CUNY Vagina Monologues, 2012

In Spring 2012, CUNY Domestic Violence Coalition (DVC) hosted its annual benefit performance of the Vagina Monologues. Proceeds funded the DVC Ending Gendered Violence Fellowship. For the 2012 edition, DVC encouraged students to submit original monologues. Below are two original submissions from students. The writers themselves read the monologue at the show.

A Mother’s Love?

by Adam J. Breaux, CUNY class of 2013

I hate my vagina.

I have met and known of a lot of trans-guys who love theirs, who see it as something unique, even special.

For me, it is just an open wound that never heals.

Does a vagina make a woman, or a mother?

You said that because I came out of your vagina, you owned me. You actually used the term property.

You, who said that no one could love me like you, you who claimed to be my protector, my guardian, everything I ever needed. What I really needed was protection from you.

You were very clever, saying that the things you did to me were okay because I came out of your vagina; nothing you could do to me was wrong. When I tried to stop it, you told me there was something wrong with me if I felt like things were inappropriate. Because I came out of your vagina, it was impossible for your love to be anything but pure.

You told me the only woman I ever called Mom, my grandmother, the only woman who really cared for me, was only using me to make herself look good. She could never love me the way you did, because I didn’t come out of her vagina.

 

Growing up, I knew that I was a boy, and not the girl indicated on my birth certificate. Even though you tried to thwart me every step of the way. When I wanted to play sports, you refused to sign the waiver. When I bought my first men’s suit, you threw it away. When I started to like girls, and shared this with my friends, you told me that if I ever came out as a lesbian you would kill yourself.

I will never know how I ever gathered the courage to leave college my sophomore year, move 2,000 miles away and begin my gender transition. But I did it.

Looking back, there was a clear defining moment when I realized what a ‘Mother’s Love’ is really like.

(ring ring)

Adam: Hello?

Linda: Are you sitting down? I need to address something with you. I just called your work and you were not there.

(I had been working at Sears for 8 months, my name was legally changed and I had started hormone replacement therapy, meaning a deeper voice and chin hairs. I was out to my manager, but NOT my co-workers.)

Linda: I told the gentleman on the phone that I bought a TV from a young lady who looked like a man and needed to speak to her. I remembered her last name but not her first, something like “Breaux.” He told me that there were no women in the department, and the only Breaux is a young man named “Adam.” Why are you lying to these people?!

 

I attempted to discuss my gender identity with her, as I had tried so many times before. The only thing she was concerned about was what she was supposed to tell everyone. She demanded a funeral, and later went and picked out a casket. I promised to take care of telling everyone, though not her parents. She did not want that embarrassment and failure. So I wrote my parents, my sister, and my father’s parents (mom and granddad) each a letter explaining the decisions that I had made and how for the first time in my life I felt like I was finally living my own truth.

I did not hear from my parents or sister until I visited Louisiana for Thanksgiving.

A few days after I sent the letters the phone rang.

(ring ring)

Adam: Hello?

Mom: Adam?

Adam: Yes? How are you, mom?

Mom: I am great, just fine. Granddad and I got your letter just now. Are you ok? We just wanted you to know, we don’t understand what you are going through, but we know that you haven’t been at peace for a long time—if ever. Since you moved, you seem so happy and finally closer to peace. We love you. We want you to know, first and foremost, that we had 19 wonderful years with Amanda, and we pray that we are blessed with 19 wonderful years with Adam.

 

And that was it. No questions, just unconditional love.

 

Does a vagina make a woman, or a mother?

In my experience, what makes a man, woman, or a person is simply living your own truth. And a mother? It is not about who comes out of your vagina, being a mother is all about how you love. I know, that one day the wounds will heal, and I can learn to love my vagina and myself the way Mom loved me.

 

Brain Clitoris

by Lauren Curatolo, CUNY class of 2012

 

This is going to get weird really fast, and I’ll tell you why right now.

My brain…  has a clitoris.

I don’t know if that resonates with anyone really, but it does. Seriously.

I have thoughts sometimes that just lead me to orgasm. Someone says something about which I haven’t thought or something provocative – I can have an orgasm.

It has happened in the CUNY library, the gender neutral bathrooms, next to the peacock, a transient bug saw me do it, while reading a Steve Katz weather report, in Sexuality in the Law – sorry Prof. Robson, it’s true, in the hallway, getting coffee from Marge and Karen, scrolling through the CUNY tumblr page… just right there – in public, I have an orgasm. I’m probably having an orgasm right now because the thoughts I am having are thoroughly fucking me. Hard.

What are my thoughts? Well, I’m thinking about what I want. I’m thinking about desires that once surfaced you cannot forget. I’m thinking about the first time I met someone who stimulated my brain clitoris simply by saying my name.

