There’s Shit in My Vagina

FEATURE

Written by Maia Carr Heke (she/her) | @buzzcutchainsaw | Contributing Writer

Illustrated by Younsoo (Chloe) Kim (she/her) | @ysksince0522 | Contributing Artist

TW: Sexuality, Sexual Coersion, Sexual Assault

There’s shit in my vagina.

Sometimes I put my fingers down there, draw them back to my nose and sniff, just to make sure my vagina doesn’t smell too bad for the next man I will stop wanting to have sex with halfway through but will continue to have sex with anyway.

Why do I care how it smells, tastes? Why do I bother wanting to taste OK for someone that will bruise me without asking, and keep going regardless of whether I tell him it hurts?

No matter the answer, I check anyway, the stench of desperation for approval lingering on my fingers alongside the smell of my vagina. It never smells that bad, but how am I to know what the next normal condition of a vagina is no longer tolerable? What if I am just used to its putridity, riddled with disease yet asymptomatic? What if that next guy who splits my hesitant hips apart while I grimace at the ceiling and goes to lick me comes right back up and pulls a face?

What if he is angry? He might not have noticed my enthusiasm faltering, but he’ll notice my shitty vagina. And what if he licks me anyway, licks me through all our shared pain, all because I didn’t trust him enough to tell him I don’t even like oral?

What if I wiped wrong? What if I got literal, actual shit in my vagina? A rectovaginal fistula? What would even happen if my shit festered there unnoticed before my next shower? Why would it even matter to me beyond the obvious, immediate health issue?

Do you remember waking up in his bed with his thumb lodged deep in your guts?

It’d started so normally, you’d said yes, but of course, once you say yes to a stranger, there’s no way you can back out after.

You woke in his bed to that burn, in that place no one had tried to venture, not even yourself. You were still so drunk, so confused. It wasn’t the first time something like this had happened, but it had been so long that you were almost trusting of the idea it would never happen again.

Especially not like this. This gut punch was too literal.

And you’d fucked him, hadn’t you? You’d fucked him with gusto, happy to do it – excitement only starting to wane halfway through, god, you didn’t want to do this anymore, couldn’t figure out why, he’s not abusing you, there’s no excuse, there’s no excuse, keep going, keep going -

You’d fucked him, hadn’t you? You’d fucked him long and hard and fast and good and well, well, well beyond your limit, praying to God despite being an Atheist that he’d just come already, but he wasn’t showing signs, and so you’d dutifully raised your burning, trembling hips and thighs again and again, aching, aching.

Wasn’t that enough? Or was the stench of your vagina permeating the small room, twirling inside his nostrils, preventing him from orgasm?

No, he hadn’t come. You hadn’t done your penance. He was too drunk to come and this

responsibility would be placed like a sword at your sheath, now. But he fell asleep, his arms like a vice around you, unable to squirm away to sneak home, and you slipped into a fitful sleep, only to wake later on to that burn...

I’d never wanted it, neither of us had discussed it, never even mentioned it, and there I was, prodded and stretched. I hadn’t even gone through with withdrawing consent and I was still being speared open, because I still seemed to owe him something.

It was so usual, though. Reality fell on me as a weighted blanket full of grief. A distant friend visited without warning, appearing at the window I vacantly stared out of while his thumb was in my arsehole. She placed a heavy hand on my shoulder and held me still with sad eyes.

Did he put his shitty thumb inside my vagina afterwards?

I don’t taste too foul. I think I taste normal. But what if? Am I meant to taste like sweet nectar and peach? My phone is filled with videos on what to ingest to allow the healthiest flora to grow down there in that cavern, that betrayal, that bus station.

Good customer service dictates you must have the best product on hand, and be damned if you don’t want to sell it. Even worse if you close the shop midway through a sale.

And sometimes it is your fault. You seek it out and don’t like what is given to you in return. Erring on the side of danger for a thrill that is only thrilling for a moment and then you’re sitting next to someone who won’t let you walk away from him for even a second just to sip your beer. Pulling your arm and taking the bottle out of your hand, setting it aside so you can mount him, because you agreed to be here.

It is not my fault. I seek out sex and find myself trapped in an apartment building in the morning. He’s asleep and I need a key card for the building doors. I leave his place and realised I’d rather be trapped in an entire building than wake someone I don’t want to have sex with anymore to tell him I want to leave his home.

Maybe he’ll be pleased I took my smell with me. Maybe my breasts are bruised because he didn’t approve of my taste.

And when I finally burst out of that building into the harsh and spiky sunlight, fire escape door clanging shut behind me, there’s that friend, offering me a cigarette and a hand, come, walk with me.

This isn’t the worst you’ve been through. So quit it, because you left the house for exactly this.

But did I? I seek sexual companionship, not this. I seek respect and fun, and yes, one-night stands are not particularly intimate, but sex is, so is it wrong of me to think I’ll feel safe to set any boundary?

It’s all I got, me and my shitty vagina. The smell must attract this kind of attention. Even so, I must be desired. I must smell good for them. I must make sure I taste pleasant.

Maybe they’ll get off faster that way.