Doing the splits

You are 14. Your mother tells you that you will soon have your first period. You wonder where the hell it has been this past year as almost every girl in your class has cried and stuffed cheap toilet paper into their panties at least once. When will your dramatic moment come? When can you shriek and wail and be handed a banana and welcomed into womanhood? Your mother tells you it is the hormones in their food that make their periods come early. You wonder whether you would trade your lovingly prepared chelo-kabab and ghormeh sabzi for a pair of tits and the opportunity to complain about PMS. What is PMS anyway? Why do people let you yell and cry and blame it on three useless, meaningless letters. Anyway who cares...where are my breasts? Stupid Iranian food with its fresh ingredients and lack of hormones.

" Don't do the splits." Your mother says.
" Why?"
" You'll tear your hymen."
" My what?"
" Your hymen. Your...curtain..."
" My curtain?"
" Yes. Your curtain. Stop it."

I sat and pondered my hymen. If it was indeed a curtain, surely it would only be attached on one side, allowing the other side to move freely. Would it cascade like silk or is it more like a velvet curtain at an opera? Why couldn't I reach down and tuck it in somewhere to stop it rupturing? Either way, the thought that I could tear anything down there made me immediately stop doing anything which required me to open my legs further than they absolutely had to be. I started imagining tearing my eyelids and nose apart. I touched myself with the greatest delicacy from then on.

You are 16. He put his hand up the back of your top and you counted ten seconds before pulling away and saying;
" we should stop."
" Why?"
" Because we might go too far.."
" Too far how? You mean sex?" He is breathless and his face is red. You want, more than ever, to tell him that you do not even find him attractive when his face is a normal color, that you are here simply to fulfill a societal requirement to prove that you CAN have a boyfriend. You want to tell him that you imagine yourself removing your shoe and batting him in the face with it until he bleeds because sometimes (especially when he gets aroused) you find him incredibly repulsive.

" Yeah...I don't...I'm...waiting."
" Waiting? Waiting for what??!!" He says. He spat on you when he said that. His aftershave smells like cake AND he spat on you. He is truly repulsive.  You want to tell him that even if the small matter of your hymen wasn't in the way you wouldn't let him anywhere near your naked body. Even if your naked body occasionally resembles a sack of onions beaten into the rough shape of a woman like thing. It is still far too good for a man who smells like cake and spits at you when he talks. Also, you haven't gotten the hang of shaving your intimate area and you have cut yourself more excessively than a self-harmer. Your vagina is not ready for a public unveiling. One day your vagina will be soft as the petals of lilies and you shall decorate it with tiny jewels all the color of the rainbow. When your knickers are finally drawn down a choir of angelic voices will serenade The Chosen One and tears of joy will cloud his face as he comes across your hymen, in a tuxedo smiling bashfully and sipping a martini to your and his good health. One day your vagina will stop looking like Rasputin after a day at the seaside. It will. I promise. But when that day comes, the man who will gaze lovingly upon it will neither smell like cake nor spit at you when he talks.

" My wedding night. Its a cultural thing...we don't "do" sex before marriage." I say proudly.
" I won't tell if you don't..." he says and leans in with an expression that in his head must be like Omar Sharif in his hayday...in that film where its winter all the time and everyone is sad...what is it...Cleopatra...no wait...anyway in reality he looked like an aroused prawn. His forehead is so crinkly you want to take your shoe off and...no wait..that's not fair. A fish. He looked more like a fish because his eyes are too close together and they are small and beady and emotionless and he is making a strange shape with his mouth. You want to hit him with a fish. Let's see how much he likes that. A duel with one of his own. A FACE DUEL.

"err..They can tell...My hymen will be..well...it won't be there." You have your hand on his face and you consider pushing your fingertips into his eyes and pressing so hard that he squeals.

" What the hell are you talking about? Take your god damn clothes off!" Now he says it rather whimsically, what with your hand over his face and a little jaunty laugh at the end to make absolutely sure that he does not sound like a rapist.


You told him he smelled like cake and left. You felt empowered.

" Its just me and you...on my wedding night you'll score me a lifetime of prestige!" You whispered to your hymen at the bus stop. Now I'm sure you'll think you imagined this, but you had the distinct impression that your hymen winked back up at you in response. You are happy, ignorant and virginal.