I am pleased to say that this awkward moment came only in part by my own doing.
My sister came to stay with us a few weeks ago. One night, the three of us along with a friend were lounging around our living room trying to find something good to watch on Netflix Instant. We ran across this movie that I had seen listed a million times, but had never had the courage to watch: Teeth. I made the mistake of mentioning this fact. The brief synopsis of Teeth simply states that a young girl finds through an encounter of sexual abuse that her vagina has teeth. Now perhaps you understand my fascination and repulsion. Everyone was shocked. We giggled a little and my husband lingered a little longer than normal on the movie’s image. My sister, however, was jokingly insistent about watching it and my husband, ever ready to indulge a whim, decided to hit play.
Needless to say, the movie was horrible. It was one of those so-cheesy-you-can’t-believe-someone-actually-produced-it kinds of things. The girl is an unofficial spokeswoman for a faith-based high school abstinence campaign… and so is the boy. And yet, we continued to watch. Cheesy scene after cheesy scene, our eyes remained glued to the screen. Our friend even pulled up some pillows and created a little nest on the floor, surrounded by our two Corgis. We joked about turning it off, but something prevented it. We were all hoping for some sort of payoff. You can’t make a movie about a vagina with teeth without some sort of good payoff, right?
And so we watched on. In fact, it wasn’t until almost an hour of sappy, melodramatic teen wooing with Christian boundaries and bizarre stepfamily issues had passed until we got it. Major pay off! (I’ll warn you here. There is major spoilage coming up.) In a moment of passion in a secluded cavern under a waterfall (yup, I said cheesy) romance turns ugly when the heroine rejects her suitor. He turns rapist and knocks her unconscious. The romantic that he is, the boy figures he’ll enjoy her even when she’s out cold. But he’s in for a surprise.
At this point, we’re all making predictions. Will they actually do it? What will they show? Is this what we’ve been waiting for? Should we just turn it off? The anticipation is tangible.
Then, it happens. Just as little Casanova nestles in for some not-so-love-making, the girl wakes up… and so does her vagina… and they’re both pissed! Next thing you know, everyone is screaming and there’s a prosthetic penis lying beside him on the cavern floor and he is looking quite eunuch-esque. At this point, the guys in the room are looking a little piqued and my sister and I are rolling on the floor. After a few minutes of hysteria, gasps and snide comments, my husband turned off the TV.
I can’t tell you how the story ends, but I do know that Eve Ensler is not going to be including this jewel in her next revision of The Vagina Monologues. And be careful who you share this story with because your yap might land you right in the middle of a Teeth screening of your own.
