The Vagina Monologues

You know how the Chinese name each year after an animal? Year of the Rooster. Year of the Dragon. Well, for me, last month was Month of the Vagina.

It all started with a co-worker. She came in to work one morning and told me she had to ask me a question. “But you can’t react in any way! You can’t laugh or smile or make jokes or ask me any questions.” Curious as to what the question was, I agreed to the conditions.

Looking over her right, then left shoulder to be sure nobody was within earshot she asked, “What does this word mean?” From her pocket she pulls out a post it, and slides it across my desk face down. I pick up the post it, flip it over and scrawled on the small piece of yellow paper was the word. Before I say what the word was, I first have to say how much I hate this word. The word was poontang. I think I stopped breathing for a second and my head nearly popped from holding in the laughter. I had 3 million clever things to say and I had agreed not to say any of them! This was torture.

I looked up at her and said, “Go back to your desk. We’ll discuss this via e-mail.” I explained to her that it was a very crude word for girl parts. She writes back, “Which girl parts?” I write back, “If your body is a globe, South America.” She writes back, “Oh.” I type, "It's just as dirty as the "C" word." She replies, "What's the "C" word?" Oh hell. Then start the million questions. Why is it called that? Who made that word up? Why is it so dirty? On and on it went until finally I sent her to the authority on all things ghetto. Urbandictionary.com. I read the definitions first to be sure they would answer all of her questions, and with the exception of one entry that talked about losing car keys, they were spot on.

Fast forward to a week later and I’m sitting at a business dinner with a group of meeting planners. We talked about the usual things at dinner. Properties we’d worked at in the past, favorite hotels, least favorite hotels, our families, sex parties…Insert sound of a skipping record. WHAT? Sex parties? They are called different things around the country like “Slumber parties”, “Girls night out parties”, and my personal favorite, “F***erwear parties.” Basically a group of women get together, drink a load of wine, buy sex toys and pee themselves laughing. Sounds fun right? The true fun happens when the same group of women includes a male stranger (aka ME) in this conversation. I learned things about the female anatomy that I never wanted to know, and will never need to know. The worst part of all was learning about “The Man in The Boat.” For those who don’t know what “The Man in The Boat” is, I’m not sure even the urban dictionary will be able to help you.