Tiny-V

How odd it is to have a body, to be corporeal. A captain on a windswept vessel.

.   .   .

“How do I go about this? My tongue dwarfs the entire thing…”

            Alex was staring intently and not without scrutiny at the smallest human vagina he had ever come across. Far too small to be real. It had felt to him like a wet raisin. He asked the question seriously, earnestly, without a whiff of tension, anxiety, shame, or the sharp odor of something fishy.

            The woman whose vagina we are considering here urged Alex to continue but offered no concrete instructions. Apparently she was simply born with a recordholdingly minuscule sexual organ. The woman’s equivalent to a micro-penis, Alex assumed. There must be news articles and medical journals written about her.

            “Okay then, here goes.”

            Although he hadn’t yet seen the woman’s face, he knew it was Julia. He hadn’t seen Julia in over a year, why was she here? Wasn’t she in Charlotte?

            Bent to excavation, he had the feeling that he was searching for something that wasn’t there. Peeling back fold after fold, layer after layer, revealing nothing. Like taking off a mask only to reveal the same face underneath. Suddenly, the subject of his scrutiny vanished and became smooth on his tongue. Recoiling, he jerked his head into the air, looking down upon a hump of flesh that made him think of a Barbie Doll. He gasped and awoke, grinning despite himself but admittedly confused. He muttered an expletive as he attempted to rub away his weariness.

.   .   .

            He thought about that tiny, vanishing vagina all day long. Making phone calls, answering emails, reading reports. Writing reports. Everything he did, he did with “Tiny-V” (that’s what he called it) on the brain. He seemed to think that the dream had some deeper meaning. That it was more than simply a tiny V. Yet what meaning could he possibly attribute to that dream, lady killer that he was? He knew his way around vaginas, and so found no correlation between the dream and any sexual anxiety he may or may not feel. He thought about calling Julia but decided against it.

            He performed the occupational actions that were expected of him, followed his gym routine unquestioningly, stirred pasta, fried chicken and vegetables absently, and spaced out as The Walking Dead flickered from his laptop. He stared at the ceiling from his full-sized bed and drifted unconsciously to sleep.

            Again he found himself facing that tiny, Tiny V, like a slightly raised pimple upon a shaved pate. Without hesitation he began performing cunnilingus. Moving his tongue between the tiny folds at the Tiny V’s apex, waiting for its inevitable disappearance. As it did he declined to recoil, and instead pressed his face to the smooth flesh with increasing pressure and fervor. Julia groaned. He opened his eyes to look up the body he was pleasing and to his great surprise, found two eyes staring back at him from the smooth flesh in front of him. He shut his eyes again and pushed on, allowing things to continue as if they weren’t strange. He opened his eyes again slowly and as he did so, realized that the blue eyes in front of him, only an inch or two away from his, opened and closed with the exact same rhythm as his own. He tested this theory several times with the same result. Was it a mirror image? He stared deeply into these eyes before a horrifying revelation forced his mind into unwanted consciousness.

            Again he awoke confused. “Was I eating myself out?” he asked aloud. He lay awake and stared at his alarm clock, only seven minutes short of its steely ring, pondering his own mind. Staring into a mirror that didn’t exist.

            Habitually and without storing any memories, Alex followed his daily routine. He always saw parts of himself in his lovers (not just his dick) but this was different. Had he ever truly been present in the bedroom? When he fucked his girlfriend, was he really fucking himself? He recalled a college course in which they analyzed narcissism, what it meant to love yourself more than any other thing in existence. That it implied a desire for world-destruction, for self-destruction. He couldn’t wait to fall back asleep.

            He missed Julia deeply, ached for her, stayed up at night and cried for her. Drank for her until he could sleep, for her. But now he questioned whether it was her that he missed at all. Did he miss her, her personality, her long dark hair and mischievous eyes that resisted any kind of interpretation? Or did he miss the way she made him feel? Did he miss her, or did he miss his former self?

            “Uuuhh, yes ma’am that is correct, we offer full-service solutions to your labor-forecasting problem.” Apparently he was on the phone, “Mmm-hmm, yes. Indeed. Well, it seems like our company can add significant value to eBalls.com. Why don’t we do this, I’ll send over a whitepaper with some pertinent information, and we’ll reconnect at this same time next week to do a full product demo. Does that sound good to you? That way we can dive deeper into the application and you’ll be able to see the value for yourself.” How long had he been talking? He looked at the monitor, which showed that he had been on the phone for twenty minutes. “Perfect. Okay thank you for time today. Uh-huh, bye now.”

            Alex hung up the phone and shook his head. Pursing his eye-lids together and wrinkling his brow. His boss, Bruce, looked at him with an expression that he guessed was approving as Alex stared right through him. He was having trouble seeing, focusing his eyes on a subject within his field of vision became harder and harder, as if he had forgotten how to be specific.

