This is what 39 looks like. He looks good for his age, don’t you think?
Photo above by my good friend Aaryn.
Okay, I’ll admit it, I’m only recently committed to using the v-word in place of various euphemisms. I get it, okay? The reason it’s easier for me to say “penis” than “vagina” is because I have been culturally conditioned to feel shame about my girl parts nether region lady-bits vagina. But also, it’s that vagina isn’t always accurate. It’s not always necessarily the biological girly bit that I’m talking about. Sometimes I mean clitoris, and sometimes I mean mons, and sometimes I mean labia majora–or minora–but most often I mean the whole kit and kaboodle. The whole shebang, as it were. The penis is easy; it’s just exactly what it is, and there’s not much to it. It just hangs there, simply itself, easily named and called upon.
But women are different. Our sex is more mysterious, more complex in both composition and function, and comprised of not one but many sensitive and lovely parts–only one of which is actually a vagina. And I don’t have a word for that. Besides girl parts, I mean.
Anyway, these semantics are on my mind because I have noticed, like some others, that I’m hearing a lot about this lately. Seems like every time I tune in to the popular culture somebody’s talking about one vagina or another. Which is fine by me. I’m cool with it. It’s about time, I guess, that our vaginas came out of the closet–or wherever it is we’ve been hiding them.
Ah, dorm life. It’s been a long time since I was able to intimately familiarize myself with the graffiti of a particular bathroom stall.
See, I have this thing–when I work somewhere, or stay somewhere–that I have to use a public bathroom on a consistent basis?– I get over some of my anxiety about the sharing a toilet with strangers by using the same stall every time. It’s weird, maybe, but it’s something I do. Over the course of using the same stall over the last several days, I spent time reading the graffiti, until I pretty much had it memorized.
So, join me, will you, in the damn hell WW bathroom stall? I think it gives an nice flavor of what this particular North Carolina farming college is like:
(on the window sill)
smoke wheat
(on the toilet paper wall)
Obama GET
Kucinich FIRED
MIT UP!
HILLARY CLINTON–life’s a bitch, why vote for 1?
You can’t complain if you won’t work for change.
WENDALL was here.
I am fucking up. Dude, goto student services.
possum trousers
burn something
(and on the door)
Get u some!
(consentually)
Polluted Angels Sing Vagina Hymns
And so it goes . . .
So, yesterday was registration/orientation at Warren Wilson. I took a first-day-of-school picture of me in my very spartan dorm room while I was waiting for things to start, but I haven’t yet uploaded and jpeg’d it, so Goodlooking, you’ll have to wait another day or so for that.
This is what I wrote in my journal before the meeting:
Yeah. Okay. Here I am @ my first day of school and I’m totally freaking out. Freaking. Out. I feel like the biggest fraud on the planet and I’m about to be found out. About to be found out!!!!!
My stomach hurts. I don’t know what to write on my Project Preference Form. I feel like I’m about 13 years old. Why am I so nervous? I am so nervous. I can’t breathe too good. I need to pee, but I don’t want to go out in the hall–what if someone looks at me? What will I say, and did I mention I’m freaking out?
I need to make my bed. I need to finish reading my worksheets. I need a drink. Badly.
And here’s the entry just after I got back from the orientation and new-student reception:
So now I’m back from the first night of orientatin, meeting the faculty, dinner and readings and oh. my. god. I am freaking out. I talked to Michael Martone, who’s all silver-foxy experimentalist, and Anthony Doerr, who’s all enthusiastic genius, and Debra Spark, who’s all warm funny articulateness. And CJ Hribal, who wrote American Beauty and is workshopping my story on Thursday came up and introduced himself to me. Like he wanted to meet me. And maybe you don’t know who any of these people are, but trust me, they’re awesome. God. I am stoked. Like I hardly dared to hope I’d be.
So: for tomorrow I need to straighten out FINAID and turn in my project preference form. Which I need to finalize, like, now. And sleep, which won’t be easy, but I have a feeling–there may not be much sleeping for a few days.
Yahoo!
Yeah. I really wrote, “Yahoo!” So, do you get the picture? I’m having a good time.
