I saw ‘The Vagina Monologues’ last week as part of Washington University’s V-Day events-I had seen the show before during my freshman year, but I was glad to reacquaint myself with it so I could reflect on how much I had changed over the past three years. Or hadn’t changed. Probably the biggest change is that I can now write about my vagina.
If my vagina could talk, what would it say? It would say, “invest in real estate in suburban Ontario.” As far as I know, my vagina has never been to Canada. Maybe it went without me. I probably should’ve noticed. I don’t know why I feel compelled to take real estate advice from between my legs; and I didn’t know what to tell my real estate agent when he asked me where I got this lead, but I gave him my vagina’s e-mail address-in retrospect, it was a mistake to get my vagina its own Yahoo account because it likes to forward jokes about nuns.
Again, if my vagina could talk, what would it say? It would say, “purchase duct tape and plastic sheeting.” Apparently my vagina is Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. But since my vagina brought it up, let’s discuss. Two weeks ago, the government suggested that we prepare for an unlikely but possible terrorist attack in the form of chemical or biological weapons, and that we should all run to the hardware store and purchase duct tape and plastic sheeting to create a “safe room” in our homes. So we are all now to create a “safe room” where nothing gets in (oh, now I see why my vagina brought this up. Very funny, vagina).
Now I’ve read up a little bit on biological weapons, and if you’d like to scare yourself witless, I recommend Richard Preston’s bio-terror book “Demon in the Freezer.” It’s a nice gesture the government is taking to address the threat, and I’m sure hardware stores appreciate the business; but when my vagina was five years old, we went to a day camp where one of our activities was to paint a brick wall with water. We had roller brushes, a pan of water, and our counselors would cool themselves in the shade while the children darkened the brick with water, and since the brick’s color changed, we thought it was like paint. We thought it was really doing something. Nobody told us about evaporation.
I know duct tape can do a lot. I used to own a book called “Ductagami” and it had step by step instructions about how to make various things out of duct tape: wallets, hats, briefcases. But a safe room? You’re going to have to leave it eventually and I imagine it would be quite difficult to escape a biological agent if you’re among an urban population-maybe this is why my vagina recommended Canada. Anyway, my homeland security recommendation is this: If you insist on making a safe room, replace the plastic sheeting with bubble wrap. That way, you can spend your day popping it while you watch us bleeding-eyed, fiddling grasshoppers, the ones who didn’t heed Tom Ridge’s advice, curse our duct tape wallets, wishing we had used it to build a safe room instead.
I can’t believe a column about my vagina took you on a tour of my fatalist psyche. It’s frightening to think the seat of my dark, dark soul is located in my personal Antipodes. Maybe I should lighten the mood with the observation that if George W. Bush and Dick Cheney don’t get reelected in 2004 we can no longer make Dick and Bush jokes.
By the way, my vagina just e-mailed to say if you want another fictional take on some of the above, my play “Psalms of a Questionable Nature” opens tonight in the studio theatre in Mallinckrodt and runs through Sunday, tickets available right freakin’ now at the Edison Theatre box office. The play has been called “‘Fight Club’ meets the un-sucky parts of ‘The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood.’” You sit there and think about that, and when you’re done thinking, buy a ticket and see a play.

Popularity: 1% [?]

 Print This Post

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 18th, 2003 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Cadenza. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.