by Eve Ensler
One night, my husband and I were in the act. He called out to her, “Come here, my little Itsy Bitsy,” and she did not respond. It was as if she suddenly wasn’t there. “Itsy Bitsy, it’s me, your biggest fan.” No word. No motion. So I called to her.
“Itsy Bitsy, come on out. Don’t do this to me.”
Not a word, not a sound. Itsy was dead and mute and gone.
“Itsy Bitsy!”
For days she did not come, then weeks, then months. I became despondent.
I reluctantly told my friend Teresa, who was spending all her time in this new women’s group. I said, “Itsy Bitsy will not speak to me, Teresa. She won’t return my calls.”
“Who is Itsy Bitsy?”
“My Bitsy,” I said. “My Itsy.”
“What are you talking about?” she said in a voice that suddenly sounded much deeper than mine. “You mean your vulva, girl?”
“Vulva,” I said to Teresa. “What exactly is that?”
“It’s the package,” she said. “It’s the entire deal.”
Vulva. Vulva. I could feel something unlock. Itsy Bitsy was wrong. I knew this all along. I could not see Itsy Bitsy. I never knew who or what she was, and she did not sound like an opening or a lip.
That night, we named her—my husband, Randy, and I. Just like the frogs. Dressed her in sparkles and sexy clothes, put her in front of the body chapel, lit candles. At first we whispered it, “Vulva, vulva,” softly to see if she’d hear. “Vulva, vulva, are you there?” There was sweetness and something definitely stirred. “Vulva, vulva, are you real?”
And we sang the vulva song, which didn’t involve croaking but kissing, and we danced the vulva dance, which didn’t involve hopping but leaping, and all the other body parts were lined up—Betty and Gladys and Shorty—and they were definitely listening.
VAGINA FACT
In some places, Africans seem to have been quietly putting an end to the tradition of genital cutting. In Guinea, for instance, Aja Tounkara Diallo Fatimata, the chief “cutter” in the capital, Conakry, used to be reviled by Western human-rights groups. Then a few years ago, she confessed that she had never actually cut anybody. “I’d just cinch their clitorises to make them scream,” she said, “and tightly bandage them up so that they walked as though they were in pain.”
—from the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy
“What does a vagina smell like?”
Earth.
Wet garbage.
God.
Water.
A brand-new morning.
Depth.
Sweet ginger.
Sweat.
Depends.
Musk.
Me.
No smell, I’ve been told.
Pineapple.
Chalice essence.
Paloma Picasso.
Earthy meat and musk.
Cinnamon and cloves.
Roses.
Spicy musky jasmine forest, deep, deep forest.
Damp moss.
Yummy candy.
The South Pacific.
Somewhere between fish and lilacs.
Peaches.
The woods.
Ripe fruit.
Strawberry-kiwi tea.
Fish.
Heaven.
Vinegar and water.
Light, sweet liquor.
Cheese.
Ocean.
Sexy.
A sponge.
The beginning.
I have been traveling with this piece all over America (and now, the world) for years. I am threatening to create a vagina-friendly map of all the vagina-friendly cities I have visited. There are many now. There have been many surprises; Oklahoma City surprised me. They were wild for vaginas in Oklahoma City. Pittsburgh surprised me. They love vaginas in Pittsburgh. I have already been there three times. Wherever I go, women come up to me after the show to tell me their stories, to make suggestions, to communicate their responses. This is my favorite part of traveling with the work. I get to hear the truly amazing stories. They are told so simply, so matter-of-factly. I am always reminded how extraordinary women’s lives are, and how profound. And I am reminded how isolated women are, and how oppressed they often become in their isolation. How few people they have ever told of their suffering and confusion. How much shame there is surrounding all this. How crucial it is for women to tell their stories, to share them with other people, how our survival as women depends on this dialogue.
