My chest vibrated. I looked down and saw I had an email. It was from the student magazine. Oh my God. Breathe slowly, Ellie. It’s your first attempt and there will be other opportunities, I told myself calmly.
Dear Ellie,
Thanks so much for your entry. We laughed out loud while we were reading it, and it was interesting and clever as well as funny. We’d love for you to be our new columnist if you’re still keen.
We can arrange a proper meeting for when term begins but in the meantime we’ll use your “anarchy” entry for our next edition. Look out for it!
Really looking forward to hearing from you.
Sarah, Pi Editor
P.S. What do you think of “Ellie on . . . [Anarchy etc]” as the general column name? Please can you send me a picture you’d like us to use as well.
OH MY GOD! They actually liked my entry and wanted me to write for them. I lay back on my bed and laughed out loud. I wasn’t a shit writer. I was actually good at the one thing I enjoyed. It was a total relief and I couldn’t wait to tell Emma. I still had no idea if I was good enough to do it as a full-time career after uni but this was definitely a positive start. Now I just had to find a decent picture of myself . . .
Later that evening I lay in bed and my mind wandered to my lower regions. The red dots had totally disappeared, and even though the Hitler moustache was still kind of awkward, it looked very porn star. I had stood naked in front of my mirror that morning, examining it. Post-shower the sticky leftover wax had finally gone and now my vag looked like it had just walked out of a double-page spread of a Playboy magazine. It was a shame Jack hadn’t seen it, but at least now I would be fully prepared for this weekend and I’d have a Hitler sans dried wax or chicken pox.
I cringed at the thought of Jack going down on me and finding bits of wax down there, or even some stray hairs that Yasmin missed. No wonder boys wanted girls to have hair removed down there—the thought of licking someone’s lady bits was bad enough without having to rub your tongue against a hairy patch. Thirty-four quid and an hour of pain and humiliation did seem a lot to ask, though. Oh, who was I kidding? I was desperate for Jack to go down there, and if being waxed straight into twentieth-century Germany was what it took to get licked out, then so be it.
Shit, maybe Yasmin had left some stray hairs down there.
Alarmed, I sat up straight in my bed. I had to check. I was also curious to get another look at my bald vagina. Yaz had seen it from every angle and if Jack was also going to, then it was only right that I should get in on the action and have a look.
I suddenly remembered reading a Judy Blume book when I was twelve where the main girl looked at her bits with a small pocket mirror. I pulled my trousers and knickers down and inspected myself. It still looked okay, but when I leaned over to try to pull the lips apart and look at it properly, I realized how unflexible I was. I had no idea if I had a pocket mirror but I could probably look at it in the big mirror. I ran over to my full-length mirror and tried to pull my legs apart. I stood wobbling and realized that wasn’t going to work either.
In the end, I faced my back to the mirror, then stood with my legs slightly apart and bent downwards, with my head falling in between my legs. Then I pulled my bum cheeks apart and got a good look at my bum crack. It was darker than I had expected and the hole looked ominous. The skin was a weird shade of pink and it wasn’t very pretty.
By now I was completely intrigued by what the front holes would look like too. But how was I going to see them properly?
Oh my God. I had it. Judy Blume characters were from the seventies or something so all they had were pocket mirrors. I, on the other hand, was in the post-millennium era and fully equipped with smartphones and cameras. I also had a MacBook. Feeling like Armstrong about to land on the moon, I opened my laptop and switched on the Photo Booth application.
I was quivering with anticipation. The little green light next to the camera at the top of my screen flashed on. Perfect. I put my laptop firmly on the end of my bed, and then sat in front of it. Gingerly, I opened my legs out and saw my vagina appear on the screen. I angled the screen downwards so I could see the full thing and stared in fascination. This was way better than a Biology lesson.
I spent ages absorbed by the neat folds of my skin. No wonder men hit climaxes so easily. It probably wasn’t just the pleasure that did it—I reckoned they were all just overwhelmed by the labia minora.
“Elena, are you going to be at home tomorrow mor—OH MY GOD! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”
I stared in horror at my mum, who had just walked straight into my room without knocking. My hand was holding open my vagina and there was a zoomed-in image of it on my laptop screen.