            “Hey, Bruce?”

            “Yeah, what's up, Alex? Good work today by the way, solid pitch.”

            “Ah thanks. You’re encouragement really means a lot, Bruce. But listen, I’m not feeling well. Would you mind if I took the rest of the day off?”

            Bruce laughed, “It’s five o’clock, my boy! Get the hell out of here! If you stay any longer I’d be forced to pay you overtime!”

.   .   .

            Alex found himself at home, eating chicken and pasta, staring vacantly like a person enduring chronic pain. Had he gone to the gym today? He couldn’t remember. Or couldn’t expend the necessary energy to remember. He looked at his watch: it was 8:30pm so he presumed that he had.

            “…dude I’m tellin’ ya this chick was bangin’, and the whole time we were drivin’ home she had her hand directly on top of my dick. It was all I could do not to cum in my pants right then and there!” Alex’s roommate, Justin was sitting directly opposite him. Engaging in mystifyingly grotesque gesticulations, Justin placed his left hand on his crotch and his right hand over his left hand. Demonstrating to Alex how this purportedly bangin’ chick had groped Justin in the car. As if Alex couldn’t possibly imagine what it would look like for a hand to touch a dick.

            “What? Oh, yeah, nice dude.”

            “Were you even listening, bro? I’ve been leading up to this for like an hour, this is the climax! I feel like you weren’t even paying attention.”

            An hour? Maybe he hadn’t made it to the gym after all. What in God’s name had he done for the last three and half hours?

            “Sorry man, it’s a really interesting story, and I’m happy for you. I’m just a little preoccupied with work is all.”

            “Oh dude, I feel ya. Today at work this chick Tanya was flirting with me HARD, bro. It was ridiculous…..”

            Justin launched into another incomprehensible tirade while Alex chewed, Alzheimer slow. He looked up and nodded occasionally to placate and appease his friend, but not a word entered his conscious mind. He could not stop thinking about Tiny V. What meaning lay dormant within the folds of such a tiny, Tiny V? He imagined shrinking himself until he were the size of an ant. Smaller. Donning tiny cave-expedition gear and spelunking into the v’s mysterious hollow. Delving until he reached a chamber, deep purple, that was warm and still. Producing pillows, a blanket, and falling into the most comfortable sleep imaginable.

            What do you call something that should be life-changing, but isn’t?

            Alex awoke confused. He found it difficult to open his eyes, some kind of goo coated his face like a film. Groaning as he sat upright, he faltered and twitched. His muscles felt less responsive, weaker than they had day before. He reached for the bedside lamp and felt nothing but warm, condensed air. Tachycardic, he bolted, stark naked, from his gooey repose. Sputtering and shaking he writhed, rubbing the film from his skinny appendages. He struck from the purple chamber, blubbering and afraid.

            “This can’t be real,” he whispered, shaking his unkempt hair and fiddling with his beard, “you were dreaming, this has to be a dream.”

            He ran through what he remembered. Breathing like Joe Morton at the end of Terminator Two: Judgement Day.

            “You were at work. Yeah. Youuuuu went to the gym. Maybe?”

            He shrugged.

            “Then you drove home, made dinner, talked with Justin, and hit the sack!”

            His eyes were wide, though it was still too dark to see.

            “Fuck! No, that happened, that happened, that was real!” The chamber began to spin and black bars appeared at the periphery of his vision, limiting his view. In a heap, he crumpled to the soft ground. Right on top of some ancient caving equipment.

.   .   .

            Fifteen days later Alex was nearing the entrance to Tiny V. Judging by the map he found in the gear-pile, sealed tightly within a metal tube, he was less than a two day’s journey from freedom. With him he had one helmet; one full-body spelunking suit; one headlamp; one waterproof backpack; two ropes, one half as long as the other; eight batteries (the lamp required four); one empty diary; and one map sealed tightly within a metal tube. No pens to speak of.

            Once he had recovered from his panic-induced stupor, he donned the gear at his feet, and agreed with himself, inaudibly, to forgo logical judgement and to believe that he was dreaming until such a time as he could properly reflect upon the events of the last “24 hours”. He stolidly ignored the rusty zippers and took no pause to consider the fabric’s thinness, the rope’s frayedness, his skin’s sagginess. Without thought or backward glance, he followed the map, for he believed, or willed himself to believe, that if he followed that map, he would find his way out. When did he learn how to read a map? That question never came up.