It was after performing the piece one night in New York City that I heard the story of a young Vietnamese woman who, when she was five years old—recently arrived in America, unable to speak English—fell on a fire hydrant while playing with her best friend, and cut her vagina. Unable to communicate what had occurred, she simply hid her bloodied underpants under her bed. Her mother found them and assumed she’d been raped. As the young girl did not know the word for “fire hydrant,” she could not explain to her parents what had really happened. Her parents accused her best friend’s brother of raping her. They rushed the young girl to the hospital, and a whole group of men stood around her bed, staring at her open, exposed vagina. Then, on the way home, she realized her father was no longer looking at her. In his eyes she had become a used, finished woman. He never really looked at her again.
Or the story of the stunning young woman in Oklahoma, who approached me after the show with her stepmother to tell me how she had been born without a vagina, and only realized it when she was fourteen. She was playing with her girlfriend. They compared their genitals and she realized hers were different, something was wrong. She went to the gynecologist with her father, the parent she was close to, and the doctor discovered that in fact she did not have a vagina or a uterus. Her father was heartbroken, trying to repress his tears and sadness so his daughter would not feel bad. On the way home from the doctor, in a noble attempt to comfort her, he said, “Don’t worry, darlin’. This is all gonna be just fine. As a matter of fact, it’s gonna be great. We’re gonna get you the best homemade pussy in America. And when you meet your husband, he’s gonna know we had it made specially for him.” And they did get her a new pussy, and she was relaxed and happy and when she brought her father back two nights later, the love between them melted me.
Then there was the night in Pittsburgh when a woman filled with passion rushed up to tell me she had to speak to me as soon as possible. Her intensity convinced me, and I called her as soon as I got back to New York. She said she was a massage therapist and she had to talk to me about the texture of the vagina. The texture was crucial. I hadn’t gotten the texture, she said. And she talked to me for an hour with such detail, with such sensuous clarity, that when she was finished, I had to lie down. During that conversation she also talked to me about the word “cunt.” I had said something negative about it in my performance, and she said I didn’t understand the word at all. She needed to help me reconceive it. She talked to me for a half-hour more about the word “cunt” and when she was finished, I was a convert. I wrote this for her.
RECLAIMING CUNT
I call it cunt. I’ve reclaimed it, “cunt.” I really like it. “Cunt.” Listen to it. “Cunt.” C C, Ca Ca. Cavern, cackle, clit, cute, come—closed c—closed inside, inside ca—then u—then cu—then curvy, inviting sharkskin u—uniform, under, up, urge, ugh, ugh, u—then n then cun—snug letters fitting perfectly together—n—nest, now, nexus, nice, nice, always depth, always round in uppercase, cun, cun—n a jagged wicked electrical pulse—n [high-pitched noise] then soft n—warm n—cun, cun, then t—then sharp certain tangy t—texture, take, tent, tight, tantalizing, tensing, taste, tendrils, time, tactile, tell me, tell me “Cunt cunt,” say it, tell me “Cunt.” “Cunt.”
I ASKED A SIX-YEAR-OLD GIRL:
“If your vagina got dressed, what would it wear?”
“Red high-tops and a Mets cap worn backward.”
“If it could speak, what would it say?”
“It would say words that begin with ‘
V’ and ‘T’—‘turtle’ and ‘violin’ are examples.”
“What does your vagina remind you of?”
“A pretty dark peach. Or a diamond I found from a treasure and it’s mine.”
“What’s special about your vagina?”
“Somewhere deep inside it I know it has a really really smart brain.”
“What does your vagina smell like?”
“Snowflakes.”
THE WOMAN WHO LOVED TO MAKE VAGINAS HAPPY
I love vaginas. I love women. I do not see them as separate things. Women pay me to dominate them, to excite them, to make them come. I did not start out like this. No, to the contrary: I started out as a lawyer. But in my late thirties, I became obsessed with making women happy. There were so many unfulfilled women. So many women who had no access to their sexual happiness. It began as a mission of sorts, but then I got involved in it. I got very good at it, kind of brilliant. It was my art. I started getting paid for it. It was as if I had found my calling. Tax law seemed completely boring and insignificant then.
