Wax On, Wax Off

Though mammals, as a society we seem to frown upon body hair, especially for women. I bend to this social convention in spite of almost-reflexive desire to stick it to the man whenever possible. In my pursuit of delicately feminine hairlessness, I offer you, the reader, this recap of my most recent experience:

I decided a while ago that waxing is the most effective use of my hair-removal time. Mostly because I saw some little wax strips on sale, bought them, and then spent thirty minutes removing little strips of hair from my upper leg. It was satisfying and addictive. Cool, I thought, less hair on my leg. I should consider this as my dominant hair removal mode. So I ordered a home brazilian wax kit, complete with warmer and wooden sticks, so I could be a total pro. It arrived. I did nothing with it.

Until last Saturday, when I found myself with hours of free time. No kids to deal with, no place to be. I turned that wax warmer right on and read the instructions, kind of. I was planning to learn by the scientific method and also memories of waxings past.

I started out with my upper leg. The wax was really hot. So I have a pinkish rectangle on that leg now. I moved on, envisioning a smoothly amazing bikini area. Best to just get naked, I thought. I sat on the bedroom floor and got started. Wax on, this time after a slight cooling period because I did not want burned bikini area. I spread the wax on, then waited, then pulled up the edge a bit to make a tab to really pull on. Then I ripped that motherfucker off like it was a bandaid made of worm jerky. There was an instant of satisfaction then a crashing wave of searing pain. Once that subsided I went for round 2. But this time, I knew what I was facing so hesitation came into the picture and fucked up the whole plan.

I tried 1,2,3 pull! Except my hand, out of sympathy for my groin, would not cooperate. I tried deep breathing and holding it, thinking that maybe that would strengthen my resolve. Nope. One quarter pull at best. I tried the slow pull just in case the bandaid thing is a shitty old wives' tale. Nope, so much worse; I could actually feel individual hairs screaming as they were unseated. Finally I just went all out, mostly out of sheer panic at never getting the wax off of myself, destined to always be stuck to underwear on one side.

In spite of clear evidence that one cannot wax oneself, I kept going, thinking it might get easier. Not really. And in case you were wondering, even with awesome flexibility certain parts of one's body are not quite as accessible as one might hope. I'm pretty sure the salon waxing scenario, the one with a spotlight directed at your lady garden while you contort yourself like a pretzel/sex acrobat, is actually used for a reason other than abject humiliation. At any rate, I got some areas of myself partially waxed and decided to hang up the wooden stick for a while, probably until I forget how much it sucked, whereupon I will try again (similar to how I arrived at giving birth to child #2).

Since I was done I turned off the wax warmer and was going to go take a shower to try and get all the little leftover bits of wax off. Surprise! I found out as I tried to get up that my ass cheek was actually waxed to the floor. Like all the little wax drips had accumulated under my butt, which then adhered to the wood floor. I vascillated between horror, panic, pain, and also cracking up. I took a moment to think about how I might extricate myself from this situation, and how I would never, ever tell anyone about the time I waxed my own ass to the floor.

I texted my sister to inform her of the situation, just in case things went wrong. She responded with a "Haha! Oops!" which I felt was neither helpful nor sympathetic. I then managed, through inner fortitude, explosiveness, a nearby price tag, and sheer force of will, to pry my ass off the wood floor. It hurt a lot as you might imagine. I'm sure my ass cheek is as smooth as a baby's ass cheek though, so benefit there. Unevenly smooth ass cheek.

The second part, the one where I would never, ever tell anyone about the time I waxed my ass cheek to the floor, well, that one didn't go so well.