and hack until time for my next solo excursion—snorkeling on three reefs in the middle of the ocean.
I dug around for a swimsuit that would hide nothing. I would show my breasts to be what they were, those of a woman who’d lived and loved and nursed two beautiful children. Those of a mature woman.
The Grumpy Vagina
As a reporter and columnist for years, I’m accustomed to interviewing people and asking all sorts of nosy and prodding questions. I’m not used to the tables turning, as was the case when a western North Carolina magazine named me Favorite Columnist.
A reporter from the publication called and I was in no shape for an interview. I was laid up in bed, eight months pregnant, trying to hold back a premature birth. With both my babies, I had to take medicines for a condition in which my big old fickle oven of a uterus wanted to pop out kids before the center’s cooked.
“So, how does it feel to be named Favorite Columnist?” this sweet woman who sounded all of eighteen asked, as I rolled all two hundred pounds over in the bed and tried to think of something besides losing my mucus plug.
“Feels good,” I said, sounding like some stupid hick. “Feels damn good.” Oh, why is it that pregnancy has turned me into Billy Bob Thornton? Just give me a PBR and a Confederate flag, a hundred-dollar coupon to Feed and Seed, and maybe a fetus tattoo. “I’m honored,” I said, trying to redeem a few brain cells and some class. They say when a woman is pregnant, the cranial brain dries up and the placental “brain” becomes the body’s boss. I believe it. I had a feeling everything I owned or thought was stored in the placenta.
“Why do you think the readers keep giving you this honor every year?” she asked, and I was wondering the same thing.
“Hmmm. I would bet money it’s my hair. It’s my best feature and the only body part without a cartilage problem.”
“Do you have bad knees?”
“Bad knees?”
“Cartilage. You know, in the knees?”
“Nah, I was talking about my ears. They flop like a piece of cloth, not a drop of cartilage in them. People say they favor Ross Perot’s. And my nose, too. Way too much cartilage there. I have one pretty good feature and that’s my hair, so I think readers appreciate that. Most of my mail is in regards to various and sundry hairdos. I try to change the style and color quarterly to shake things up a bit. A man threatened to kill me with that last change, the do with what he called the ‘chunky skunk’ highlights. He said he was of a mind to come in with a gun to shoot me and the stylist both. He said my nose had batwings coming off the sides, that the tip dragged too low, and that overall, my new picture would singe the eyes of every man’s whose fell upon the page.”
She cleared her throat and tried not to laugh. I was having a contraction and wanted to logroll out of the bed, but the doctor said if I got up for frivolous reasons, such as the need to pee, I might as well hold a bucket under my privates to collect the new family member.
I was hungry and my husband had left to play pinball at Frank’s Pizza because he couldn’t stand my pregnancy personality. He’d slid a cooler of food by the bed and refilled my water jug.
The interviewer wanted to talk about the secrets of my success, and I told her I never thought I was successful—except in getting men to fall madly albeit temporarily in love and propose—but I wasn’t about to share those secrets with her.
“There aren’t but three of us they could have voted for,” I said to the young woman as I peeled a banana and stuffed half into my mouth. “There is Hooch McKinney, who writes about politics, but nobody wants to read about politics unless one of them’s got his jibblybob where it shouldn’t be, plus Hooch is bald-headed. Don’t get me wrong. I love bald-headed men, but readers aren’t going to generally vote for one. Then again, old Hooch should have won this thing ’cause he was the guy that broke the story on the Diapered Detective as you may recall.”
“Diapered Detective? I’m new at the magazine. Tell me about this, please.”
Ho-hum. “Well, the instigating detective had that cartoon piggy look to him and was one of those men with an unfortunate mad-baby face. You know, the kind of grown men who resemble angry infants all splotchy and puffed up? He was at least forty-five and got caught going to diaper parties at the local Best Western. A bunch of men just stand around in their nappies and give each other enemas. It’s sick, sick, sick. Let me tell you, missy, I know firsthand about giving enemas.”
“You do?”
“Well, I mean I don’t trot over to Motel 6 with my hand in a glove and a Fleet by my side, but there was a time I got paid decent money as a young student nurse to do that kind of business. No way I’d stand around and do it for free or personal enjoyment. You have to be a real pervert to do that. Hooch wrote a few stories about it, even used the Huggies and Pampers logos next to his column sig, which was a riot, but I guess the readers didn’t find him all that amusing, probably on account of being bald and having the Gorbachev thing going on up there.”
“What do you mean the Gorbachev thing?” she asked. I guess she was too young to know who the man was. She sounded like a high school senior and I had to do most of the talking.
“He was the…Never mind. Hooch had that discoloration on his head like Gorbachev, only his is shaped like a…well, let’s just call it a male member, and this got some people behind his back calling him a dickhead, only I don’t ’cause I was brought up Baptist and you go to hell for saying those kinds of words, according to my mother. Besides Hooch, the only other competition was Regal Hildebrand, who lives near the Biltmore House and is married to a rich gynecologist and writes about things like decorating and the Junior League fund-raisers and when the daylilies are ready to bloom. That’s boring as all…Hold on a minute, would ya? Something’s trying to crawl out of me. Oh, help!” A contraction hit hard and I knocked the phone to the floor where it bounced across the hardwoods and finally hit a coffee table and flew back toward me.
“Sorry about that.” The woman reporter said nothing. I couldn’t even hear breathing, so I decided to finish my story before delivering a child.
“I was saying that no one can relate to those rich-woman tales of constipated living. If she was smart, she’d be writing witty prose about what it’s like to be married to a gynecologist and how it sure helps they make a lot of money ’cause everybody knows what they face day in and day out. I dated one for six months who was partially fingerless, but don’t put that in there because he’s still mad on account of an incident with my old Subaru.” Silence filled the phone and I was certain she had gone on a bathroom break. I continued talking as if my best friend were on the line.
“My family grew up near a gynecologist and before Mama got her renewed religion, she called him the Cul-de-sac Pussy Peeper, only don’t quote me on that because Mama doesn’t use the P word anymore. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is this Hildebrand woman really has it in her to be funny. She got drunk one time at a Christmas party, purely by accident, I assure you, and told about the time her husband had to open his secret drawer when an unwashed woman came in for her P and P—that’s the lingo for pap and pelvic. He has this drawer, see, that has these things in them that look exactly like a Pest Strips but impart a lavender aroma, and Doc Hildebrand hangs them on one of the stirrups when the patient’s not looking because he said a lot of these people don’t bathe and have pubic vermin. That’s exactly what Regal Hildebrand called them. Pubic vermin. I loved her that day. I loved her for an entire hour but haven’t cared for her since.
“You
