"WHY MEN CARVE FIGUREHEADS
ON THE BOWS OF SHIPS"
a monologue from Cristofina Sets Sail for the New World

(A Bon Voyage party. Cristofina unwraps a gift: a large box of condoms. She laughs and removes several from their wrappers as she speaks.)

CRISTOFINA:

Life offers damn few conclusions. We're living and breathing hypotheses, part of some long range experiment. The results won't be in for eons. But ...

(She blows a condom up like a balloon.)

... one conclusion we can draw is that many of the planet's problems are the consequence of poor design. Take the phallus for example.

(She lets the condom go, watches it dart about and fall to the stage.)

1. It's the wrong shape. Designed solely for penetration. Ignores female pleasure. The vagina and the clitoris are oceans apart.

2. It's overly specialized. Generates a half million sperm to fertilize one egg. What a waste.

3. It's too successful. The species is propagating at an alarming rate. Men cry out for better methods of birth control--condoms, pills, injections, surgery--overlooking the obvious: the phallus. It needs to be recalled.

4. It's poorly situated. Hanging here, at the most vulnerable point in the anatomy, its very defenselessness the root of male insecurity and aggression.

And 5. It's too demanding, too easily agitated. Men can hardly focus on their partners, let alone the world, with the phallus inflating itself every few hours. Even more frequently among adolescents!

The constant demands upon the male psyche for phallic attention lead inevitably to narcissism, egotism, ethnocentrism, planned obsolescence, destruction of the environment, and a chronic inability to satisfy one's partner.

(She empties the remaining contents of the box on the stage.)

Thank heavens we have alternatives.