The
Vagina Monologues was also printed up as a slim little book. Last year my friend Samantha urged me to read it. She was sick of me
blushing every time she called her boyfriend a
cunt. I didn't know
what the book was about (she wouldn't tell me), but I knew that there was no way I'd ask a clerk to help me find it.
I looked in the fiction section at Barnes and Corporate Nobility. No Vagina Monologues. I looked at Borders in the human sexuality section. No Vagina Monologues.
I pouted.
Two weeks later I walked into Bookworld and serendipitously found the book in the magazine section, hidden between Cosmo and Maxim (appropriate!). I comandeered a stool and dug in.
This slim little volume changed my life. I laughed so hard I fell off the stool twice. I cried in the middle of Bookworld.
I was touched in a strange way that can't be put into words.
The printed version seemed to have a goal: Take back the V-word! I'd never been able to say The Word withput cringing. After all (insert mother's voice here), nice girls just don't say that! I began to see how ridiculous the words "cooch" and "fur pie" and "kitty kitty" sounded. In 45 minutes, I shed a lifetime of shame. When I finished the book, I stared at the picture of Ms. Ensler (cayenne-blazing-hot and old enough to be my mother!), then quietly placed the book between Seventeen and YM magazines so that the book could help someone in a more formative stage, and left the shopping mall. I skipped through the parking lot, hopped into my minivan, and screamed "VAAAAAGINAAAA!" Then I laughed until my face tingled. I felt beautiful.
It was so William Wallace. And I am so in love with The Vagina Monologues.