How Do I Put This Delicately?

For someone who is not involved in the medical or porn industries, I’ve certainly seen more than my fair share of …ahem…lady bits lately.

For the record, “more than my fair share,” would be anything over the number one.

And, again, for the record and clarification, I’m talking about nether regions. Boxes. Muffs. Putangs. I’m talking about “down there.”

Man, I can’t wait to see the search term results that this post attracts.

When we were in Peru (yes, I’m still talking about that trip. Sorry, I’m not sorry), we saw a poor old soul sitting on a church step in one of Lima’s busiest squares. She was wearing a stained and threadbare skirt and was mumbling to herself and swaying. Her, um, “Sacred Valley” was on full display, but she was quite obviously not right in the head and totally oblivious to her lack of underwear. The proper thing to do was just to look away. Which I did.

I hurried up to my travel-companion-for-life XFE and whisper/hissed, “Did you see that old woman back there? She didn’t have any underwear on!”  XFE answered in the negative and got on with his life. I, however, was sad and disturbed for the rest of the afternoon thinking about that poor woman. I should have said something, or covered her, or given her some money. Something.

When I was walking home from work the other day, I got another chance to do a solid for my fellow females. There, sitting on some steps alongside a busy sidewalk and an even busier, rush-hour clogged street, was a young German fraulein with her muschi (German slang. Look it up) saying hello to all the passersby.

I presumed that she was so engrossed in her phone conversation that she was not even remotely aware of her state of overexposure (it was unseasonably cold, so I’m not really sure how this could be. For context, I was wearing tights and a trench coat. That’s how cold it was. She too, was wearing a trench coat, so I know she wasn’t completely impervious to the wind chill).

I walked past, shocked that she couldn’t know. I mean, unlike the poor old lady in Lima, she seemed to be in full mastery of her sensibilities.

Then I stopped in my tracks and thought to myself, “If I had a big chunk of spinach lodged in my front tooth and was grinning like an idiot, I would want someone to do the right thing and give me a heads up. If my skirt were caught in my tights, I would want someone, anyone, to do me a favor and tell me.”

With that whole reciprocity thing floating in my head, I went back and said, “Excuse me, ma’am, but I can see your vagina.” She glared at me and continued talking in German to the person on the phone.

In what had now become the single most awkward, one-sided conversation I’d ever attempted, I tried again. “Perhaps it would be best if you just lowered your legs a bit?” More glaring, but some shifting. “Ah, there you go. That’s better. Good job. You.”

Positive praise which, of course, was met with more glaring.

I walked off dumbfounded. Here I thought I was helping my fellow conspirator in the Sisterhood of the (Lack) of Pants. But I apparently had the entire situation completely wrong. Clearly she knew that the whole world could ascertain the color of her underwear and shaving preferences, and I was the one, in fact, who had crossed a societal line of proper etiquette by informing her that I did not want to know either of those facts. Obviously I was the one in the wrong here, a fact that I’m sure would have been supported by any one of the lecherous drivers stagnating in their cars at the stop light in front of us.

I should have taken off my tights and flung them at her.