The Automotive Vagina

When you're a teenage boy and, consequently, at least mildly socially retarded, at some point in your high school years you invariably fantasize about what it would be like to be a gynecologist.

At least, I did.

Pussy is on the menu, no matter what the time of day. You think about the mounds of slippery slivers you'd get to prod, sniff, investigate and otherwise infiltrate with a variety of ghoulish looking extensions and implements. You think about what it would be like to be a gynecologist in L.A., where you might get to come face-to-bush with the lauded labias of Hollywood's elite and beautiful. Perhaps a chic office on 5th Avenue for all of the rail-thin, chiseled blonde socialites strutting their stuff down the streets of Manhattan in impossible heels and clenched butt-cheeks.

One day, back when I rode around in an ambulance and called myself a "healthcare professional" I was part of a four-man crew assigned to take a 450-pound black woman home. She lived in a typical Philly rowhome with a set of stairs being the greeting once you got through the front door. We placed the woman in a stair-chair and the four of us lifted her up the stairs-- a painstaking job on a hot, August day that took nearly a forty-five minutes. During this time, I was positioned at the bottom of the chair, and I was at a location that afforded me an unobstructed view of her copious, walrus-like vagina for the entire ordeal.

It was at this moment that I recalled my fleeting adolescent fantasy of what gynecology was like-- an endless stream of well-constructed hot chicks, aged 18-26, walking into a room alone with you and taking off their clothes, spreading themselves before you on an exam table like warm butter on toast.

Ah, boys... Amazing that some of us grow up to become almost human.

Today, while I was reading the New York Times, I came across an article that again reminded me of transporting the fat, black lady home from the hospital, and about gynecology. Strangely enough, it was a car review that brought all this back into my mind.

It was a review for the 2010 Buick LaCrosse.

While the article was positively overflowing with praise (which leads me to believe that the author wrote the review whilst relaxing in a new pair of "Depends") it made me deeply appreciate the peaks and valleys that are inherent in any job, in this case, reviewing cars. I tend to think of reviewing cars for a living as the ideal job for a writer and a car nut, both of which are groups I consider myself a member. Who wouldn't want to take brand-new cars, drive them before anybody else gets a chance to do so, thrash them around racetracks and put them through the paces in heavy metropolitan traffic, spin them around autumnal backroads, and then sit at your desk with your dog snoozing beneath you and a cup of coffee at the ready and clack out a few paragraphs for a handsome fee?

Doesn't that sound like the life to you?

And then I finally understood today, reading the review of what may very well be G.M.'s final, sacrificial offering to the angry Gods of Automobilia, the M.P.G. Wizards of the Underworld, that, for every Audi R-8 and Bentley Convertible and even every Honda Fit and Mazdaspeed 3 or Mini Clubman-- you've got to stick your face right inside the putrid, flabby and, yes, elderly snatch of a Buick.

But that, friends, is just one aspect of occupational life. It's also a solid, timely reminder that no matter how shitty your job is, there's always a fresh, pink, delightfully prim & trimmed vagina lurking somewhere around the corner, if you look for it.

Femme Blog

According to some statistic that someone cited somewhere at some point, on the website 20something bloggers, there are 7,942 bloggers registered as members, and only around 900 of those members are males.

I'm left to ask the intellectually-stimulating question, "What the fuck is that all about?"

Seriously, sometimes I look at the 129 "friends" I have collected nigh these many months, and I feel like a total whoremaster, supervising my burgeoning, ballooning brothel. There's Laura the pilot, Mila with the roses popping out of her cleavage, Kate the poet, Sarah with the camera, Floreta with the vibrators, and, most recently, Leslie with the eye-patch. It's quite a collection of damsels, really. Any whoremaster would be proud.

There was a time where I felt selfconscious about having accrued so many BWB (bloggers with breasts) as online acquaintances, but I don't think I can honestly feel guilty about it due to the extreme saturation of the 20something blogging market by womenfolk.

It's interesting to note that, in the 18th, 19th and even 20th century, the vast majority of published writers were men, and that's no accident. The vast majority of book publishers and literary agents were men, too. It was not acceptable for women to write and publish material. Just ask Jane Austen, whose family was never quite thrilled about her professional aspirations.

Fortunately now, there are many, many women in the book publishing and literary agent industry. I should know, I've received rejection letters from most of them. So, with the increase in written, published work written by women, it should be no surprise that women are also taking the blogging world by storm.

My question is: why?

What is so appealing about tapping those deliciously manicured nails to the keyboard for women? Women have a reputation for being more sensitive than men, more open to revealing themselves and their inner feelings, and a whopping shitload of them were English majors in college.

So, is that it? Have I answered my own question? I don't know-- I don't think so.

There must be something about writing, about blogging, something about its freedom, its unemcumbered, unadorned form that appeals to women, but I don't know what it is. I guess that's why I have a comments section.

When I first started blogging, and for a while after, I didn't read any blogs. "I don't want to be influenced," I would say. "I want to be original and fresh." I worry about that a lot. If I'm going to play a part onstage, and another local company is doing the same show, I will avoid seeing the show at all costs, because I don't ever want to be accused of "copying" or "stealing," "mimicking" someone else's work. It's a youthful arrogance, a holdout from my younger days when I did copy others whom I admired-- and that fear of being caught nowadays petrifies me into almost total creative isolation.

Now, though, I read several blogs, and almost every one of them is written by a woman. I like women writers, because they are different than me. They are thoughtful, introspective and they are careful, considered, sometimes eloquent. They think about things I would never think to think about, and they open me up to different perspectives, and I appreciate that. I never thought I would like reading blogs, but I think I do. I guess I'm growing up a little.

When I write a play, I often struggle to create authentic female characters. Oftentimes they don't show up in my plays, because the challenge of writing honestly for a woman scares the piss out of me. I feel incapable and inept. The only woman I've ever included in a play who sounded true was my mother, because I couldn't get her wrong if I tried. There is a poignancy and a firm wisdom that I can only watch from a distance and appreciate.

I suppose, in the end, why there are so many women bloggers out there and so few male bloggers isn't really important. It's a fine discussion topic to start and in which to participate, but it doesn't matter much. We bloggers all bring something different to the table, even those of us who just post YouTube clips or pictures of cellphones encrusted with Swarovski crystals.