Killer inside me

It seems like it's been a lifetime, but, ten years ago, my last college roommate was asked to make a cup that you couldn’t drink from as an assignment for her ceramics class. She started out with slabs and made a triangular wedge instead of a round cup. She put a crooked base on it and poked holes in the bottom so liquid would run through. Now, here’s the oddest part of the piece, she put multi-level wedged spikes all around the “mouth” of the cup. My roommate crafted a seriously intimidating undrinkable cup—maximum security all the way around the brim.

I saw it, and I asked, “What is that thing?”

She explained the assignment to me. Then she said, “The funny thing is that the cup is supposed to be a metaphor for sexuality.”

I gaped. I had never seen my roommate more aptly symbolized ever. She was bristly, topsy-turvy, and odd-ball, but those were the same qualities that made her friends love her.

At the end of the semester, the professor said it was his custom to keep one object from every one of his students. He irked me at the time, but my grown-up mind has decided it was to prepare budding professional artists for giving up what they loved to their buyers and galleries. He chose my roommate's undrinkable cup. They even argued over it, saying how important it was for her to keep it, but in the end she surrendered it to him

The undrinkable cup took up huge residence in my mind, spreading out and resonating over the years. At odd moments I find myself imagining my own undrinkable cup, and what it says about me at the time.

Today I had a vision of my undrinkable cup. A replica of a Greek wine goblet, on a tall spindle with a large, wide dish and handles at either side. The Greeks decorated the interior of their wine cups with heroic or erotic images. One image was Hercules striking down the Amazon Queen by thrusting his spear through her breast, straight into her nipple. I always hated that image, and it made me want to cry when I studied it in art history. But my undrinkable cup, my Greek wine goblet, The Amazon Queen towers over Hercules and pinions him through the loins. Holes on either side of the image would drain the wine, so no one could obscure the power of the Amazon Queen.

My vagina is killer.