Waxing
All
methods have tricked me with their promises of easy, painless
removal - the Epilady, the standard razor, the scissors,
the Nair, the EpilStop, and now ...The Wax.
My
night began as any other normal weekday night. I came home from
work, fixed dinner for my son and we played for a while. I then
had the thought that would ring painfully in my mind for the next
couple hours: maybe I should use that wax in my medicine cabinet.
I set up my boy with a video and head to the site of my demise,
um, I mean bathroom.
It
was one of those cold wax kits. No melting a clump of hot
wax, you just rub the clear strips in your hand, peel them apart,
press it on your leg (or wherever) and ignore the frantically
rising crescendo of string instruments in the background. No muss,
no fuss. How hard can this be? I mean, I'm not the girly-est of
girls but I'm mechanically inclined so maybe I can figure out how
this works. You'd think. So I pull one of the thin strips out.
It's two strips facing each other, stuck together. I'm
supposed to rub it in my hand to warm and soften the wax
(I'm guessing). I go one better: I pull out the hair dryer! And
heat the SOB to ten thousand degrees. Cold wax, my ass. (Oh,
how that phrase will come back to haunt me.)
I
lay the strip across my thigh. I hold the skin around it and pull.
OK, so it wasn't the best feeling in the world, but it wasn't bad.
I can do this! Hair removal no longer eludes me! I am She-Ra,
fighter of all wayward body hair and smooth skin extraordinaire!
With
my next wax strip, I move north. After checking on the boy and
verifying that he was, in fact, becoming one with Bear and
learning all about smells, I sneak into the bathroom for The
Ultimate Hair Fighting Championship. I drop my panties and place
one foot on the toilet. Using the same procedure, I then apply the
wax strip! across the right side on my bikini line, covering
the right half of my vagina and stretching up into the inside of
the right ass cheek. (Yeah, it was a long strip.)
I
inhale deeply. I brace myself. RRRIIIIPPP!!!!
I'm
blind! Blind from the pain! ....... Vision returning.
Oh
crap. I've managed to pull off half an inch of the strip.
Another
deep breath. And RIIIP! Everything is swirly and tie-dyed? Do I
hear crashing drums? OK, coming back to normal
again. I want to see my trophy - my wax covered pelt that caused
me so much agony. I want to revel in the glory that is my triumph
over body hair. I hold the wax strip like an Olympic gold
medallist.
But
why is there no hair on it? Why is the wax mostly gone?
Where
could the wax go, if not on the strip?
Slowly,
I eased my head down, my foot still perched on the toilet. I see
hair - the hair that should be on the strip. I touch. I feel. I am
touching wax. I look to the ceiling! and silently shout "nooooooo!!"
And
realize I have just begun living my own personal version of
"The Tar Baby."
I
peel my fingers off the softest, most sensitive part of my body
that is now Covered in cold wax and matted hair, and make the next
big mistake - up until this point, you'll remember, I've had my
foot on the toilet. I know I need to move, to do something. So I
put my foot down on the floor. And then I hear the slamming
of the cell door. Vagina? Sealed shut. Ass? Sealed shut. A little
voice in my head says "I hope you don't have to shit anytime
soon. Your head just might pop off." I penguin walk around
the bathroom trying desperately to figure out what I should do
next.
Hot
water! Hot water melts wax! I'll run the hottest water I can stand
and get in - the wax should melt and I can gently wipe it away,
right? Wrong.
I
get in the tub - the water is slightly hotter than is used to
torture prisoners of war or sterilize surgical equipment. And I
sit.
Now
the only thing worse than having your goodies glued together is
having them glued together and then glued to the bottom of a tub.
In scalding hot water. Which, by the way, does not melt
the cold wax.
So
now I'm stuck to the tub. I call my friend, C, because she once
dropped out of beauty school So surely she has some secret
knowledge or trick to get wax off skin. It's ever good to start a
conversation with "So my ass and vagina are stuck to the
tub."
She
doesn't have a trick. She does her best to suppress laughter. She
wants to know exactly where the wax is on the ass. "Are we
talking cheek or hole, here?" she asks. She isn't even trying
to hide the giggles now.
I
give her the run-down of the entire night. She tells me to call
the number on the side of the box, but to have a good cover story
for where the wax actually is. "You know that if we were
working the help line at XX Wax Co. and somebody called with their
entire crack sealed shut we'd just put them on hold then record
the conversation for everyone we know. You're going to end up on a
radio show or the Internet if you tell them the truth.
While
we go through various solutions, I have resorted to scraping the
wax off with a razor. Boy, nothing feels better to the girly
goodies than covering them in wax, sticking them to a tub
In
the middle of the conversation (which has inexplicably turned to
Other subjects!) I find the little, beautiful saving grace that is
the lotion provided with this torturous box of wax, to remove the
‘excess’.
I
rub some in and start screaming "It's working! It's
working!" I get hearty congratulations from C and we hang up.
I
successfully remove all the wax and notice, to my dismay, that the
Hair is still there. So I shaved the damned stuff off.
Hell,
I was numb by that point anyway. And then I put the box of wax
back in my medicine cabinet! Never know when a mustache
might start to come in.
Tonight,
I attempt hair dying.