I wore outrageous outfits when I dominated women—lace and silk and leather—and I used props: whips, handcuffs, rope, dildos. There was nothing like this in tax law. There were no props, no excitement, and I hated those blue corporate suits, although I wear them now from time to time in my new line of work and they serve quite nicely. Context is all. There were no props, no outfits in corporate law. There was no wetness. There was no dark mysterious foreplay. There were no erect nipples. There were no delicious mouths, but mainly there was no moaning. Not the kind I’m talking about, anyway. This was the key, I see now; moaning was the thing that ultimately seduced me and got me addicted to making women happy. When I was a little girl and I would see women in the movies making love, making strange orgasmic moaning noises, I used to laugh. I got strangely hysterical. I couldn’t believe that big, outrageous, ungoverned sounds like that just came out of women.
I longed to moan. I practiced in front of my mirror, on a tape recorder, moaning in various keys, various tones, with sometimes very operatic expressions, sometimes with more reserved, almost withheld expression. But always when I played it back, it sounded fake. It was fake. It wasn’t rooted in anything sexual, really, only in my desire to be sexual.
But then when I was ten I had to pee really badly once. On a car trip. It went on for almost an hour and when I finally got to pee in this dirty little gas station, it was so exciting, I moaned. I moaned as I peed. I couldn’t believe it, me moaning in a Texaco station somewhere in the middle of Louisiana. I realized right then that moans are connected with not getting what you want right away, with putting things off. I realized moans were best when they caught you by surprise; they came out of this hidden mysterious part of you that was speaking its own language. I realized that moans were, in fact, that language.
I became a moaner. It made most men anxious. Frankly, it terrified them. I was loud and they couldn’t concentrate on what they were doing. They’d lose focus. Then they’d lose everything. We couldn’t make love in people’s homes. The walls were too thin. I got a reputation in my building, and people stared at me with contempt in the elevator. Men thought I was too intense; some called me insane.
I began to feel bad about moaning. I got quiet and polite. I made noise into a pillow. I learned to choke my moan, hold it back like a sneeze. I began to get headaches and stress-related disorders. I was becoming hopeless when I discovered women. I discovered that most women loved my moaning—but, more important, I discovered how deeply excited I got when other women moaned, when I could make other women moan. It became a kind of passion.
Discovering the key, unlocking the vagina’s mouth, unlocking this voice, this wild song.
I made love to quiet women and I found this place inside them and they shocked themselves in their moaning. I made love to moaners and they found a deeper, more penetrating moan. I became obsessed. I longed to make women moan, to be in charge, like a conductor, maybe, or a bandleader.
It was a kind of surgery, a kind of delicate science, finding the tempo, the exact location or home of the moan. That’s what I called it.
Sometimes I found it over a woman’s jeans. Sometimes I sneaked up on it, off the record, quietly disarming the surrounding alarms and moving in. Sometimes I used force, but not violent, oppressing force, more like dominating, “I’m going to take you someplace; don’t worry, lie back, enjoy the ride” kind of force. Sometimes it was simply mundane. I found the moan before things even started, while we were eating salad or chicken just casually right there, with my fingers, “Here it is like that,” real simple, in the kitchen, all mixed in with the balsamic vinegar. Sometimes I used props—I loved props—sometimes I made the woman find her own moan in front of me. I waited, stuck it out until she opened herself. I wasn’t fooled by the minor, more obvious moans. No, I pushed her further, all the way into her power moan.
