by Louisa C. Brinsmade

Katherine's voice is deliberate. "Um. Where did you say the clitoris should be?" I point again -- "down there, in the vagina." There are frowns everywhere I look. "Louisa, that's not where the clitoris is. It's up here, like in the picture."

"No, it isn't," I argue. "It couldn't be." I'm starting to feel weird. "That's your urethra there." I've got my finger right in this woman's vagina. "Right there."

"Oh my god, Louisa doesn't know where her clitoris is!" Beth the Cruel makes the announcement.

"No, I know where it is," I'm still hanging on. "It's there. You guys... What do you mean?"

The drawing is very specific -- black and white, spread out, no nonsense, no mystery, all dissected and stuck with acupuncture-like pins of definitive, scientific terms. I must admit, it's the first such drawing I've ever seen of the female genitalia. Most other drawings I've seen are side-cuts of your insides like at the gynecologist that don't look anything at all like what I've got up my dress.

The diagram makes one thing very, very clear: I am wrong, have always been wrong, about my parts. Basic stuff, like what goes where and what is called what. How embarrassing. The clitoris is above the urethra, not the other way around. The fleshy, pink cushions on the outside of my vagina are also my labia -- the Labium majus. Who knew that? Just everyone else in the room, that's who. And who knew you had paraurethral ducts to either side of your urethra? I didn't. And that you can ejaculate from them? Not me. And what about that area between cheek and gum -- the Perineal raphe? Who knew that counts as a private part and had such a great name? Not I.

"We won't tell anyone, Louisa," Kayte promises. She offers to show me hers later. No thanks, I'll do my own research.

Katherine makes me a copy to take home. On the drive home, I unfold it and rest it on the steering wheel like a street map, and. I feel lost. I'm driving in a daze. I've been living on an alien planet all this time. I don't know what to say to this body of mine. I've been so incredibly wrong.

For instance, I've been playing with my clitoris all my life. But since I thought it was my urethra, I always felt guilty about it -- like I'm going to irritate it, and ultimately give myself some kind of infection if I go on rubbing myself from side to side like this... I've always felt sort of uneasy and shameful about the way I masturbated -- that my mother would be able to tell, while bathing me, that I was doing something bad from the way it was puffy and swollen after I roughed it up. Later I worried that the gynecologist would be able to tell while I'm on the table with my knees spread apart. Neither ever said a word, which I took as a sign that they were so confused and disgusted they didn't know what to say.

Worse, I knew I was falling behind. While all the other girls were making the transition from clitoral to vaginal orgasms with the introduction of dildos or the real thing, I was stuck playing with my pee hole. I tried getting into touching what I thought was my clitoris, a little nub inside my vagina on the top side. Nothing. I could never admit it, nor express my desires to my boyfriends. They resorted to fingering me, and I faked it.

How could I be so uninformed? I have to say that I don't recall a whole lot from sex education class -- I don't have a great capacity for information retention, and class was brief anyway. We were separated from the boys, who tried to peek through the windows to see if we were watching the same film as they had to watch. It wasn't the same, I heard. Ours dealt with menstruation and childbirth, with those confusing side-cut diagrams and a millisecond's length of film on the male penis and testicles. That's all I recall. That was public school, 6th grade. Two years later, I was in private school, and some man came to our class accompanied by Father Heinz, and there were no diagrams or film. We discussed pregnancy and disease.

I took the diagram to bed when I got home from Katherine's party. I planned on wooing my body with new knowledge, figuring that I would also be granted miraculous technique with the release of guilt and shame. I laid the illustration on the bed, got my mirror and checked myself out. Thank goodness my parts are prettier than the picture, for one. For another, you can't look at such an illustration without losing your appetite for sex. So, I put it down, and started exploring familiar territory with new vigor. My orgasm was reached, and I was pleased -- I found out that my body knows more than my mind -- and that despite shame, embarrassment, fear, self-loathing, my body has always simply wanted what it wants. My hand will obey.