            After making his way from the purple chamber, he followed a clear, viscous tributary for some miles. Sometimes holding his breath and letting the current take him under where the trail ended, trusting in the map, trusting that he would surface. The tunnel-system connecting to the the purple chamber always glowed a soft pink. There were no openings to admit light, but the walls were of varying thickness, admitting, filtering, and regulating light from the outside. The light must have been strong and bright to penetrate these walls, for Alex found them disappointingly unyielding; he could not simply tear through them, despite their softness. Therefore, he relied on the tributary not only for guidance, but also for sustenance. The warm liquid supplied him with caloric energy, allowing his muscles to repair and his stomach to once again digest. Alex knew who he was in this context: a map-follower, purposeful.

            Yet as he walked he found it more and more difficult to stave off troublesome thoughts.

            “What is this place?” ...

            “How did I get here?” ...

            “This CAN’T be Julia’s vagina, right? ... “Is this a map for Julia’s vagina?” ...

            “Julia’s Tiny V?”

            “Wait, am I in my own Tiny V?”

            For fifteen days he clambered and hiked through the fleshy cave, becoming ever more restless as he drew farther and farther from the purple chamber. Without meaning to, he had registered the physical changes his body had endured during his hibernation. He guessed that, due to the visible wrinkles on his hands and his skin’s generally geriatric demeanor, he must have slept interred for years. How this could be possible, he refrained from positing. What he did know however, was that somehow he had to escape. “Escape to what, Alex?” you might ask. “A life as a molecular geezer cavorting with skin mites on your own thigh?” And he wouldn’t know how to reply.

.   .   .

            With under two days left in his journey, Alex began to fear what lay beyond the comfort of what he now firmly believed to be Julia’s vagina. Not his own, that didn’t make sense. After all it had nourished him all these years (some might say imprisoned) and had kept him safe and warm (some might say isolated and weak) and he began to miss the purple chamber. His body wandered forward towards the horizon, but his mind looped in on itself, statically replaying idle thoughts as if they would reveal something new.

            When Alex finally became aware of his surroundings, he was standing at the lip of the cave’s mouth, staring into the open light. He could see nothing in front of him and there appeared to be nothing to either side, below, or above. If he stepped out would he fall? Was there a life for him at all beyond this threshold? Weeping with frustration and anxiety he couldn’t bear to leave; burying his face in the soft pink ground he screamed, shook, and eventually slept with his arm hanging out into the abyss.

            Alex dreamed about himself. He saw his childhood home on a warm spring night in 1996, his mother had made beef stroganoff for dinner, his favorite. He imagined his father throwing a frisbee to him at Natural Bridges State Beach in Santa Cruz. Saw his sister in a bed with wheels on it, pale and skinny. He imagined he still played Water Polo, saw Julia holding a sign with his name on it. Then things started to move faster, images of the people he cared about flitted about like stick-figures in a flip book, and then moved so quickly that their images remained still while their features aged.

            He looked on while their lives played out, watching them die and become smaller to make room for more people in his field of vision until he assumed a sublime and worldly perspective. Conscious of both life and death as they made their ever-presence felt within mortality. Time continued to accelerate until he could see organisms evolve and witness massive, topological, planetary transformations. At one point the planet became completely blue, without any hint of green, and then a massive underwater explosion occurred (Alex assumed it was volcanoes or something) which then formed land masses that began, after some time, to sustain life. It was gooey at first, little slime creatures lurching and dragging themselves from the ocean onto the craggy islands. But soon whole societies sprung into being and almost as quickly they fell.

            Time was moving at a dizzying pace by now, Alex felt his eyes begin to blur and tear. He realized that he couldn’t move his body and was forced to surrender. He felt like he was hanging, with arms out straight to either side and his feet together. He heard nothing and saw only light, slowly building from grey into a blinding white flash. As the light reached its apex he felt a geographic rumbling, heard sound--raw and uninterpretable--and screamed, for this experience seemed to last an eternity. Do things ever actually end? As the light flashed, a crushing darkness took its place, and Alex floated for millennia before waking up, confused, in his bed.

.   .   .

            Alex awoke in his bed confused. The alarm clock said 6:30, he assumed it was AM. He got dressed and went upstairs to make some coffee. He had a meeting at 10:00AM but after that he could relax. Justin came downstairs and poured a cup of coffee before the French Press had sat for a full five minutes. Alex grimaced.

            “What happened to you last night, bro?”

            “Whattayou mean?” Alex slurred.

            “We were talking or whatever, and when I left quickly to grab a beer, you disappeared. I sat around for a sec thinkin’ you might’a just left to take a shit or somethin’, but you never came back so I just played some COD,  jerked it,  and passed out.”

            Alex shrugged genuinely. “Sorry man, I must’ve been super tired or something, cuz I honestly don’t remember what I did last night. Must’ve just gone to bed early.”

            Justin laughed and punched Alex in the arm. “Aright whatever, pussy.”