Friday, June 4, 2010

Hot Wax and Speed Zones

In Medieval times a common form of punishment was torture. A wide (and rather creative) array of methods, machines, and tools were invented for various degrees of pain and public humiliation. In England for instance, drawing and quartering an individual was a popular practice that was often done for large crowds (the disembowelment and ultimate beheading of a person was the modern equivalent of dinner and a show). Another very widely used form of torment were chastity belts, which women were regularly expected to don in order to give their future husbands and families a semblance of security that her purity was indeed intact rendering her a much more valuable bargaining chip when negotiating her potential marital union. Being a history buff, I have seen multiple examples of the wrought iron thongs, and I would have to say, I would rather be drawn and quartered.

While such methods are no longer practiced today, there have been new rituals invented to take their place. And while ancient forms of torture were regularly acted out on the accused, we as modern women seem to willingly seek it out. I am of course talking about, waxing. Women routinely have their hair follicles ripped from their skin while a perfect stranger (usually named Ingrid or Olga) with a very heavy accent contorts our lower bodies into exposing and uncomfortable positions. After the warm sticky wax, compromising positions that would make a Chinese gymnast blush, excruciating pain, and hours of red bumpy highly sensitive skin, we are expected to pay them for this service and tip them well.

Personally, I had never bought into this. I couldn’t see the sense in paying someone to tend to that area. But I began to notice that more and more women are beginning to liken this experience to a trip to the dentist, as regular maintenance. On a recent shopping trip with my Mom I had it brought to my attention that my “area” could use a little “control”. I was of course doing the one thing that most females dread, swimsuit shopping. Much like the chastity belts of yore, swimsuits are an uncomfortable form of female bondage popular to our era. The spandex prisons are by nature frighteningly unflattering on the wrong form and unsettlingly exposing. Lately I have noticed the stretchy material cutting into the softer regions of my body creating lumps and rivets in places I don’t want others to see. I resemble a lycra hotdog that been overstuffed – and if anything is going to maintain my chastity, it’s being seen in public in one of those.
At first I found it insulting that my Mother would make such an observation, but then I took a good look at the region. To add insult to emotional scaring, my Mom asked me if I wanted to go with her on her next appointment. The idea of being taken along on a hot waxing trip, was more than I could bare (no pun intended). So instead, I took down the name and number of the salon and promised to make an appointment.

I am afraid of salons. They are actually a phobia of mine. They are a collective hive of overly maintained women doing their best to defy nature at all costs. My fears only compound when one or more of these women begin offering up life advice and gossiping about anything and everything. Of course this visit would do nothing for my terror because I was bringing myself (willingly) to have a very sensitive area of my body thrashed. My appointment was difficult to book because the Ukrainian woman who is their specialist liked to book her own appointments,

“Ees for wax, da?” She had a very deep voice that dripped from the back of her throat and rolled into pronunciation.

“Yes” I answered meekly “It’s my first time, so I don’t really know what to have done, or what to ask for…” She let a long pause hang uncomfortably for a few seconds,

“Ees fierst time, da?”

“Da” I answered, “I’m Mona’s daughter”

“Aaaaaaah yees, Mona, she viery lovely, viery hiery” Already I was squirming with too much information, and feeling slightly exposed “eef you like Ma, den you need full hour.”

“An hour?” I squeaked.

“Da” She repeated. She rattled off a date and time, which I wrote down and to my horror realized it was that afternoon. Of course her “office” was as clean and sterile looking, with a couple of half-baked attempts to make it look more personable (a trickling fountain and a picture of a fuzzy kitten, which I’m assuming was the only hairy pussy apparently allowed in that room). She pointed to me and asked,

“What you like?”

“Oh gosh, I don’t know…” She looked at me shrewdly and answered,

“You want same as your mother? Landing strip wis Playboy wax?” I have been told in the past that I have my Mom’s eyes, her cheekbones and her laugh, but I really didn’t want to share her bikini line. Besides hearing that my Mom ordered something with “Playboy” in the name, was just about enough for me.

“Streep!” She ordered.

“Streep?” I asked “as in Meryl?”

“Your pants! Remove.” She stumbled over the word remove, but miraculously she managed to maintain her dominance in the situation. I blushed fiercely and began to sloooowly undo my belt. With my ears burning and every ounce of my dignity gone, I hopped up on the cold stiff table covered in crinkly paper and looked up at my oppressor. I tried to focus on the ceiling cracks, but as soon as the warm goo touched my inner thigh, I knew there was no turning back. With each rip tears would form in the corner of my eyes. With a powerful thrust, she lifted my leg into the air and began spreading wax on an area that I really only ever intended to have treated nicely.

