I am a person who cares about vocabulary and, in particular, that around a woman’s anatomy. I taught my daughter early on the distinction between the vulva, the outside, and the vagina, the inside, of our genitals. That led to a funny mix-up with the car that I drove at the time, a Volvo. Whereas many are uncomfortable using these “real words,” slang has actually been trickier for me. While in college, my best friend, also a feminist but more savvy with cultural vernacular, liked to make fun of me and my inability to say the word pussy without stuttering. She would use it just because it made me uncomfortable, like good friends do. I didn’t like the word because I included it in the laundry list of terms that are used to avoid using the real ones. Also, it felt crass. As you can imagine, then, I had some adjusting to do when we got into the lifestyle. Pussy is pretty much THE word. I get it. While the vagina and vulva are the in and the out, the pussy really encapsulates the whole kit and caboodle.

There’s another aspect to my pussy, other than what we were calling it, that I struggled with when we got into the lifestyle: it was the way my pussy looked. Technically, it’s my vulva that I had a hard time with and it started long before the lifestyle. Even though women hang out naked at slumber parties (kidding, but I got you for a second, right?), there are locker rooms and the like where I wasn’t really trying to check out my friends’ pussies, but when I did notice, theirs looked like the ones I thought most of them were supposed to look like: the slit. The reason I thought that most of them looked like that was because when I was in fifth grade, my best friend and I would sneak into my dad’s locked gun den to look at his Playboy magazines. I had no interest in guns, which were locked again in cabinets anyways, only the ladies. The pictures were an introduction to sexuality for me, of sorts, and I guess the images had an impact. I’m sure if my dad had subscribed to other types of pornography I might have had a different expectation around my own anatomy. As I matured, and even now, I was not that into porn so I never really expanded my vulva viewing in order to shift that initial impression.

Contrary to the slit, my lips are, um, voluminous. My vulva looks like she’s making fun of you—always with a tongue out. When it became more of a trend to remove all the hair down there, I had it waxed for a while. My husband loved it, but it made me feel self-conscious. Like any good landscaping, I felt the landing strip at least distracted from the car-wreck behind it. He constantly reassured me that pussies come in all shapes and sizes, but I thought he was just being nice. I mean, what else are you going to say to the pussy that you’ve committed your life to? Anyway, later on a trip to Frankfurt, we popped into the Museum of Sex. There, we stood before a large art installation of 100 different vulvas in plaster. “See,” he said, “all shapes and sizes.” We studied the installation to find the one which was closest to mine. We toured the whole place and then we went back to the hotel and fucked for hours—that museum was a huge turn-on.

Years later, when we started the lifestyle, that self-consciousness crept in again. I mean, in the heat of the moment I certainly wasn’t worried about what I looked like, but I wasn’t about to send anyone a picture of it or be seen in lingerie that might expose it. Let’s just say, if she had asked me if she was pretty, I would have told her that she had a great personality. She definitely didn’t seem photo-worthy. I contemplated having labiaplasty, but I knew even the greatest surgeon on the planet wouldn’t be able to get from where I was starting to the Playboy-slit that I admired. Also, I didn’t want to get rid of anything that was actually bringing me sensational pleasure and, on that front, she delivered.

Then a weird thing happened. I kept getting compliments on my pussy. Okay, so if you aren’t in the lifestyle, that might already be the weird part. This was strange to me because I was already clearly going to have sex with the guy, so the incentive seemed low to mention anything about it, let alone conjure a big lie. I was suspicious though, and still self-conscious. Over time, however, after seeing, playing with, licking, and generally appreciating pussies for myself, I started feeling differently about my own. Now, I’m also fluent with the word - it just rolls off my tongue like, well…

The truth is that she is fairly unique—and I now think this is a good thing. Recently, I was watching a video sent to me after a very hot night. I watched in amazement, enthralled, not just because I was being fucked while I had a beautiful woman sitting on my face, but because before I realized it, I had the actual thought about how hot and beautiful my pussy was. Just like that. Well, after four years of active swinging, uncountable conversations with women and men about pussies and dozens upon dozens of sincere compliments, I fell in love with my own. I re-watched the video a few times, you know, just to make sure I really did think my pussy was beautiful. I did. Now, isn’t that the cat’s meow?