We’ve been Taught

Sophie Westergren

Two women are taken to a place just before a room. Someone we cannot see brings each woman to a doorway and asks them to remove their clothing before stepping into the room. Inside, the women feel cold. Not too cold, it may just be because they have just stripped a layer of protection. The room is dark but light comes from somewhere. The floor is smooshy like a gymnastics mat against their pink feet. The walls look like mirrors but they do not reflect. The women have nowhere to look but at each other, across, standing bare at the other end of the room. This room is unlike our concept of the world. Its rules are not the same as the ones they have learned because the rules here are unlearned. Its oddity is overbearing as they stand naked, cold, alone in front of the learned image of friendship; Woman. 

But the women still know what it is to be outside of this room. They are trained to understand NUDITY ≠ FRIENDSHIP. They begin to notice the curves of the other and how they are unlike that of the people they have gone to bed with. They are thinking of the bed. The two have been accepting of the memories they have of a man’s rough hands lifting them onto a soft bed. Never before have they seen such curves and thought of the bed but this room does not seem real to them. They notice the delicate features of the other’s face and how they are unlike those they have loved. They are thinking about love. The rules are different here, looking at the others curves.

	Outside of this room, it is standard for women and men to know this equation and accept it without question:

PENIS + VAGINA = PLEASURE

		         SEX

	                 LOVE

		         CERTIFICATE OF ADMIRATION

		         REASSURANCE

		         REPRODUCTION

I have had sex over one hundred times between eight different men. They have the proper equipment to penetrate a woman in a gratifying way. That’s what we can see on pornos with women gasping for air, gripping the sheets on their beds or hear about between cocktailed whispers of how “He really did it to me last night.” We have studied the relationship of penises and vaginas through media, art, history, science and religion. It has been sewn into tapestries and painted with coal on the walls of old caves cool and dark; Their floors much too harsh to stand on with pink feet. We have been learned, as women, to value the Penis and if we don’t then we are in search of either the vagina or solidarity. Those who like penises, stick to penises. They get married and reproduce using the equation they have been taught through awkward school dances and puffy sleeves. First introductions at college parties and one too many rum and cokes. It is MAN + WOMEN = LOVE. I have had sex over one hundred times with eight different men and of these times and have cum zero times. I have spent awkward growing periods with stretching bones and shin splints laying on the floor of my tub playing with another equation and have finished almost every time. Does this mean I love strong faucets, fingers, and sex toys more than I love men? Becoming more accepting of the equations of OBJECTS + VAGINA = PLEASURE, I am still accepting the love of men who can’t give me pleasure. I still have dreams about them.

But lately I have been stumped by an equation I have not tried to solve for myself. If the vagina is a crucial variable to the desired answers that are sex and pleasure, and the man, or the revered Penis, is not a necessary variable for me to receive sex and pleasure, then what would VAGINA + VAGINA equate to for me? Would love be a product for this equation?

I am not thinking of sex. Although when I look at women, I am admiring their lips. I am admiring and noticing interesting relationships between bone structure to skin types to hair colors and consistencies; Blonde and straight hair tucked behind small ears, high cheeks plated in soft freckled skin, black hair with tight curls and how this pairs nicely with the deep brown of her eyes over there in the corner. I like her over there too, she has a wide nose that fit her wide set eyes where piercing light blue marbles sit wrapped in heavy black eyelashes. There’s a balance to it all. I admire the infinite combinations that equate to beauty, but I am not sure if these smaller and smoother painted hands will turn me on if they rubbed me.

You could hunt love into extinction if you tried. You could wash it every time it stained until the deep red color of the feeling bled away into a watery pink. There must be a limit to the amount we can love or else we would just be treating it like a bacterial infection. Feeding it too many pills thinking it will heal us until the pills no longer treat us. So we have to be careful with love and not to over do it. 

I have loved three different times and I think I have an understanding of the personal formula of the people that excite me. I have learned through the romantic unfolding between two friends never realizing they were always ‘so much more’ on television shows and in books. Through a general understanding of history, learning about monarchies and lineages and what it means to be a man to a woman and a woman to a man. I watch Jackie O scramble onto the tail end of a car to catch the pieces of her husband's brain and skull not seconds after the trigger of a gun was softened against the finger of an angry man. It has always been WOMEN + MAN and in this game of Life I have always chosen to place a blue plastic man next to my pink plastic women in the front seat of my yellow car hoping we don’t get too close to the spinner. 

I have been trained that boys complete my ‘emptier half.’ I understand here, where the pieces fit and how to perform love and that here there can be love. I understand that I am to be the short one, the one who wears makeup and the other will be the male. But something about the way I think about women makes me wonder if there is some pull of learned restraint in my thoughts.

I have this new friend. She moves through the air like there is no air, pushing gently through the current. She pushes with force. The force of layered stone and a calloused heart, I can’t tell if it is simply because she is unaware of the wind trying to push us all down or if she just doesn’t have time for it. And after twenty one years of life I have found someone of the same gender that I would be curious to stand in a dark and cool room alone with. Naked even. And if she walked towards me in that room, I don’t think I would laugh if she grabbed my waist with her smooth hands. And I would lean in deep if she kissed me. Maybe it’s because I want her shine to rub against the curves of my body and let me glow too, or maybe I am just attracted to her. 

Over the roughly fifteen years of thinking I understand my sexuality, I have kissed three girls and have felt zero emotions. There has been one woman I have ever actually been interested in kissing having felt some emotions… I think. So if we have been taught to like boys, and we have accepted this idea, how will we ever know if we like women?