"The conch shell is the voice of Buddha, the birth-bed of Aphrodite, the horn that drives away all demons and draws lost mariners home from the sea. Colored by the moon, shaped by primal geometry, it is the original dreamboat, the sacred submarine that carries fertility to its rendezvous with poetry. A calcified womb, a self-propelled nest, the conch shell outlasts it tenant, its builder, to go on alone, reminding the world’s forgetful of their watery sexuality.
Mermaid’s tongue. Milkmaid’s ulcer. Courtesan’s powder box. Ballerina’s musk. With its marvelous pinkness, the flow from conch shell’s long, smooth folded aperture saturated the cave. It was bonbon pink. The tint it cast was that of a vagina blowing bubble gum." Tom Robbins, skinny legs and all