It all started with my missing hymen.
One week before my twenty-eighth birthday, I decided to take my own virginity with a silicone dildo coated in two-percent Lidocaine gel.
Silicone dildos are the best. Firm, smooth, easy to clean, and most importantly, you can boil them in water. We Chinese folks love to boil things in water. Our chopsticks, our teacups, our pots and pans, and especially our drinking water. Nothing goes inside our bodies without being boiled in water first.
Silicone dildos are also the ideal choice for people who have allergies.
I have a lot of allergies. That and I didn’t quite fancy the idea of asking some emergency room doctor to pick glass shards out of my vagina. And as the saleswoman said, glass dildos would be “less than ideal” for my present intentions.
I selected a purple medium-sized dildo with a flared base for easy grip. As it was not attached to a male body, I figured I would need to have a firm handle on it. Not that it would have gone anywhere except out the way it went in, but still.
And like everything else, it was “Made in China.” A fact my parents would surely appreciate. They like everything made in the home country.
I named my dildo Mr. Happy. I thought it would be an appropriate name for something that would have the privilege of destroying my family’s honor which I had upheld dutifully between my legs for nearly three decades.
The existence of that untouched membrane sent every American boy running, especially when I told them that we couldn’t have sex until we got married. As no one wanted to marry me by the third date, my insistence of keeping my hymen intact put a huge damper on my dating life. Had my parents and I stayed in Hong Kong, it would have been less of a problem. Traditional Chinese people frown upon premarital sex.
But we were not in China. We lived in the home city of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence who had been “defining San Francisco values since 1979.” We lived in the golden state of California which had the second highest teen pregnancy rate in the nation. We lived in the United States of America, the nation of Girls Gone Wild, where that thin sliver of tissue did not get anyone’s family an extra head of cattle. All it did was keep me home every Friday and Saturday night.
So when I met Chip, I decided to assimilate into debauchery and sin, to bite into forbidden fruit American-style. Family honor be damned. Thank God the Chinese are not into honor killing. At least I will not be dragged out into the village square and stoned, stabbed, or set on fire. I considered myself lucky.
It would just make my mother cry.
Unfortunately, my hymen felt differently. The dozen condoms I bought sat unused on the nightstand, next to a packet of Plan B pills. Suspenders and a belt for me. I am a woman who buys double insurance. But my insurance proved unnecessary for my hymen refused to be obliterated, pulverized, annihilated. Its resistance to all three of Chip’s attempts had not been futile. It left him whimpering and nursing himself in the dark. It sent me to Dr. Ng’s examination room.
“His weenie bounced out of me like I had a trampoline down there. I must have one tough hymen. Maybe you’ll need to cut it open. You can do that right?” I asked. Lying on my back on the paper-covered table, I counted the little holes in the ceiling tiles while Dr. Ng examined me with a long Q-tip.
“Actually, you’re already open. I really can’t see a problem,” replied Dr. Ng from underneath my dressing gown.
“No, seriously, it wouldn’t go in. I kept asking him what the hell was wrong with his equipment. Maybe he was too small. He was the same size as a low-absorbency tampon. Do you think that matters?”
“Uh, no, it should still work.”
“That’s what I thought. But anyway, I told him it wasn’t his fault as that’s what God gave him. Then he went all floppy.”
“You said that to him?”
“Yeah, I was trying to make him feel better.”
“Next time, Fiona, don’t try to make him feel better.”
“Oh, there’s not going to be a next time, Dr. Ng.”
“Why is that?”
“He wouldn’t let me wipe him down with an alcohol pad. You know, to sanitize that area before slipping the condom on.”
“Fiona, why in the world…?”
Because he wouldn’t let me boil his penis in water first.
It was all Listerine’s fault or perhaps Neosporin’s. All those commercials with oversized cartoon germs in Crayola colors with spikes, tails, and little mouths eating away at the tongue and gums. All those flagella propelling fat microbes about on the skin. All those microscopic spirals, spheres, and cylinders of death and disease waiting for their chance to slip into the body. No wonder Listerine sells so well. Maybe the next guy wouldn’t mind being splashed with some minty-fresh mouthwash. I’d offer him the non-stinging version.
“You’re thin, pretty, and smart. Don’t worry. You’ll find someone, Fiona,” said Dr. Ng as I pulled my long hair into a French twist.
That was not the point. For nearly three decades, culture, parents, upbringing all intertwined my self-worth with my hymen. If it was indeed that valuable, I would want to rip it out, freeze-store it in a little plastic bottle and leave an instruction in my last will and testament to be buried with it. Either that or stuff it in a little glass vial and wear it around my neck like Angelina Jolie did with Billy Bob’s blood.
Anything but let someone else take it. And have a picture of me up on his MySpace page next to the other picked cherries. Or get my bloodied panties passed around in the boys’ locker room.
No thank you.
Then Dr. Ng came up with the dildo solution. No rush, no fear of STDs or pregnancy, no involvement of another human being, no stench of human warmth crushing down on me. Nothing but an eternal, unfailing erection that could be twisted and bent to my satisfaction and sanitized with boiling water. God bless Dr. Ng.
But I came up with the two-percent Lidocaine gel idea. I demanded an extra-large prescription to ensure that I would have enough to cover Mr. Happy and myself several times over. With a large number of anesthetics available, I saw no reason for having to endure any pain. It wasn’t as if I had asked for an epidural. That would be insane. A little gel and no pain. God bless Lidocaine.
I don’t think Chip would have let me slather Lidocaine all over him. But Mr. Happy remained true to his name and was more than happy to oblige.
Guys. So overrated.