There’s the clit moan (a soft, in-the-mouth sound), the vaginal moan (a deep, in-the-throat sound), the combo clit-vaginal moan. There’s the pre-moan (a hint of sound), the almost moan (a circling sound), the right-on-it moan (a deeper, definite sound), the elegant moan (a sophisticated laughing sound), the Grace Slick moan (a rock-singing sound), the WASP moan (no sound), the semireligious moan (a Muslim chanting sound), the mountaintop moan (a yodeling sound), the baby moan (a googie-googie-googie-goo sound), the doggy moan (a panting sound), the southern moan (southern accent—“yeah! yeah”), the uninhibited militant bisexual moan (a deep, aggressive, pounding sound), the machine-gun moan, the tortured Zen moan (a twisted, hungry sound), the diva moan (a high, operatic note), the twisted-toe-orgasm moan, and, finally, the surprise triple orgasm moan.
After I finished this piece I read it to the woman on whose interview I’d based it. She didn’t feel it really had anything to do with her. She loved the piece, mind you, but she didn’t see herself in it. She felt that I had somehow avoided talking about vaginas, that I was still somehow objectifying them. Even the moans were a way of objectifying the vagina, cutting it off from the rest of the vagina, the rest of the woman. There was a real difference in the way lesbians saw vaginas. I hadn’t yet captured it.
So I interviewed her again.
“As a lesbian,” she said, “I need you to start from a lesbian-centered place, not framed within a heterosexual context. I did not desire women, for example, because I disliked men. Men weren’t even part of the equation.” She said, “You need to talk about entering into vaginas. You can’t talk about lesbian sex without doing this.
“For example,” she said. “I’m having sex with a woman. She’s inside me. I’m inside me. Fucking myself together with her. There are four fingers inside me; two are hers, two are mine.”
I don’t know that I wanted to talk about sex. But then again, how can I talk about vaginas without talking about them in action? I am worried about the titillation factor, worried about the piece becoming exploitative. Am I talking about vaginas to arouse people? Is that a bad thing?
“As lesbians,” she said, “we know about vaginas. We touch them. We lick them. We play with them. We tease them. We notice when the clitoris swells. We notice our own.”
I realize I am embarrassed, listening to her. There is a combination of reasons: excitement, fear, her love of vaginas and comfort with them and my distancing, terror of saying all this in front of you, the audience.
“I like to play with the rim of the vagina,” she said, “with fingers, knuckles, toes, tongue. I like to enter it slowly, slowly entering, then thrusting three fingers inside.
“There’s other cavities, other openings; there’s the mouth. While I have a free hand, there’s fingers in her mouth, fingers in her vagina, both going, all going all at once, her mouth sucking my fingers, her vagina sucking my fingers. Both sucking, both wet.”
I realize I don’t know what is appropriate. I don’t even know what that word means. Who decides. I learn so much from what she’s telling me. About her, about me.
“Then I come to my own wetness,” she says. “She can enter me. I can experience my own wetness, let her slide her fingers into me, her fingers into my mouth, my vagina, the same. I pull her hand out of my cunt. I rub my wetness against her knee so she knows. I slide my wetness down her leg until my face is between her thighs.”
Does talking about vaginas ruin the mystery, or is that just another myth that keeps vaginas in the dark, keeps them unknowing and unsatisfied?
“My tongue is on her clitoris. My tongue replaces my fingers. My mouth enters her vagina.”
Saying these words feels naughty, dangerous, too direct, too specific, wrong, intense, in charge, alive.
“My tongue is on her clitoris. My tongue replaces my fingers. My mouth enters her vagina.”
To love women, to love our vaginas, to know them and touch them and be familiar with who we are and what we need. To satisfy ourselves, to teach our lovers to satisfy us, to be present in our vaginas, to speak of them out loud, to speak of their hunger and pain and loneliness and humor, to make them visible so they cannot be ravaged in the dark without great consequence, so that our center, our point, our motor, our dream, is no longer detached, mutilated, numb, broken, invisible, or ashamed.
“You have to talk about entering vaginas,” she said. “Come on,” I say, “come in.”
I had been performing this piece for over two years when it suddenly occurred to me that there were no pieces about birth. It was a bizarre omission. Although when I told a journalist this recently, he asked me, “What’s the connection?”