“No!” I cried “I don’t think I want to have that area done, I don’t think I am ready!”

“Yees, must do! Thees is ugly, must Metch!” Since she already deposited the wax, I knew I was doomed so with a whimper of anticipated pain, I let her continue. Once she stopped, I looked down, only to see a red and throbbing exposed area.

“You go home now, buy Bikini Zone and seet down” I couldn’t really argue, or mutter a cohesive sentence at this point. “Hurry! Go get, or you heav ingrown heirs I heav to pull out!” I worte a check (complete with tip) and stumbled out to my car, all the while VERY aware of my “area” and the pain it was in.

I wasn’t fully aware of my diminished driving capacity on the trip home until the red and blue lights flashed behind me in a hail of siren noise. I glanced in my rearview mirror long enough to see the cop motioning me to pull over. I began to panic, I didn’t know what I had done and my vajayjay was beginning to burn in protest t it’s denim prison. He seemed to be taking his own sweet time even getting to my window and I began fidgeting. When he finally got to my window he leisurely leaned over and asked,

“You know how fast you were going?” In truth, I didn’t. I hadn’t even thought to check my speedometer, so I shook me head in response to his question.

“You know what the speed limit here is?” he questioned. Again I found myself at a loss, and again, I shook my head no.

“Well you were going 50 and the limit’s 35” he said while searching my face for a spark of recognition, the only thing I actually did recognize at that moment was the growing ichiness going on in my nether regions. “What’s a girl like you rushing off to?” He questioned.

“Home” I mumbled.

“Well maybe you outta think about slowin’ it down a notch, after all, life is too fast. You should slow down and enjoy it.”

I don’t know what it is in me that snapped, but from somewhere inside I felt a break. I literally could feel my left eye twitching in anger at his blatant disregard for my time and my obvious need to get the hell out of there. I found myself leaning out of my window and making direct eye contact with Officer Slowdown and said in my most measured tone,

“Look, I know as a man you probably will never understand the reason behind my rushing, but I have to get home so that I can buy some industrial strength anti-inflammatory cream to apply where I have just had a full wax…including lips. In layman’s terms, I need to get home NOW so that I can go home and ice down my once hairy taco.”

For a horrifying moment, I feared he would spontaneously combust, but instead he drew in his breath, stretched upwards and lurched towards his car. It is the first and only time I have ever talked myself out of a ticket.

2 comments:

  1. Jesus. After that Ukranian genital mutilation ordeal, I'd think the lock-and-key medieval chastity thong probably seemed a little less horrible.

    Easy for me to say, of course. Still, I'm willing to go out on a limb and say girl, you gotta get yourself a better waxing salon. I may be a dude, but when I was married I hung out with my then-wife and her girlfriends often enough to hear wisdom of such things conveyed. It's not too much to ask that you have a waxing technician who has a good, soothing way with nervous clients. Or at the very least, one who doesn't call to mind Lotte Lenya in that James Bond movie. If you're short on girlfriends who could give a reliable referral, I have female cousins in Seattle who could send you the hookup.

    One other thing:

    ...drawing and quartering an individual was a popular practice that was often done for large crowds (the disembowelment and ultimate beheading of a person was the modern equivalent of dinner and a show). Another very widely used form of torment were chastity belts, which women were regularly expected to don in order to give their future husbands and families a semblance of security that her purity was indeed intact rendering her a much more valuable bargaining chip when negotiating her potential marital union. Being a history buff, I have seen multiple examples of the wrought iron thongs, and I would have to say, I would rather be drawn and quartered.

    Um... I'm pretty sure you're being hyperbolic here, in order to set up the present day parallel of torture through waxing. However, in case you're not I've gotta ask: are you out of your frikkin' mind?

    Look, I'm no apologist for the abusive degradation of putting women in chastity belts. That said, I think being subjected to one would be easily preferable to being drawn and quartered for the simple reason that chastity belting was not fatal. Drawing and quartering was invariably fatal - in fact, your description of it as "disembowelment and ultimate beheading" in public is a bit incomplete:

    ...On May 30, 1582, [Thomas Cottam] was dragged on a hurdle through the muddy streets to Tyburn, past jeering crowds, and then hanged, taken down while he was still alive, and castrated; his stomach was then slit open and his intestines pulled out to be burned before his dying eyes, whereupon he was beheaded and his body cut in quarters, the pieces displayed as a warning.
    - Stephen Greenblatt, Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, p. 98

    I'll take the iron undies.

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