Brazilian Bikini Wax

Men aren't cut out for hair removal. A guy can eat nails, drive a Harley, bench 700 pounds, and still snivel at the sight of tweezers (or as I like to call them, Devil's Chopsticks). It is baffling that women endure this pain -- repeatedly -- for any cause, including their own salvation.

In the waxing chamber, everything was fresh and folded and surgically white. I took off my jeans and assumed the position, which was like being at the chiropractor only with leg stirrups and on second thought nothing like the chiropractor at all.

A voice interrupted: "You muss be see lucky man."

Enter Blanca, an earthy Bolivian whom you liked immediately even though she was about to unsex you. Blanca's voice, straight from Evita, soothed like a lullaby, but you sensed that she could just as well soothe you with a half-nelson.

For some reason, it only now occurred to me that Blanca would see me naked. I felt like we should get to know each other, have a drink or something, but she went right to work like a mother changing a diaper. She had seen every size, shape, and color, and mine did not bear mention. So it goes.

Blanca pulled out her weapons of destruction -- liquid wax, cloth strips, a box of Kleenex (for my tears). Evidently, the "Brazilian" part has nothing to do with live samba dancers.

"Brazilian es when everysing goes, even where the sun no shine. The French es when you leave a leetle strip..." She diagrammed.

I asked if we could start with a cooler, more conservative country ... say, Poland.

Blanca laughed as she dipped a rag in hot -- extremely hot -- wax. She molded the goo onto my wattle, then rrrrrriped! I arched back like a slinky and screamed so loud that nothing came out. Somewhere in the distance a dog barked.

"Es okay. Es beautiful. See." Blanca presented a strip of fur.

I looked to her with runny-red eyes the way you do a flight attendant in turbulence: Her smile was all I had.

"See, es almoss over." Rrrrrip!

With every pass, the wax got hotter. I asked Blanca if the heat would max out at some medically safe temperature.

"Hot wax es better," she said. "It grabs see hair from undernease."

Her thoroughness was killing me.

It's a little-known fact that the person who coined the phrase "mind over matter" died of a Brazilian bikini wax. I've endured broken bones, carpentry stabbings, a bee sting that made my lip look like Meg Ryan's -- none of it prepared me.

Finally, mercifully, it ended. Blanca had clear-cut Georgia, Alabama, and parts of Florida. Blanca told me to air out my privates, be naked if possible. Good thing I work at home; that could have been awkward for everyone.

"Sank you for trust me," she said. "Will you do eet again?"

"Perhaps if down the line I encounter some issues with my memory."

***

A week later, I'm still not myself. The draft in my basement never goes away. I feel less manly -- Samson without his pubic hair. I've stopped showering at the gym, and it may be years before I can eat Brazilian nuts.

My hair is returning slowly, in patches, like Earth after nuclear winter. Blanca said that if I wax often enough, the hair will stop growing altogether, but then what would we do for fun? My compulsion to scratch is severe -- greater, in fact, than my need to be accepted by others in the restaurant.

Some say that waxing improves sex, but I'm good enough at sex to tell the difference. Blanca treats musclemen, swimmers, and guys who roam the beach showing off their circumcision, but still, most of her clients are women. They are the only ones tough enough to return.

I have since decided that my private parts will remain private, but I'll always gush for this woman who knows me better than do most of my exes. Even now, as I scratch and pinch, her sweet Evita accent echoes in my mind: "Es almoss over, es almoss over..." Rrrrrip!