My Golden Snatch: an Ode to Talentless Vaginas

At Patong's ping-pong show, balloons explode around my ears, shot through with darts hurtling from clenched Thai vaginas. A middle-aged woman squats over a fishbowl and out plops a live, swimming goldfish from her undercarriage. Another reaches inside herself and pulls out a sparrow, chirping and dazed from its close cervical encounter. I ponder my own vagina. It's alright, but it's not a lethal weapon. Or a birdcage.

My vagina has lived with me for 25 years, but we're almost strangers, co-habiting the same building like tenement neighbours. She came with no instruction manual, before search engine diagnosis became an idiot's guide to hypochondria, and I haven't managed to teach her any tricks yet. The best trick I could master is to maintain a consistent pH level, or prevent my pants from looking like snails have had a big sticky orgy in them.

I know what you're thinking: that's disgusting. I know. It's the reality of caring for a temperamental bacterial ecosystem, one that gives zero fucks if random secretions and silver pant trails are unbecoming.

That's not to say I don't like her, she's just high maintenance. I give her orgasms and comfy cotton-gusset pants, and avoid wearing tight jeans on hot days; she rewards me with unpredictable menstrual cycles and the occasional mid-coitus whoopee cushion thunderclap.

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"I saw an artist cover her fanny in glitter and use it to lip sync to Donna Summer. I'm less adventurous"

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As far as folded flesh around a cave mouth goes, she's a looker. While often depicted as a lotus or some other gently blossoming flower, a vagina's physical appearance is more ‘sideways bacon sandwich’ if we're honest. The notion of 'badly packed kebabs' is bandied around to denigrate protruding labia, as if they’re something to be avoided.

Let's be true to ourselves folks, badly packed or no – you're still going to eat that kebab. As someone who has eaten both pussy and kebab, well and poorly packed, I can confirm its appearance does not change the flavour, or the outcome.

Lots of other feminists have made friends with their vaginas. They celebrate their clams, frolicking around the hillside with their muffs out. They collect their menstrual blood in cups and use it as plant fertiliser, they make furry dolls out of pubic hair.

I watched an artist cover her fanny in golden glitter then use it to lip sync to Donna Summer, instantly shaming a lifetime of my karaoke efforts with the opening note. I'm less adventurous with mine. I once contemplated slathering her in poster paint to make a potato print, but decided against.

In Amsterdam's Banana Bar, a naked barmaid told me she'd write me a postcard. She inserted the marker and scrawled, 'To Q love from Pussy' in perfect script. I won't lie, my stationery set was violated in my own love letter attempts, but I never mastered the cursive.

She might not fire darts or make a decent aviary, but she'll do.

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