Tune in Tokio

Hmm. Girls crowded together, pointing at me and laughing. This is starting to feel a little too much like middle school. What’s going on?

Jo and Grant approach the glass, see me, and wave. They look above me and then back at me. They giggle.

I look behind me and realize that there is a giant photograph on the wall above the couch. What is it of? I get up and turn around to get a better look, but I still can’t tell. It kind of looks like a close-up of an old woman’s lips, like when they start growing facial hair around age eighty. Yeah, that’s what it is. Oh-my-godno-it’s-a- vagina! A huge black and white photo of a horizontal vagina. The biggest vagina I have ever seen. And it looks angry.

How did I miss this? I didn’t come out to this club looking for pussy, but still, if it’s staring me in the face…

Feeling better that I’m not the object of all the spontaneous giggling across the glass, I begin to look around me and realize to my surprise that the room is simply jam-packed with photos of vaginas of all sizes, each one dimly lit by the blue tint of the black light. I am surrounded by ghostly, luminescent vaginas. Every gay man’s nightmare. With a thrill and a shudder I gasp: I am no longer in the Chill Out Room. I am in the Vagina Room. The Vagina Room. Full of vaginas.

Vaginas.

Flushed and dizzy, I sit back down and catch my breath. Looking from vagina to vagina, I note how they differ in shape, size, and overall presentation. Here’s an impeccably kept one, the hairs tended like a prized garden or perhaps just naturally minimal. On the other hand, the one over there is a veritable festival of fur tangles, an overgrown patch of briars and brambles. All of the vaginas are wet, though, which makes me wonder what they are thinking about.

“What about him?” one of them says.

“Hmm. Yeah, he’ll do,” another pipes in.

“Come on, girls,” says the really hairy one. “Look at him. He’s totally gay.”

“You think?”

“Oh my God, yes! Look at his nose. That is one gay nose. And see how scared he is, looking at us?”

“Every guy who comes in here looks like that,” the well-trimmed one suggests. (Brazilian?)

“Yeah, but not like this. He’s trembling. Watch this, watch this. Hey, little man,” she says to me. “Boo!”

I jump.

“What a chump.”

“Maybe he’s just really sensitive.”

“Oh please. That’s good old-fashioned mortal fear.”

“

,” a Japanese vagina agrees. “

Ha, ha, ha!!”

“Yeah, and didn’t you see him dancing earlier? No straight man dances like that.”

Wait, is that a compliment?

“Shut up, all of you,” the giant vagina bellows from behind me. I stand up and face her. “Sit down, little man.” I sit. “Give it a rest, bitches,” she continues. “Stop fucking with him. He’s obviously just curious.”

“Hey, Tim!” Rachel shouts, and I whip my head around to see her smiling face looking down at me. Apparently she’s decided to take a break from her ferocious body-rock and join me and the vaginas.

“Oh, Rachel! Thank God! Sit down! These vaginas have been talking my ear off.”

Rachel looks around at the luminous, disembodied female genitalia surrounding us.

“Wow. These are cool.”

I want to tell her that a few of them are actually quite rude, but I figure they can probably hear me, and I definitely don’t want the big one to jump off the wall and get all vagina dentata on me.

“There are so many of them,” she says, lighting a cigarette. “I wonder whose they are.”

With Rachel here, I start to calm down and think clearly again. Come on, Tim, these vaginas are nothing to be afraid of. They’re people just like you and me. And why shouldn’t I use this opportunity-access to so many good vaginas-to learn a little something. About myself and others. Mainly others. Others’ vaginas. Since this is probably the last time I will ever be in a room with so many useful visual aids, and since I do have a few unanswered questions about their form and function, I should turn to Rachel and pose a few.

“So, Rachel,” I say, pointing up to the giant vagina behind us, “where the hell is this clitoris thing I keep hearing about?”

I’m not likely to ever launch my own search, and this is one of the few chances I will ever have to find out without being unseemly. She gazes up at the Big Vagina and, extending her hand, points it out to me.

There it is. The elusive clitoris, peeking out from its hiding place like Nessie, saying hello to the world, confirming its existence.

“That’s it? That’s what guys have such a hard time finding? It’s right there, for God’s sake.” Sure, it’s about ten times its normal size in the picture, but still, if it were a snake…

“Yep,” she answers. “That’s it.”

“But why do guys have such a difficult time tracking it down?”

She takes a long suck from her cigarette and, exhaling a cloud of purple smoke, says to me, in the tone of a mother getting tired of her son’s relentless questions, “Because they just don’t care, Tim.”

Needless to say, this answer fails to satisfy me. There are bound to be some guys who care, some who have dedicated a decent number of naked moments searching and searching to no avail. So what’s the story with clitoriseseses? Are they shy? Temperamental? Passive-aggressive?

And why am I the only person in here asking these questions? Every man in this club should be in here taking notes and plotting maps.

Rachel finishes her cigarette, gives me a little hug, and sets off for the dance floor again, leaving me to enjoy some quality time alone with the vaginas. I stand up and walk around to each of them, examining their nooks and crannies and seeing if I can pick out the clitoris. I tilt my head and zoom in and out, trying to make sense of the shadows and light and the variable contours and textures.

And damn if every vagina isn’t completely different. I think I see a few clitorises, but I can’t say with any certainty. Each vagina seems to make its own rules and reveal what it wants to reveal. I give up and return to the simplicity of the dance floor. As I leave I hear the vaginas behind me get chatty once again.

“Well there he goes, still blissful in his ignorance,” one of them says.

“I felt him staring into my very soul,” intones another.

“You were too much for him, Priscilla. Look at him, so desperate to get back to the other dicks on the dance floor.”

“

,” the Japanese vagina coos.

“He’ll not sleep a wink tonight,” proclaims the giant one, tugging on a cigarette, sounding not unlike Bette Davis.

After a few minutes of dancing in the corner, my eyes adjust to the darkness level. I look straight at the wall in front of me and see that I’ve been dancing in front of an eight-foot figure drawing of a completely naked man with his completely erect penis in his hands. He has a head but no face, and it is tilted back in a pose of sexual ecstasy.

Is it an artful commentary on the objectification of the male body? An examination of the erotic nature of anonymity? Who cares?

“Now this, this is more like it,” I think as I do the electric slide right up beside it. It’s a beautiful drawing, anatomically devoid of mystery. And there is no tricky clitoris to complicate my life. I name him Fred and ask him to dance.

We boogie for the rest of the night as the ladies in the Vagina Room look on in extreme disapproval.