The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler Read Free Book Online

it’s an unusual story—brutal; extreme. But it’s not. In fact, it’s not nearly as disturbing as many of the stories I’ve heard in the years since. Poor women suffer terrible sexual violence that goes unreported.
    Because of their
    social class, these women do not have access to therapy or other methods of healing.
    Their repeated
    abuse ultimately eats away at their self-esteem, driving them to drugs, prostitution, AIDS, and in many cases, death. Fortunately, this particular story has a different outcome. This woman met another woman in that shelter, and they fell in love. Through their love, they got out of the shelter system and have a beautiful life together today. I wrote this piece for them, for their amazing spirits, for the women we do not see, who hurt and who need us.
    THE LITTLE COOCHI SNORCHER THAT COULD
    [Southern woman of color]
    Memory: December 1965; Five Years Old
    My mama tells me in a scary, loud, life-threatening voice to stop scratching my coochi snorcher. I become terrified that I’ve scratched it off down there. I do not touch myself again, even in the bath. I am afraid of the water getting in and filling me up so I explode. I put Band-Aids over my coochi snorcher to cover the hole, but they fall off in the water. I imagine a stopper, a bathtub plug up there to prevent things from entering me. I sleep with three pairs of happy heart-patterned cotton underpants underneath my snap-up pajamas. I still want to touch myself, but I don’t.
    Memory: Seven Years Old Edgar Montane, who is ten, gets angry at me and punches me with all his might between my legs. It feels like he breaks my entire self. I limp home. I can’t pee.
    My mama asks me
    what’s wrong with my coochi snorcher, and when I tell her what Edgar did to me she yells at me and says never to let anyone touch me down there again. I try to explain he didn’t touch it, Mama, he punched it.
    Memory: Nine Years Old I play on the bed, bouncing and falling, and impale my coochi snorcher on the bedpost. I make high-pitched screamy noises that come straight from my coochi snorcher’s mouth. I get taken to the hospital and they sew it up down there from where it’s been torn apart.
    Memory: Ten Years Old I’m at my father’s house and he’s having a party upstairs.
    Everyone’s drinking.
    I’m playing alone in the basement and I’m trying on my new white cotton bra and panties that my father’s girlfriend gave me. Suddenly my father’s best friend, this big man Alfred, comes up from behind and pulls my new underpants down and sticks his big hard penis into my coochi scorcher. I scream.
    I kick. I try to
    fight him off, but he already gets it in. My father’s there then and he has a gun and there’s a loud horrible noise and then there’s blood all over Alfred and me, lots of blood. I’m sure my coochi snorcher is finally falling out. Alfred is paralyzed for life and my mama doesn’t let me see my father for seven years.
    Memory: Twelve Years Old My coochi snorcher is a very bad place, a place of pain, nastiness, punching, invasion, and blood. It’s a site for mishaps. It’s a bad-luck zone. I imagine a freeway between my legs and, girl, I am traveling, going far away from here.
    Memory: Thirteen Years Old There’s this gorgeous twenty-four-year-old woman in our neighborhood and I stare at her all the time. One day she invites me into her car. She asks me if I like to kiss boys, and I tell her I do not like that. Then she says she wants to show me something, and she leans over and kisses me so softly on the lips with her lips and then puts her tongue in my mouth. Wow. She asks me if I want to come over to her house, and then she kisses me again and tells me to relax, to feel it, to let our tongues feel it. She asks my mama if I can spend the night and my mother’s delighted that such a beautiful, successful woman has taken an interest in me. I’m scared but really I can’t wait. Her apartment’s fantastic.
    She’s got it