Victuals and Vaginas?

Can she put some strawberry sorbet on my love muffin? This was not a big question. Right? There was no God. No religion. No politics — well, not really. I paused and thought hard about it. The frozen cold notwithstanding, I was intrigued by the idea. Plus, I was twenty-five years old and in love with her wild inclination to do dirty things to me.

We were in New York City. We were dykes — out, loud and proud of doing risky things with radical love and the vulvic flowers. She had done it with another lover years ago, she said. And the woman is still alive and exercising full use of her vagina. So I spread my legs and she slathered some gooey sweet iciness over my twat and asked me how it felt. I was young and so willing to please. I held my breath and kept my counsel about the fact that my love muffin was frozen and I couldn’t feel my clit. I grinned what felt like a bizarre grimace in some obscure lesbian play by Ibsen said it felt lovely. I screamed in shock and discomfort and told her that she had touched something deep in me that had never been touched before. So she slowly licked it all away and added another scoop.

I lay there for twenty minutes suffering and trying to make my moans sound more like pleasure than terror. When she was done I started itching right there and then. Two weeks later, my cunt was morphing into a mysterious red fire raging and threatening to jump out of my panties on its own. I was reading poems about being fucked up a canal that was literally untouchable in that moment. I was on the subway doing wild dances against the hard cold train-seats in order to scratch my nether regions and not have anyone notice.

When I went to the OBGYN she pronounced that I was suffering from a commonplace yeast infection. Millions of women had them and it was not life threatening. Not to worry, my vagina would work again after this cream and that pill. I told her that I never had a yeast infection before I came to America.

Christian and Haitian, she suggested that I was perhaps eating more sugar in my diet than I was before I came? I never told her that it was a more direct sugar contact that was responsible.

Since then, when I think sugar, I think yeast. I tend to avoid sweets and I never wash my underneath with food-scented soaps. So, now that I know the biology of high fructose foods and its effects on the chocha, do I want strawberry sorbet in my vagina? Hmm. Not so sure.

But what of things not frozen? Jams and jellies? Peanut butter? It all sounds so wild and wonderfully exciting, but how what exactly is safe and OBGYN recommended with food and sex? In porn flick they are all but eating steaks off of each other. Can anyone tell me? Are there specific foods that are vagina friendly? Can I eat a medium steak off of my lover’s muffin? Is hummus really ok? The sexistentialist question of food and sex — hmm. What is the deal, really? I know that the vagina has a soft gentle pH balance to maintain in order to stay healthy.

Too much acid spells yeast infections. Too little, a bacterial nightmare. Honey and chocolate and beer and whipped cream and fried chicken during sex could swing my pH left or right and run the risk of an itchy punani thereafter.

But there I go — over thinking again. But seriously, am I alone on this?

Do other people worry about the pH of their pussies? Or do you just allow her to dump a bowl of borsch on you and lick away? Fuck the consequences? How far are we to go for the joy of exploration? And should I have used sugarless sorbet? Should we have melted it a little before? Should she have put a whole scoop? Is ice-cream better? I mean because it’s not so icy? Talk to me folks—summer is almost here and these are things a single dyke needs to know.

(Staceyann Chin is the author of The Other side of Paradies: A Memoir)