excited. I was horrified. Now, when I stated my androgynous name, there would be no mistake. My breasts had outed me. I was indeed a woman. When it came time for the "monthlies" as some arsehole inanely put it, I was determined to stave it off with sheer will.

It almost worked. My initial trauma began in California, at Disneyland, in white pants, on a roller coaster, with my overbearing Born Again Christian Aunt.

I'm not shitting you.

Upon returning to her stucco house, she took me to the bathroom and instructed me to put my underwear in the sink, and run some cold water. I did this, with much shame, only to have her emerge from the kitchen with a salt shaker. "Salt on the underwear, gets the blood out!" she stated gleefully. The depths of my horror at seeing this woman salt my underwear put me off my period until I was almost 14. I'd feel a twinge, see a spot and mentally slam the door. Quietly but firmly, I let my body know this was no joke, I was not ready. I could not handle this rite of passage.

When the floodgates finally broke, I was brought down hard. I was that girl in phys-ed class who had a legitimate note to skip swimming, as I was busy throwing up in the bathroom, my body wracked with pain. My vagina was getting back at me.

But It wasn't as if there was any penis envy going on. Who wanted an appendage that betrayed its host, airing its intentions at inappropriate moments, as in, say, phys-ed swimming class? Vaginas never told of their intentions. They could keep secrets, be discreet, cunning even. I tentatively called a truce.

 

"It says here, it comes in two sizes," I tell my customer. I'm in my mid twenties, part employee- part owner of North America's only co-op pharmacy. A band of lefties, pinkos, gays and straights, we soldiered on for the people's right to buy vibrators and toothpaste all in one store. This one product, called "the keeper" looked like a spare part off of my old Volvo, a little space module of hardened rubber. It's actually a menstrual cup, designed to contain the flow until you dump it out and re-insert it. It is environmentally friendly for sure, but was somewhat confusing to me at this moment. I re-read the directions. "Okay, A is for After childbirth, B is Before kids". My customer smiled appreciatively. "B," she stated, "I need a B". Back then, I did too, the Before size. I held them in my hand, sizing them up. B was a fair bit smaller, its significance lost on me.

The B times had been good to me. How I emerged from sexual exploration virtually unscathed still baffles me, considering how many wrong turns I took. I had my fair share of notches on the bedpost, some for victories sake and others because I actually liked the guy. I survived the first love heartache, the confusion of "friends with benefits". One collegiate evening my girlfriend and I drew up a chart of our conquests over drinks and confessions. We howled at the flow chart, with arrows pointing to "brothers," "best friends," "roommates." We calculated that by certain degrees of separation, we'd actually slept with each other five times. Dipping from the same pool, they call it. Somewhere in Megan's underwear drawer this juicy blackmail material still exists. At the time, it was just honesty. We didn't really take sex all too seriously; it was too confusing.

We were all in it together, this hazy time of "dating". One booze fuelled evening, I'd decided to throw in the towel. I raised a glass to my girlfriends in the bar, swearing off men for good. At that very moment, I spied my husband. "Be right back!" I called to them, sliding off my stool, leaving the groans of "here we go again" behind me.

Four years later, we were married.

I'd found the yin to my yang, and we set off on that pleasant adventure called adulthood. Parenthood was to come next, after several relocations and constant job upheaval. It was in London, England, 2005, that I would become my new A size.

Other Moms had warned me, labour was going to suck. Most confirmed this, glossing over it with a simple "One forgets, that's how more babies are born." I didn't think I would forget my son's 32 hour arrival, me pushing with all my might when I was supposed to be breathing in tiny, butterfly breaths. I panicked. After so many hours I just wanted him out. And out he blasted; leaving a sewing nightmare for the medical seamstress. "Am I supposed to be feeling this? Because I am definitely feeling this," I informed her. "Oh, no...You're not," she stated in her English lilt. She hurried to find someone who could give me a shot Down There. Men, there is nothing I can say to make you understand the pain of it, the sick feeling in your stomach after being sewn back together. Repeatedly slamming your bits in a door might make a good start, if you then passed a tangerine out your urethra. It is with this knowledge that women know we are the tougher sex. 

Against doctor's orders, I checked out my stitches too soon. Straddling the mirror, I had a moment of panic. Oh, the horror. It looked as though someone had crudely sewn up a large canvas tent. It looked like the purse my brother made in third grade Boy Scouts, complete with vinyl looped stitching. lt looked like... FrankenVag. I called my girlfriend from the pre-birthing hospital class, the only one I'd met who seemed to have a sense of humour about this parenting thing. "I looked at my stitches! Does this get better?" She hooted, "I think so. You shouldn't have looked!  But I looked too, and am equally depressed." We sighed. What if we'd become those women who needed adult pads, because they peed every time they laughed?  I laugh a lot, so this was a serious concern. I vowed to do my Kegels.

My mother called several months later.  "Do we have a bad connection? There is a terrible echo." "No Mom, that's just my vagina." I shouted down the phone. Chortled laughter turned to sputtering. I yelled I'd try her back and hung up. My connection was better, and she answered still giggling. "Oh honey, that gets better. Otherwise no married couples would ever have sex again." I paused, and stated that no married couples I knew did have sex any more, especially after children. She seemed to consider this, and quickly changed the subject.

Years later, I remembered the pain, and chose to do it all over again. I still vow to do my exercises. I still don't do them. Although I think we might have more sex than some couples, I occasionally do write it on the calendar. My husband is good about it. He doesn't beg or plead, he knows it might happen between 8:30 and 9:15, or on the rare occasion I feel so inclined, at which point he has approximately two minutes before the urge is gone. Unfortunately, I don't ever feel the need to buy Cosmo, with its "Venus Flytrap and Ten Other Amazing Moves He will Love" articles. If the headlines read "You Have Ten Minutes to Get It On!" I'd be more interested. It would be even better if they catered to "A" sizes like me, with titles like "Cinch the Old Baggy-Vag into Gymnast Twists!"

My friends and I have discussed going the designer vagina route, but I am technically against any kind of surgery that isn't necessary. I waffle on this one. Couldn't it be called restoration, like a heritage building with old plumbing? I'd like to think I'd have heritage status, minus all the plaques. If I only had a little discipline, I would be one step closer to fruit peeling.

I'll start now.

One one thousand, two one thousand, three....

ERIN HART lives in Vancouver with her two kids, husband, and ancient cat. She is a Mother, writer, metalsmith, passable cook, and generally funny lady. Her work has been published in various venues such as the Globe and Mail, blush magazine, Reality Mom, B.C. Council for Families Newsletter, themomoirproject.com, and sweetspot.ca.