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BERKELEY'S NEWS • NOVEMBER 18, 2023

A tale of 2 lovers (and some vaginas)

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FEBRUARY 14, 2018

You’d think two girls who’ve been dating for a decent amount of time would know what a vagina looks like — but apparently not.

“What is this, a fruit?” Ketki said as the shot panned slowly back from the cervix, the image all blurry pink lumps.

It was a vagina.

There are some movies about sex that you want to watch alone, and others that you want to watch with someone else. “Double Lover” is the kind of sex movie that makes you want to join a convent.

I watched “Double Lover” with my girlfriend accidentally. I got the link to review the film and we planned a casual date night — the kind where we both wear leggings and get take-out.

In France, plenty of couples probably decided to watch François Ozon’s Cannes-premiered thriller together. They probably popped the cork off some Bordeaux and put on some red lace lingerie. They also probably didn’t think the vagina was a fruit.

In Berkeley, on a Tuesday at 8 p.m., I opened Vimeo while Ketki wedged the plastic clamshells full of pie into her refrigerator. Neither of us had red lace lingerie on.

She sat down on the pinstriped comforter cover that was folded over her mattress to make a makeshift bed sheet, and I unwittingly hit play on a vagina.

***

When I was 14, my mom and I drove down South Shoreline Boulevard in the December early evening darkness to watch “The Wolf of Wall Street” at Century 16.

She covered my eyes when Margot Robbie showed Leonardo DiCaprio her vagina.

At the scene where Margot and Leonardo have sex on top of a pile of money, my mom told me to close my eyes again. But I watched them do it through my eyelashes as I squinted and pretended that my eyes were closed.

At 14, I’d had a sex ed class. I’d even had a coed sex ed class, so I knew what a penis was. And I was very indignant that I wasn’t being allowed to look at Jonah Hill’s.

I wonder if Martin Scorsese ever thought of his film as a form of sex ed.

I doubt it, but even still, it was one I was sad to miss.

There’s a scene in “The Wolf of Wall Street” where Leonardo gets a candle stuck up his butt that I absolutely do not remember ever seeing, probably because I was closing my eyes or having my eyes closed for me.

And there’s another scene where 50 people have sex on an airplane. I also didn’t watch that scene.

I was 16 when I got my period for the first time; I was 18 when I decided to use a tampon. It took me 20 minutes to figure out where to stick the tampon in, and I blame this on all “The Wolf of Wall Street” scenes I never saw.

***

In Berkeley, there were plenty of scenes to see.

There was the part where the woman whose vagina we zoomed out of in the opening scene is having sex with her boyfriend when his identical twin brother pops in out of the shadowy doorway.

“Whoa — the sex twin is real?” Ketki asked.

He apparently was, because he kissed the woman’s boyfriend — and then, of course, the woman split into two, and the ordeal became a foursome, because apparently that’s how straight sex works.

Then there was the part where the woman’s boyfriend’s twin fingers her while she’s on her period.

All I could think about was the YouTube clip of the woman fingering a papaya — and then I noticed Ketki’s dog staring at me.

And then there was the part where the woman has an orgasm and we see it from the perspective of the inside of her vagina.

I don’t know what sort of fruit Ketki thought she saw in Marine Vacth’s vagina in the opening shot, but if there was any doubt about the reality of it being a vagina, there wasn’t anymore.

The remnants of our night — from before we realized we were embroiled in a foreign-language erotic thriller featuring one Chloé and one Paul (and sometimes two Chloés and two Pauls and supposedly one Louis) — sat on the bed at our feet: to-go boxes of Brazilian food, half-eaten slices of pie, Ketki’s dog.

It was 9 p.m., and we were in bed with plenty of sex playing out on the screen in front of us, and absolutely nothing was getting steamy.

Honestly, at the end of the day, sex movies are equally as terrible at teaching people about real-life sex as they are at turning people on. The sex gets pretty unrelatable pretty fast. And the circumstances you’re watching it in are never nearly as sexy as you want them to be.

As the title screen scrolled up, I glanced toward the clock and saw Ketki’s dog lying at the foot of the bed. The time was 9:54 p.m. and this ludicrous movie was finally over — and then the dog winked at me.

“Cutting Room Floor” columns are one-off, arts-oriented pieces written by Daily Cal staff members.

Contact Olivia Jerram at [email protected].
LAST UPDATED

JULY 06, 2021


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