by Heather Jo Flores
“I have the universe inside my pussy.”
Annie Rose looked at me like I was out of my mind, then burst out laughing.
“Go ahead and laugh,” I said, “Get it out of your system.
And then I want you to look at it for me.”
Annie Rose stopped laughing and looked nervously around the cafe. It was a popular breakfast joint and every table was full. She looked into my eyes and saw that I was serious. She leaned in closer.
“What are you talking about?” she whispered.
I told her everything I could remember, about how I’d been having cramps and feeling light-headed, dizzy and euphoric, how I’d been masturbating obsessively for weeks. I just turned forty so I thought maybe it was some sort of pre-menopause symptom. But then I put a finger inside myself and got a tiny electric shock, like putting your tongue on a battery.
“That was probably just static electricity,” said Annie Rose.
She didn’t believe me.
“Not static electricity!” I said, “Listen to the rest.”
I told her about what had happened with Alex. We hadn’t been dating for long, and I already knew he loved to eat pussy, but lately he hadn’t been able to stop. It was like he was bewitched. All he wanted to do was look at it, smell it, taste it. He was a man possessed.
But it wasn’t me he loved, it was just my supernaturally-electrified pussy. I had to stop seeing him.
And then there were the dreams.
I dreamed I was Lilith, flying through the sky, visiting nocturnal emissions upon naughty young men.
I dreamed I was a meteor in the shape of a woman, birthing stars out my ass as I hurtled through space at a trillion miles an hour.
I dreamed of legacy, desire and vindication.
I dreamed of fire and chaos and transformation.
I dreamed that the milky way was semen on the belly of a lady beast, and that our solar system was a half-blown kiss from one dimension to its beloved other.
And still my pussy wouldn’t stop tingling. For weeks I walked around in the midst of an extended orgasm, and I was having a hard time getting any work done.
One day I went home and spread my legs in front of a mirror. I propped myself up against the couch and tried to see what was going on.
My pussy shined bright lights right back at me. Planets, stars and galaxies, nebulous clusters of infinite wonder. Supernova.
Clearly, I was going crazy, so I called my therapist but when she asked me what was wrong, I couldn’t tell her.
So I shot some video on my phone, from several angles. I needed proof. It was hard to see in the video. Finally I got a shot that seemed like it captured what was going on in there. I thought about putting it up on youtube but instead I just showed it to Annie Rose, across the table at that crowded diner.
“That’s really good!” she said.
“Good that I have the universe inside me?”
“No,” she said, “I mean it’s so clever, how you edited it! It looks so real! Is that one of those colorized NASA videos? I’ve never seen that one! Are you gonna put it online?”
She still didn’t believe a godforsaken word I was saying. She thought it was a big joke.
I interrupted her. I was getting impatient. “No!” I shouted. “It’s the FUCKING universe, and it’s in my va-jay-jay!”
The barista burst out laughing across the room and Annie Rose gave me her condescending, “concerned friend who knows you’ve been through hard times” look. I changed the subject and we drank more coffee. Life goes on.
After a while, I got used to it. Jeans were uncomfortable, so eventually I quit wearing them. Soft skirts, leggings with extra room in the crotch, extra air flow. It’s easy to get overheated when the universe is all up in there! Wow! Hot pants!
Soon, it started to leak.
Every time I sat down, I left a little trail of stardust. Like a slug trail — kind of sticky and iridescent like that — but this was more subtle.
You’d never notice it if I didn’t mention but every now and then I would say to somebody, “hey do you see that?”
“See what?” they’d always answer.
“On the seat there, where I just was. Do you see anything, um, unusual?”
“Oh YEAH!” Every time. “What IS that?”
“I think it’s the Universe,” I’d say.
Maybe we’d make a few extra jokes about it. Like, “do they make special tampons for that?” or, “you should get that checked out,” to which I would respond, “Oh trust me, I have!”
After a few years you realize you can’t just wander the streets screaming “the universe is in my pussy!” because then you end up behind bars on forced medication and since the universe has probably always been in there (though I don’t know how I never knew it when I was young) and it doesn’t seem to be a temporary condition, I eventually stopped mentioning it.
By now, all of my clothes, bedding, everything I own has little sprinkles of my universal pussy juice on it. Because it doesn’t just ooze out of my vagina. It comes from all of my pores, my hair, my breath.
My whole life sparkles with mystery, with potential.
I feel good, pretty much all the time, and certainly way better than I ever did before I found the universe inside myself, so I don’t worry whether or not there’s a problem.
The other day I was hanging up this beautiful tapestry I just bought from a Moroccan woman in Granada. I had spilled coffee on it and rinsed it out right away because it’s a masterpiece that must have taken her several days to weave.
As I hung it up to dry, I noticed a different kind of universal slime, just a smudge on the corner. I don’t know how I knew it, but I felt sure it wasn’t mine. The spot was dense and round, a stain, like it had come from a finger, rubbing the same spot again and again. I had seen marks like that on my favorite paintbrush, where my fingers grip the handle, and on the collar of my hoodie, which I almost never wash.
I realized this was HER juice, the weaver!
I went back to her stall in Granada with the tapestry and my hoodie. I showed her the marks and tried to figure out how to ask her, in Arabic, if she had the Universe inside her pussy. I don’t speak any Arabic, so we didn’t get very far. She offered to replace the tapestry but I said no no, that’s not what I’m saying.
Looking around, I realized the Universe was everywhere in her shop, all around us, on every item she touched. She had it bad, like me. I waved my hands around and tried to point at my cho-cho, but I didn’t want to get arrested for sexually harassing the street vendors. She spoke no English. I tried again, in Spanish, to ask her, but she just started laughing and kept laughing until I gave up and left.
On the way home, I leaned against the window of the bus as it careened through the mountains. I felt as if I was wearing special “See the Universe in Everything Around You” glasses.
Actually, it feels more like my glasses have finally been removed.
Now, everywhere I look, I see a multidimensional, inter-dimensional, chaotically possible and impossible cornucopia of opportunity. And weaving it all together, billions of unique, universal slug-trails, the legacy of every woman who ever lived. Every single one of us has the universe in our pussies, and through it, we are all connected .
(to be continued…)
I wrote the first part of this in 2013, after spending four months devouring books by Helene Cixous, Clarice Lispector and Franz Kafka. I enjoyed Cixous and Lispector for their abstractions, their fearless tangents and poetic meanderings. I loved Kafka for the fact that he seemed to eschew any obligation to finish a story. So much of his work is just fragments, moments in time that leave the reader to her own imagination. During this time I also read Taisha Abelar’s The Sorcerer’s Crossing, in which one of her teachers bares her vagina and Taisha sees the universe.
The second part was written just now, here in Spain, on my garden patio in the mountains. It’s a work in progress, I doubt it will ever be finished.
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