The Vagina Monologues Original: The Bind by Lady Axelle

This is an original piece performed for our February 2014 Vagina Monologues event.

THE BIND by Axelle Paramour

I can distinctly remember my first conscious memory of my vagina, the first moment it occurred to me that my "down there" was different from an arm or a leg. I was five years old, it was during nap time and my mat was positioned directly across from a little ginger haired boy. He was whispering about striking some sort of deal, an "I'll show you mine, if you show me yours" sort of thing. Well I knew what I looked like, I saw it every day in the tub, but what I didn't know was what boys had, I only did have the one sister. I was curious, and the fact that the shades were drawn and we were suppose to be sleeping piqued my devilish sensibility. I pointed to him and whispered, "You go first". I remember being puzzled at the little appendage between his legs. What on earth did they do with that? I flashed mine and I'll never forget the look of disappointment that covered his face, like he was expecting more or something. I felt like some sort of dud.

I'm nine and I'm standing in my front yard, I watch her coming up the block, a spec till she envelopes my vision. She is tall, lanky, and blonde; the complete opposite to my short, chubby, brown haired self. But for some reason she stops and strikes up a conversation with lil ole me. I'm immediately both flattered and dazzled by her. She is three years older and talks a mile a minute. She explains she lives round the corner with her grandparents and goes to some private, bible thumping Christian school for girls. She asks all about going to school with boys. If I talk to them, if I have a boyfriend, have I been kissed yet? I tell her I don't really notice them and ask her if she wants to come climb in my tree. She accepts and among the leaves and branches proceeds to corrupt my young and impressionable mind. She asks me how much I touch myself and when I give her a bewildered look she explains how it's done. I have been perfecting the practice ever since.

In the fifth grade, a couple of years later, I bring home a note from my teacher, asking my mother to contact her because she is concerned on my vast knowledge of sexual education as well as my vagina and she  also does not appreciate being corrected in class. I argue with my mother and explain that it was all her fault! She was the one to give me the books about puberty, she was the one that told me it wasn't a shameful thing, and she was the one that assured me everyone knew about it! You see my mother was not the type to talk about such things, being born and raised in an era were polite conversation forbade such discussion. So when a couple of years before I began asking, "What's happening to me?", she bought me a book bearing the same query.

It became a ritual for a time, she would come over Friday nights, we would rent movies, and stock up on sugary delights. She's 14, a year older than me and has teeth that remind me of a bunny. She has a boyfriend and she tells me all about him, about the things he does to her and how nice it feels. Just listening to her weave the little tales gets me excited, makes something stir deep within me. I snuggle closer to her and melt when she does the same. We're watching some movie that could qualify as soft core porn, when my leg brushes against hers and I make some sort of off handed comment about how soft it feels. The smile on her face widens, she explains some trick about using hair conditioner as a shaving cream and invites me to feel with my hand. I trail my fingertips over her soft flesh and eye her, she leans in to kiss me and I don't bat an eyelash when her hand covers mine and guides me towards her cunt.

It happened when I was fifteen. I went to bed on night the same girl I had always been and awoke the next morning to a stranger. My path forked, a part of me ceased to exist and what was left carried along down this arduous road alone. What he did to me became a pillar in my life, most things are measured against it. Before he did it, after her did it. I have never been able to look at him the same, never meet his eye without suppressing rage. But the heart is a tricky, tricky thing, it can betray us and make us love those that we would rather hate. For a period of time my pussy became nothing but a source of pleasure, I severed the tie between it and my heart. I would never again allow it to become so precious that it's existence could break me. Sex? Yes. Sex and Love? No. I viewed each experience with a reckless abandon, I feared nothing because death was always the ultimate consequence and I had little regard for my life.

They call it an awakening, the moment when the fog lifts and you can see till forever. It was the summer after graduation and it's cover is what intrigued me. A woman, her legs crossed, bent over, her hands on her ankles, and on display. I felt myself getting wet, just looking at it. I watched the film in a kind of awe. I had imagined, I had fantasized, and I had envisioned a life like this but never did I think it could be real. I wasn't the only girl who trembled in delight at the thought of horrible and deviant things being done to her, I wasn't the only girl who touched herself and conjured up ghastly little scenarios, I wasn't the only girl who wanted so much more then what society told her was acceptable. I had always been tantalized by the darker things, drawn into the shadows of the forbidden. And in this unearthing, I had found a home.

It takes ten years from that night before I trust myself enough to allow the first person to scale my walls and find a place in my heart. I saw in him someone who was searching and longing for something they couldn't define. He was tender and vulnerable in a way that only made me see him as strong. When the day came that I found him between my thighs, feeling the gentle and cautious questioning of his touch, I knew with a certainty I was safe. The link between my vagina and my heart had been repaired. Liberation doesn't always come through fire and brimstone and sometimes we do not always hold the key to our own locks. At times it can be a taken hand and the constant of another. And when I finally freed myself from those shackles and learned that beauty of loving someone and making love to someone my vagina was freed.