“In the old days, they used to perform a clitoridectomy on girls like this,” she heard the doctor say.
She was fourteen. Both of her parents accompanied her to the gynecologist’s office. She waited in the reception room while they consulted with the doctor. When her parents came out, she was called into an exam room where she was told to undress and given a small paper gown and lap robe.
She was afraid. She didn’t know what to expect. No one had talked to her about this except to say that now that she was developing into a woman, she needed to go through these exams yearly to make sure that everything was working OK.
But that wasn’t the real reason. The real reason was they wanted to know if she was a virgin.
No nurse was present in the room in those days. She was completely naked with a man’s hands and fingers probing her insides and her breasts . He began by putting her legs in the stirrups and opening her vulva with his fingers. She heard him take a good sniff of her musk as he examined her labia and pulled back the hood of her clitoris.
She was afraid, gasping in pain as the exam proceeded. The force of the metal instruments inside of her was searing. She felt as if she was being cut open.
Then she heard the doctor’s voice as he recorded notes about her privates into a tape recorder. “Hymen broken… not a virgin… doesn’t appear over-sexed… no physical abnormalities…”
Fifty years later her mother says in way of confession, “We took you to a doctor to see if you were still a virgin, and then it turned out that he wanted to screw you too… but he didn’t, did he?”
“Why didn’t they just ask me?” she wonders. She would have told them everything. She liked to make out, she would show her tits to anyone, and she loved to ride the finger, but she was still officially a virgin.
She hadn’t had intercourse with a penis. She hadn’t even touched a penis… Well, except her baby brothers, but there was nothing sexual about changing a diaper. She didn’t understand about it getting hard. Coming was something she hadn’t even considered. With the limited knowledge she had from the health sex education program at school, she didn’t get the whole picture.
Even though her parents had been quite open about sex allowing her to read Playboy, her mother’s talk to her about cunnilingus and how some people are gay still didn’t make much sense to her. She wasn’t ready to process the information yet.
It would be at least two more years before she was ready to go all the way. She was content to fool around, kiss, and fondle. Why didn’t they just ask her? She would have told them everything. No judgement. Just Ask.
(First published 9/25/12)
