He wanted a refund.

Huffing and puffing, a peculiar five-foot-eight tall replica of Robert the Bruce emerged from the theatre. Visibly upset, he demanded his money back. The show wasn’t what he expected.

“I want to know how it feels to clean it, to wipe it -- what it feels like when you have your period.”

He was looking for a biology lesson, not a collection of stories. Offended and taken aback, one of the organisers argued with the pale man, but finally pacified him, returning his $12. As he stalked away, she yelled after him: “You know that money was supposed to go to a women’s charity!”

He paused, grumbled, gave the money back, and swaggered away.

* * *

Clearly, not everyone knows what to expect from Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues. Whether in print or on stage, some people are still wary of this six-year-old phenomenon, and with good reason: The writing itself is anything but superb. At times, the language seems awkward, forced, maudlin, or repetitive. Luckily Ensler’s ability as a storyteller and the talented theatrics of the book’s interpreters -- most often college students, though Glenn Close, Rosie Perez, and the like have been known to dabble -- save the pieces, and perhaps feminism too, from obscurity.

As a play, The Vagina Monologues serves both noble and worthy purposes. Full of great female caricatures, the play offers amazing breadth and depth of roles for women in an art form where men tend to get “all the good parts.” The Vagina Monologues also bears witness to true modern day tales of rape, disfigurement, and murder. Performances raise awareness. They raise funds. College students across the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom use the play to raise cash for local and international charities committed to ending violence against women.

As co-director and an actor in the production at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, this year, I wondered on opening night: “But how relevant are the Monologues, politically?” On a campus whose student population is already 60 per cent female, it might seem the battle of the sexes is over, and women have won.

But then, during the performance, we were heckled.

A certain redheaded buffoon was heard to utter, “Oh, I get it! Even fat girls can be pretty,” while a screechy woman yelled “bullshit” whenever she disagreed with the contents of the script. Obviously, there were converts still to be had. Using tactics of shock and awe -- how fitting from a New Yorker -- Ensler would have them, too.

The Vagina Monologues are superbly exciting. The play takes you on a roller coaster that pitches you to the depths of horror with tales of ritual acid-burning and tactical rape. Then, it switches gears and speedily rockets you to celebrations of birth, orgasm, and hope with such levity as to make you feel that familiar cotton-candy queasiness and lump in your throat.

Ensler never intended to write the play, but after interviewing more than 200 women for another project, she felt driven to tell their stories. Women were “hungry” to talk about a part of themselves so long (and still) considered taboo, and Ensler felt she was just the woman to serve it up, with a cherry on top.

Instead, she launched a cult.

In 1998, Eve Ensler co-founded a charitable organisation and movement revolving around the Monologues termed “V-day” -- the ‘V’ standing for vagina, violence (against women), and victory.

With V-day, the revival of she-pride seems to be pegged on convincing the well-to-do class of the younger generation that feminism can be fun and sexy. As such, cast members and organisers of college campaigns more closely resemble a nunnery run amok, a sorority gone mad, or a slumber party on caffeine pills than a bunch of “typical feminists.” They sell clit lollipops, hold moaning contests, and titter over vagina hand puppets. There are pudendal lamps, and vulvic glass hand sculptures. (I haven’t yet seen vagina prints, but I’m sure they’re next -- followed by labial impressions.)

The Vagina Monologues has become its own strange universe in the land where the sky is pink, the view is rosy, and young middle-class college girls can feel empowered, independent, and free-thinking by simply joining a club. Initiation is easy -- just stand in front of a congregation and chant the most reviled invective in the West: cunt. Feminism is dead and exhibitionism has replaced it.

According to the publishers, Random House, The Vagina Monologues have been “hailed as the bible for a new generation of women,” and the high priestess, or as the New York Times would have it, “the Messiah heralding the second wave of feminism,” is Eve Ensler. The first commandment: Make a spectacle of yourself. The second commandment: You must not criticise any part of the Monologues.

The play is vulgar, comedic, sexual, stimulating, frightening, and educational, but, most of all, it is an institution. A healthy, devoted congregation returns yearly around Valentine’s Day to celebrate, chant, and worship the cult. The vagina, a Latin word meaning, unfortunately, “sheath for a sword,” once the subject of a play, always a relevant biological entity, is now Temple. Out of The Vagina Monologues, many women have found a spiritual, or at least vaginal, awakening. Now, if we can just get away from the mob mentality, we might have something.

I joined the cult and I reclaimed ‘cunt.’ Now that the party is over for this year, I’m sitting with a philosophical hangover pondering a lot of half-formed memories. “I don’t usually behave like a cheerleader,” I groan. “I’m not an in-your-face, dancing-on-tables, vagina-talking kind of gal.” I got lost in the crowd and thought I would find myself. I didn’t.

I see that the Monologues trip I bought into might not have been all that I had bargained for. And, I’m thinking now -- thinking about asking for a refund.

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