My memory is raw. When I recall something, conjure up a memory, I feel it all over my body. It is like it is happening all over again. And, my friends, I have been fucked by a language that only certain people can speak. Yes, my brain clitoris if fully erect and on fire, because even while I am talking to you right now, my mind is racing with thoughts and feelings and I’m quivering, but you can’t see it – but my brain clitoris has exploded. I am no longer one thing, I am everything, everywhere, absolutes don’t exist – I just am one constant exploding orgasm who wants a lot of things and wants to give even more. And what I want is not an ending. It is a starting point – because how can you know what you want until you get either what you don’t or … holy… one second….  [whisper:]… braingasm…

 

I want to be with you.

I want to build what that would look like

with you because I understand

that there is no template that

exists for us.

I want to be stimulated intellectually. Play with my brain clitoris….

I want your liberated mind to

penetrate mine.

I want to fuck in the light and make love in the dark

and make love in the light and fuck in the dark.

Feed me in ways I’ve never been fed.

I want to challenge you in that same way.

I want to fill you up in that same way.

I want to build and build and build and explode

just to know what it feels like to build again.

I want to be with someone who creates

new ways of being.

I want to use my intelligence in innovative ways

both as a symbol of how I love you

and as a symbol of how I want to change the world.

I want to share meals,

cook for you

if you get hungry.

I want to eat off of you.

I want to learn about your culture and

where you’re from,

and honor your history,

your family.

I want a Sunday kind of Love

whose after-effects last through and over hump day.

I want to tell my truth to you and hear yours

and ride the ebbs and flows of how they

change even though one thing remains

true: I love you.

I want to be brave.

nothing can ever

look like we do,

feel like we do,

fight like we do,

fit where we do.

I want to feel like you’re fighting

to be in my life.

iron fist, velvet glove

I want you to eat me out while I’m eating ice cream.

Pop my Cherry Garcia

I want your help

being centered when I am overwhelmed

anxious

dizzy.

I want grace.

I want to call you when I just can’t do it

alone.

I want to be in the 67% and I want you to take me there.

I want to make you happy,

I want

your eyes when I can’t see what I need to see,

your hands on my body,

hard and soft.

I want to feel like I may not be

the only one,

but that you want me

and that’s all that ever

truly matters.

I matter.

I want the conversations that only

we can have.

I care about your desires.

I care about your needs.

I honor your space.

Your solitude.

 

I want to wake up in the morning

and feel your hunger on my skin

whether you are there beside me

or not.

I don’t want lines, unless they are

laugh lines.

I want to take responsibility for my

expectations, and know that they

can’t always be fulfilled, but

that if I am reminded

that you love me,

just by looking at you,

everything is

possible.

 

I want silence.

that

speaks.

 

I want to fight and make up and play records while we slow dance

in front of the whole damn world as they look at us wondering how we could be

slow dancing to hip-hop but we are rapped in the beat of what lies beneath

we are the pulse of the dance

 

I want you to tell me to do

completely appropriate

things in seemingly

inappropriate places, like… the writing center

except we won’t need a bluebook

at the cite of our unedited bodies

one look and we are published

in a law journal .. or the Post.. no matter,

either one won’t be able to capture the madness of our

Sexuality gone lawless.

 

I want to know how you taste,

and what makes your dance last.

 

That said, I respect your secrets.

I do not desire to possess you.

 

I want too much don’t I?

hahha. yea… no. This is simple.

I never think people stay if I speak about all of this,

but some people stay.

we have, haven’t we?

Yes.

Through all of it – we have stayed.

Things fall apart. Things fall so much

apart that we don’t even recognize

the pieces when we go to try and pick them

up. But, are we supposed to? Should we

try to understand the broken places?

Or, do we thank them – love them

unconditionally because they are

now part of us. Do we walk away

from the war zone, or do we stay?

Stay. And realize that every piece

matters. It’s a place of peace, after all.

What is difficult matters.

And we stayed because we know it does.

 

 

how we’ve turned this world upside down.

I can’t get enough of you, and

I can’t get enough.

You’re more than that.

You are the hand I want to hold when the world

sounds its sirens.

 

It is the ultimate rebellion – to love

 

Once you are there – when love and desire meet, you have freedom.

Freedom to be as unconventional as

possible,

as untraditional as possible.

and that’s what I go back to.

Love.

not just any love, but this love… this love that genuflects before desire and gives freedom power.

 

I want

to be treated like I

am unlike anyone else,

because I am unlike everyone

else.

As are you, and

I recognize that, I am

constantly reminded

of that.

I put you on a pedestal because

of that.

 

What do you want?! Tell me on a plane to Paris because I want to go to Paris and meet strangers and show them how we’ve perfected their kiss. My brain clitoris wants to travel!!

 

I want to stay weird and mad.

 

I want what we deserve:

everything.

I’m not convinced that we can’t have it.

 

 

brain clitoris on full blast.

now tell me to shut up and take me.

everywhere.