A Tour Of The Property

I was twenty-one, and my roommate came home from a biology lecture looking scandalized. She dropped her bag and pulled out a pencil. She drew a diagram on the back of a pizza box.

“Is this right?” she said. “This is not what I pictured.”

It was not what I pictured either. For twenty-one years I had lived in a house with no floor plan. I knew roughly where the front door was. I had a vague idea of rooms behind it, and that was the sum of it.

We sat on the dorm room carpet with the pizza box between us. I am not exaggerating. We took turns saying “wait, what?”

Does this sound like you? Welcome. This is the tour. It is short and friendly, and it has line drawings.

Most of us never saw an accurate picture of our own bodies. The pictures we did see were often a little embarrassed. So here is the pizza box, properly drawn. It has names on everything and a few surprises in the attic.

Name Tags

Let me hand out name tags before the tour starts. You have met these words already. Here they are again. A good tour lets everyone know what to call things.

Every part gets its proper name here once. After that, we use the friendlier word. It is the word you would use with a close friend.

• Clitoris, or clit, becomes your button. Your pleasure button works too.
• Vagina becomes your kitty.
• Labia majora and labia minora become your outer lips and inner lips.
• Urethra becomes your pee hole.
• Anus becomes your rosebud.
• The G-spot becomes simply G.
• The whole area at once becomes the neighborhood, or down there, or below the belt, or between your legs, or your secret place.

The proper names are on the labeled drawings in small type, so nobody gets lost. You are also free to use your own words for any of this. Plenty of women have a private vocabulary, and it is funnier than mine.

The Front Yard

Let us start on the outside. That is where most tours begin.

At the top, over the bone, is a soft cushion of tissue called the mons. Think of it as the front lawn, the soft landing. It often has hair. It often likes a gentle press through your clothes, and we will return to that.

Below it you will find your lips, properly called the labia. There are two pairs. The outer lips are the labia majora. The inner lips are the labia minora.

They come in an astonishing range of sizes, shapes, and colors. We will come back to that. It matters.

The inner lips meet at the top. There a little fold of skin sits like the hood of a sweatshirt. Under the hood you will find the tip of your button. That tip is the only part you can see, and it is a small piece of something much bigger.

A bit lower sits your pee hole, the tiny opening where pee comes out. Its proper name is the urethra. It belongs to neither your kitty nor your button. It is its own thing, just above the door of the kitty.

Below that is the door to your kitty itself, the opening that leads inside. A little farther back is your rosebud. Between the door and the rosebud lies a small patch of skin. It is often forgotten, and it is loaded with feeling.

Here is a thing that surprises a lot of women. That is three openings. Many women only ever knew of “an opening down there.” Most of us use a single word for three different places.

The Iceberg

I want you to know this part above all.

Remember the tip of your button, the little pea under its hood? It is the visible tip of an iceberg. Underneath, out of sight, sits the rest of the iceberg. It is a great deal larger than the tip.

The whole of your clitoris, your button, is a structure with a body, two long arms called legs, and two bulbs of spongy tissue. The legs run back and down on either side. They hug the walls of your kitty from the outside. The bulbs sit beside the door.

Arousal swells all of this with blood, like a sponge in water. Some of the fullness and pressure women feel with arousal is exactly this.

Put it all together, and it is far bigger than the little bump suggests. The whole of it stretches several inches. Imagine a wishbone, or a small, tucked-away butterfly, wrapped around the neighborhood.

One part gets me every time. This was drawn properly only recently. Researchers described the full structure in careful detail only in the last few decades.

Most of us carry this body part, and it is devoted entirely to pleasure. But it was mapped properly only within the lifetime of many readers of this book.

Some of this may feel like news. It is news.

Why does it matter? Three reasons.

First, it answers a question many women have asked. Pleasure can feel so wide and so hard to pin to one spot. The button is a structure, and parts of it lie under the surface, near the kitty’s walls.

Second, it explains the range. Touch, pressure, and movement can feel good in so many different places.

Third, this one matters for the rest of the book. A gentle press through a layer of fabric can reach far more of the button than you would guess. The button reaches well beyond the hood. It is wider and deeper, and it can be reached from several directions.

Your Kitty

Your kitty is a soft, stretchy, muscular passage leading inside. It is more like a sleeve. Its walls rest against one another until something is there. It is built to change shape.

It lengthens and widens with arousal. That is one reason arousal is worth taking time over.

Many women feel most of the pleasure near the door and less deeper inside. That is common, and it is one reason the button gets so much credit. Some women love sensation deeper inside too. For them it often connects to pressure and fullness, and to the legs and bulbs of the iceberg nearby.

People vary, and there is no required answer.

And G? That is a place on the front wall of the kitty, a short way inside. Some women find it quite wonderful.

Some women do not notice it at all. Women have been arguing about G for decades.

The Hammock

Now for the other surprise. Beneath all of this, a sling of muscle stretches from your pubic bone at the front to your tailbone at the back. It looks like a hammock, and it is called the pelvic floor.

It holds up some of your organs. It helps you control your pee. Here is the part that matters for us. This muscle squeezes in rhythmic waves during an orgasm.

It tightens and relaxes like any muscle. Like any muscle, it can be strong, weak, tense, or relaxed.

You can find it right now. Sit comfortably and imagine gently holding back a bit of wind. That small, lifting squeeze, up and in, is your hammock. Notice it, let it go, and do nothing more.

(Some guides suggest stopping your pee midstream on the toilet to feel the muscle. Use that trick once only, to locate the muscle. Never make it an exercise. Doing it regularly can keep your bladder from emptying fully.)

That is all for now. There is much more to come on this muscle, including ways to wake it up. A few of them are a lot more fun than they sound.

A Quick Word About The Rosebud

Your rosebud sits at the back of the neighborhood. I will say only a couple of things about it, matter-of-factly.

Many nerve endings surround it. For some women this part of the body is a source of pleasure. For many it stays quiet, and both answers are completely normal.

Some women never go near it. Some women find nearby touch quite lovely. Here there is only information.

One of the most common discoveries is also one of the least mentioned. Many women press a little on the outside. They rest a fingertip or the flat of a hand against the rosebud, or on the soft patch of skin just in front of it. The pressure adds a deep, full feeling near the peak.

This stays on the surface. It is only pressure, held still or pulsed gently. It seems to make the whole climax feel rounder and richer.

Many women never try it and lose nothing. Some try it once and cannot imagine going without. The Private Wing has more on how women do this, in the warmer voice.

Prefer not to think about it? Leave it alone entirely. It has no feelings about the matter.

Every House Is Different

At fourteen I would have loved a copy of this section.

Bodies vary. Lips vary. Some are tucked in neatly, and some are longer.

Some are ruffled like a good lasagna noodle, and some have one side bigger than the other. Colors vary, from pink to brown to nearly purple. They change with age and arousal.

Buttons vary in size and in how much they peek out. The distance between the pieces varies. Hair varies too. You may have none, all of it, or something in between, and it is completely your call.

Every one of those is normal. The idea of one correct version comes from edited pictures and an embarrassed culture. Real bodies are more varied than any magazine allowed.

I have a simple rule for this. Does it feel good? Then it is working.

Does it look like you? Then it is correct.

Something may start to hurt, burn, or bother you, and it does not settle. That deserves a look from someone qualified. I will repeat this one kind line. The rest is simply variety.