Doctor, Doctor: Gimme My Designer Vaginer

People who still read the newspaper, I think, do so for lots of different reasons.

I think a lot of people who read the newspaper do so mainly so they can feel superior to those who don't. (Isn't that an obnoxious thing to say? If you want more, raid the archives.)

Of course, nobody feels more superior than the people who still read the newspaper in print. But we know what they're up to. They're the kind of people who refuse to get cable and microwaves, just so they can stand on ceremony and talk about what purists they are and how they delight in and concurrently suffer for their insistence on eschewing technology.

People like, oh, my parents.

Dickheads.

Some people read the newspaper to find out who got shot or stabbed or raped or arsoned overnight. If you're not a nightowl, you know that a lot happens in the smaller and larger world after you've rubbed Noxzema onto your hands and/or onto your lover's erect penis and gone to bed. Waking up and checking out the newspaper is like finding a veritable gold mine of stray bullets, sirens, semen, and aggravated battery.

Other people read the newspaper to see what that bald-ass motherfucker, Ziggy, is up to, and to see if he's been hired by Ikea to star in a new series of their Ektorp instruction manuals with the strange-looking potato people.

I read the newspaper. Kind of. Over the course of the last year, I consult http://www.philly.com/ and http://www.nytimes.com/ mostly to see if there is appropriate blog fodder, but I'm also semi-interested in who got gang-banged and bang-ganged overnight. In Philadelphia, lots of people do, so it's good to try to keep track if you can. It's not easy.

Sometimes, though, I'll check out a feature article or two if a title piques my interest. That is, after all, what titles are supposed to do, as I learned in 4th, 6th, 8th, 10th grades, and again in Journalism 210: "Media for the Chromosomally-Challenged" intro class in college. You never know what you're going to find. A local high school's scabby, bespectacled tech gurus are secretly webcam photographing young, lithe students doing homework on their laptops in their tank-tops and underoos... two rabid raccoons are on the loose causing havoc with ritzy resident's toy poodles and pomeranians... some crazy white woman is recruiting for the Taliban...

Oh, and friendly, resourceful, creative plastic surgeons in my neighborhood are helping out women with deep pocketbooks by giving them "designer vaginas."

apussysayswhat?

That's right, Pussy. You heard me. Designer vaginas.

Here's how it started...

Like all things that are now absurd, ridiculous and ethically dubious, this particular practice started out innocuously enough as a way to assist women with actual medical problems, like a vagina that looked like it had been put through a wheat thresher due to the passing of obese triplets or a panther child. Women with certain urinary tract conditions have been helped by physicians who have reconstructed various components of both the interior and exterior urogenital system.

And that's very nice.

But, just like facial plastic surgery, which was originally intended for burn victims and car crash survivors and people who stood too close to turbo-prop plane propellers, the practice of vagectomies (my word-- patent-pending) has gone, well, awry.

Enter: financial crisis.

Now, if you're a wealthy individual, and you've been advised by your Wealth Management Consultant that you need to tighten your purse-strings, what's the first thing you're going to cut, after downsizing from a Maserati to a Maybach, donating a small selection of your mink stole collection to science, and selling off your least attractive female child to a hairy-chested guy named Manolo?

You're going to give your plastic surgery budget a little nip and tuck.

After all, you've probably had your ass lifted and your cheekbones cracked and your eyelids stapled and your tits re-woodblocked-- so, really, there couldn't be that much left to do besides sandpapering and varnishing your forehead.

Enter: the vagina.

"Because of the recession, most cosmetic surgeons are doing far less [business] than they have in previous years, but I'm busier than ever," said one area plastic surgeon who partially credits vaginoplasties and labiaplasties with his practice's success. "Women want to look good all over and feel better, too."

Well, doc, they sure do, don't they?

Now, if you want the "perfect vagina" you can get one that's totally made-to-measure. Your dumb-ass, lumbering ox of a lover can't find your G-Spot? Apparently, some plastic surgeons can give you a "G-Shot" which is exactly what you're hoping it isn't: a shot of collagen to surgically enlarge your G-Spot. Maybe they can even coat it in neon reflective paint to make it easier to see in the dark, too.

If that image isn't disturbing enough, what pops into your cooch when you think of the word "hymenoplasty?"

That's right: they can make you a brand new hymen, so no one will ever have to know. Think of the possibilities! It's positively clit-boggling.

Critics say that these practices are tantamount to genital mutilation but, surprisingly, the plastic surgeons don't seem to phased by the critique. It must be all that money they're making from desperate housewives who want their "vaginal area to feel like a teenager, really. It's like back to its original state," one local hausfrau said.

Really? Back to its original state? That sounds a far lot younger than "teenager" to me, and that makes me positively ill. Your husband must be a very sick individual if he thinks your vagina going back to its "original state" is a good thing.

Life's funny, you know? I went to the vet yesterday to have our new puppy, Molly, all checked out. The vet was all but awestruck as he entered the room, spending a moment or two just to gaze at her.

"You know," he said, "she's just beautiful. I'll bet her genetic make-up would be very interesting."

I smiled and rolled my eyes at the same time, to indicate how I felt about pursuing that particular avenue of financial ruin.

"Well," he said, "if you ever run into a large sum of money that's just burning a hole in your pocket, and you can't think of absolutely anything else reasonable or prudent to spend it on, maybe you'll spring for it-- just for the heck of it."

I nodded my head and stroked Molly's head.

Or maybe I'll just get cockectomy to make the tip of my penis resemble the head of a bald eagle.

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.