Durban’s tikka wind twirled litter off the pavement as three of us arrived at a friend’s wishbone flat to flesh it out with gifts of Cabernet and cushions.
After the third bottle was opened, we began to discuss men. Selfish men. Funny men. Men with spreading hips. Wally men. Swimming men. Men who smell from the mouth.
And as the wine flowed, the issue of men and their penises came up.
How grand that they can shove their hands in their pockets and flop their scrotums while talking to the boss about ballpark figures. How liberating it must be to have all your bits on the outside, snoozing in a nest, able to be roused at the snap of a bra strap. How fabulous to know what your best friend’s little man looks like. How comforting to be able to compare.
The four of us know intimate details about each other. One has a railtrack scar trundling down her chest. Another likes to have sex in empty baths drizzled in washing-up liquid. But we don’t have a clue what each other’s vaginas look like.
Of course, we have seen strips of hair in the gym changeroom, but sightings of the entire mammal are rare. The only sample available to us is the short-haired albino variety found in porn magazines and movies. But they can’t be trusted.
And so the idea for a Fanny Party was born. We would gather together 20 women, photograph their vaginas and throw a cocktail party at which the pictures would be on display. How clever and daring we were. How liberating the experience would be. We would out-vagina Eve Ensler.
Getting volunteers wasn’t easy.
‘It’s kind of weird, isn’t it?†one friend said, crossing her legs and making slurping noises with her tea.
‘I’m not sure if my husband would approve,†was another response.
After much persuasion, we enlisted 18 women. Now it was down to technicalities.
In a bedroom, I screwed my camera on to a tripod and established where the subject would have to sit by perching on the side of the bed, my legs open. We were going for deep self-timer action.
The allotted day came and the veranda was filled with women gulping wine and grubbing in the chips with queasy fingers.
There were sighs of relief as, one by one, they emerged from the room. The hard part was over. Or so we thought.
We hadn’t factored in developing the spools. We couldn’t take them to a photographic shop — they would have the Scorpions on to us. Or worse, they would print extra copies and file our vaginas in a for-Deon’s-eyes-only photo album with a marbled vinyl cover. Then I remembered that my brother owned a photographic shop in a nearby town. Surely he would be discreet?
It was decided. I would take the film to the shop, stand next to the printer and catch the photos as they marched out.
The following Saturday, I arrived. I told my brother a friend was doing a nude art project. She smoked a lot of dope and was paranoid. My brother is a very obliging human being.
Driving back to Durban, the pack of photos lying on the passenger seat felt like police pictures of dead women. Perhaps we had gone too far.
The evening arrived. We had hung lines of string across the veranda and pegged the pictures on to them, like weird prayer flags fluttering against white-eyed jasmine.
The pictures were astounding in their warmth and bravery and the range was breathtaking: damp-looking marmosets, their thick hair plastered down; friendly sheepdogs with shaggy beards; blonde Labradors with shiny coats; and red snappers amid sheets of milk.
One of them stood out: a neat, hairless vagina, like a puppy shaved for surgery.
The women arrived at 7pm, averting their gaze and heading straight for the drinks. Later, once the innards of the wine box had been pumped, 18 pairs of eyes looked up. There were murmurs: ‘God, am I that hairy?†There were exclamations: ‘Hey! I look quite classy!†There were revelations: ‘Hey! Mine looks just like that one.â€
But slowly, the women gathered around the neat picture at the end. ‘Whose is that?†they asked, their eyes taking in the peach folds and pearliness.
As the evening wore on, the mood became un-celebratory. The women left drinks half-drunk, took down their pictures and stuffed them into handbags. Some vowed to tear them up.
We had failed. While Ensler had got women across the world to celebrate their sexuality and chant ‘cunt†in superbowl stadiums, we had succeeded in staging a competition — the country’s first Miss Vagina South Africa.
It took me back to school, to Susan Donnelly and her pine-needle hair, her even teeth and her butterfly stroke. Everyone wanted to be Susan Donnelly.
After that night, I was sure that across the sulphur city, 17 women were pruning their vaginas and teaching them acceptance speeches in Californian teeth: ‘I just wanna save the poor children and promote world peace between religions. Beauty is only skin-deep. It’s what’s inside that counts.â€