I have been so very bad at updating Seeing Red of late (MFA, I blame you!), but this month finally took a picture to contribute to the Project Naked video. Project Naked is an Edinburgh based blog run by Hannah Tait and Megan Hood, that aims to record and publish people experiences and perceptions of their own bodies. They are currently accepting submissions of images for their upcoming video. 
Anna
I’d like to add my own b-side to this response.
Anna
Anna, with thanks to Johanna for help with camera operation.
Free Pussy Riot demo at 12 noon, outside the Russian embassy in Edinburgh tomorrow 24th August. See you pussies there.
Thanks to Johanna for helping with the camera part.
Anna
After a long silence, here is my latest. From a trip to Sweden last month, I first attempted this in Texas in 2009. Omissions from earlier months should be uploaded soon.
Anna
I can’t resist plane toilets. I do kind of wish I’d remembered to flush though, and avoided traumatising the guy who went in after me…
Anna
My vagina and I are fighting again. Maybe it’s my uterus and I who don’t get along anymore. Either way, there’s some kind of a war going on and I’m getting dragged into it. I decided to take Vagina to the hospital. Vagina does not want to go the hospital. On this particular day, I do not care. I try to reassure Vagina that I’ll refuse any personal investigation – “it’s like The Shining down there,” I will say.
I try to console Vagina by taking her to the hospital by her favourite mode of transport – “A nice little ride on Vita, that’ll cheer you up won’t it?”
“Fuck you,” Vagina said.
Ok, so Vagina clearly does not want to be patronised. I try a new tactic: ignore Vagina and just get on with it. Things start to go a little better after that – we arrive at the hospital, read some celebrity gossip magazines about the Royal Ascot (I try to amuse Vagina by pointing out the hats that look like her, but she’s blanking me) and quite quickly a nurse calls us in. I follow her into the awkwardly small consulting room and she asks me what I want – I tell her I’m there for a Hepatits vaccination, and within seconds there’s a needle embedded in my arm. Huh. A few more seconds and she’s suddenly sitting down on the other side of the room waiting expectantly for me to leave.
Vagina is groping discreetly for the handle when I finally manage to mumble “um, can I ask you something?”
The nurse seems a little brisk, but I hope for the best. In fact, all I want is an appointment at a different but related clinic. Clearly, the pussy clinic is deeply special to the nurse: she is not letting me in there without a fight.
“Why do you want to go there?”, she demands, looking me fiercely up and down, pausing briefly to peer in Vagina’s direction. Vagina flips me the bean and retreats from the situation. She’s still muttering “fuck you” under her breath. I’ve been reduced to muttering too – I hear myself mumble “…sometimes…ba…rg….mhrr….burgg….please?”
Eh, what?
Not only has my vagina abandoned me, now my words have fucked off with her. I am weaponless against the grumpy scary doctor. She takes a step closer to me. “I can smell that on a girl you know, the second she walks into the room.” Ok, even I’m getting a little freaked out now. Vagina is absolutely nowhere to be seen.
“Excuse me?”
“That’s right, I can smell it. I don’t smell anything on you.”
Normally I wouldn’t insist that there was something wrong with Vagina. This time though, something was wrong and Doctor wasn’t backing me up. She offered to test me, but I refused on the grounds of my extreme period and lack of shower. I’d come back tomorrow I said, and get the stupid test for the problem I already knew I had.
I left pretty quickly, and after a small panic in the street outside, went home. The following morning, I returned, but had very little time. I got there super early, but in all of my non-assertiveness got queue jumped by a bunch of people and ran out of time. I glimpsed angry Doctor a few times from the waiting room, but eventually gave up and slinked out.
I haven’t been back since, I’ve just been cowering and self-medicating at home. Vagina is happy and healthy, but every now and then I think of the angry doctor, and Vagina is gone again.
Anna
