Plump Fiction

[Part 5 of the "Voices of I" series]

Roxanne lives a sex life that is as arid as the Gobi. Truth be told, dry is too polite an adjective to characterize the state of affairs between her genitals and actual—not imagined—coitus. If her vagina is a desert, it is one that thirsts for the first drop of rain that will finally undo the curse of famine, a literal coup de grace for the celibate. In one of her toilet bowl contemplations not too long ago, Roxanne can almost hear her vulva speak to her as if it was pulsating with alien life, declaring with a clout of frustration—like Mark Antony at the start of his funeral oration for Julius Caesar—that she has become more virgin than Mary of Nazareth herself. "Shut!" Roxanne would issue the command like a judge would issue a writ with finality. Unfortunately, her vagina has lips that will not be sealed by a mere order from its possessor. "I have come to bury your virginity and not to praise it," the creature would interject, smiling without teeth, as if to say that Roxanne is its arrogant underling. Although Roxanne would have none of it, perhaps the vagina has a point when it said that the fruit is already swelling, or ripe enough for harvest season, only that she hangs at the topmost branch and that nobody ever dared to climb the height of the tree and touch her.

The problem is that they exist in the same body at the same time, like two disparate independent clauses bridged by an unbreakable conjunction; they necessarily form the whole sentence. You cannot take away one without destroying the collective meaning. Roxanne sees their situation comparable to sisters conjoined in utero, sharing the same blood and flesh, but treats everything as communal only to the extent that one is willing to share. Nobody wanted to share anything, and therein lies the rub. Because their flesh is one, nature dictates that their relationship is one of absolute community of property. Worse, the vagina cannot divorce itself from her.

On the twentieth of each month, it bleeds. It is not wounded from a protracted battle but it is waiting for that fateful day as Milan Kundera himself would have envisioned it: "[Roxanne's] legs raised in the air like the arms of a soldier surrendering to a pointed gun." Enemy occupation will be liberation day, like how traitors embrace the knees of the conqueror in exchange for an extended artificial life, no matter how brief. It will be the death nail to her chastity; the immeasurable pleasure therefrom will be nirvana for the vagina. What she detests, her receptacle yearns. The reader must understand the dualism, the dichotomy that separates the organ from the organism.

I have not seen Roxanne in seven years, much less the proud flower that complains for not having been placed on the head as a crown to a queen, a rightful throne that deserves the attention of the universe. In my memory, she is a voiceless face whose skin is lovely but pales in contrast to the soul that hides beneath. I remember the two short encounters we have had in the past, and on both occasions she said "no". The question had something to do with her name and her answer had a lot to do with rejection. Twice failing, I did my research and eventually found out for myself. I think I have known many things about her. Looking back, there is always a fine line between fiction and truth, but three years less than a decade is a period long enough to blur any distinction, if at all it still matters today.

Novelists and women—oftentimes just one and the same—have long posed the theory that there is a group of the female species out to reserve their chastity, or bent on remaining true to their abstinence, until the day the bold and brave hazards to climb his way through the thorns and claims the destiny meant for a man and a woman, which is to consecrate their lives in a lasting union. Until that day, the Gobi is to remain deprived of irrigation, or exonerated by harrowing winds from the vast sea of nimbus above. Roxanne believes in this like gospel truth, as if the occult is not in any way different from organized mafia called religion. In a way, her vagina is a stubborn atheist. Men in her college admired her for her iron will, but they admired her sexual canal all the more for its rebellious disposition. Like greyhounds, they wag their tail after picking up a scent that they were trained to recognize. Her dogged followers want both polar worlds and they desire to smother themselves in those extremes. They are captivated captives who understand prison term as the closest thing to sexual freedom.

Etymology is a curiosity. The word vagina literally means scabbard in Latin. It is supposed to hold a bladed weapon, like a knife or a scimitar. The scabbard poses the least danger; it is the weapon inside that can inflict mortal wounds, some of which are never to heal.

I am yet to recover from the seven years of absolute nothing that Roxanne has given. Her absence has been fatal to my cause. She has been the executioner, if not the guillotine herself, taking the form of a blade that hides inside a fertile sheath of skin, waiting for the prompt time to wield itself against the neck of the convict. I have been guilty of admiration and I have died many times during those seven years.

She is the vagina without her knowing it.



Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6