The last time a woman, sitting between my legs, told me I had a pretty vagina, I replied, "I'm glad you think so," to which she quickly, and without any coyness, retorted, "Come on. I'm not the first woman who's told you that." Caught in this truth, I blushed a shade darker than most of what she could see.
* * *
As the gynecologist, seated on a swivel chair mere inches past my goose-bumped legs and thoughtfully shaved mound, leaned obligatorily towards the glossy pink sanctum of my cervix shining through the small yawn of my speculum-wrenched vagina, I closed my eyes the way people in pews do and waded into the rose-colored darkness for a brief breath.
When she picked up the thin plastic wand recognizable to every woman who's ever had a pap smear, I fastened my eyes to the ironic flower decal on the ceiling and tried not to imagine the rigid stick shooting through the short dark tunnel, like a snake lunging in the night. It bit into me with a familiar twinge, its sharp pinch the kind my sister used to give me when we were kids.
