The Scene: The bathroom. For some reason 7th Heaven is playing in the background and the actress who plays Lucy is whining, a major stretch for her as an actress. There is blood. There is screaming. There is a strip of paper with some sticky stuff and a bunch of hair stuck to it on the ground.
Perhaps I should back up a bit. Today I decided it would be really neat to buy one of those home-waxing kits so I could become one of those hairless freaks that you see on the MTV.
I am wearing something sleeveless to the Big Party and I thought it would be a kick to rip out all my armpit hairs at once. Bam! The teeny Vietnamese lady who did my nails a couple of times showed me her legs and said that every time she has them done, less and less hair grows back. Hmm. It got me to thinking.
I went to Fred Meyer, ostensibly to buy some chapstick. The hair-removal aisle pulled me like Demi “Midlife Crisis” Moore to some barely-legal boy candy. “Sugar wax! That sounds good.” My stupid brain told my stupid hand to pull it off the shelf. I shunned Nad’s and that creepy new Veet stuff in order to go with a classic: Nair. “Heat in the microwave!” exclaimed the package. “Three easy steps!” The smiling hairless woman on the box gazed at me knowingly.
“But I like your armpit hair,” said Mr. Husband, as he put Frannie’s shoes on.
“Mmmph,” I said.
“Just so you know.”
“See you,” I said, and closed the door behind them. Damn him and his supportive, accepting attitude. I had crossed a line and couldn’t go back now.
So tonight, with the house to myself, I went to work. I opened the box and it had a giant roller bottle full of brown goo, with fragrance added to it. I don’t see why it needed fragrance; it’s made of sugar, and doesn’t that smell good on its own? There were some paper strips and some little wipes that you wipe yourself with first to get all the oil off your skin, because then it works better, I guess. I skipped that part.
The directions said that the “hair should be more than 1/4 of an inch, but less than 1/2 of an inch.” Hey! Math? All the sudden this was getting hard! I went into the bathroom and trimmed my armpit hair over the sink, not an easy task.
I hate looking at myself in the mirror without a shirt on and wearing pants. I think I look all goony that way, especially with one arm up in the air and my poor little armpit with its new bad haircut. And men look goony with just a shirt on and no pants. What up with that?
Now that I had the desirable 1/4 to 1/2 of an inch length, it was time to heat the goo in the microwave. “Full bottle: 15 seconds. Wax should be as warm as comfortably-hot bathwater.” I got that done, then I had to squeeze it down to the “easy roller tip” that you use to smear it on your chosen manlike body part.
The packaging says it is “easy and neat” but it’s really not because you have to roll it around with your finger to get the goo all over the roller. It was at this point that I was starting to realize what the fragrance smelled like: Boy. It was manny, like boy deodorant. That’s weird.
So I put it on my least favorite armpit first, the left one, and the rolling itself painfully tugged my doomed hairs. At last I was coated in goo. The illustrated directions showed a hand ripping the strip off and a hand holding the skin taut next to the line drawing of an armpit. But I only had one hand free, the ripping hand! The other hand was attached to the arm that was attached to the victim armpit! What to do? Rip anyhow, I guess.
YOINK! I actually saw stars for a second, and then I remembered to start breathing again. Damn, dude. Like four hairs came out, and you bet your pimp juice I have more than four armpit hairs. I put my arm down to take a break…and it got stuck to my side. Fuckity! This was not crapping going well.
I always like to Make Matters Worse, so I ripped a few more times. More hair came out, but I am certainly not ready for the MTV. Or even MuchMusic. Now blood was rising to the surface. It was like I was giving myself some kind of awkward hickey.
I decided to switch to my upper lip, which is not super manlike, but I figure it could be improved. That worked marginally better, but now all I can smell under my nose on my freakishly feminine lip is man-smell. Those people over at Nair have got quite the sense of humor. I salute them.
Now I have a swollen, itchy, smelly, hickey-fied armpit, and a normal armpit with trimmed pit hairs that are short n scratchy. And an upper lip that looks okay.
I should have just thrown my seven dollars off a bridge, and hit myself with a flyswatter for about an hour. Same damn results.
What I should do now, and what I should have done in the first place, is make myself a pan of crappity fucking rice krispie treets, and eat them all before Mr. Supportive Modern Guy Who Will Secretly Laugh Up His Sleeve at Me comes home.
And after you’ve had the treats, try downloading Alix Olson’s “Armpit Hair” for some armpit-lovin laughs :)
umm If your gonna make Rice krispies can I have some? P.S I love you asshole
Oh … my … effing … gawd…
Don’t ever write something like that again when my dad is sleeping. I almost hyperventilated trying not to make any noise while laughing my ass off.
And thank goodness I didn’t piss my pants…
I thank you for sacrificing your arm pit to such a good story. Just remember no good deed goes unpublished.
Ouch.
My Mr. Husband-guy once tried to wax his chest hairs, and ended up actually ripping off his oh-so-sensitive skin along with the wax, so it could have been worse!!
Great stroy, though!
Actually, his is too, but I know that I cannot possibly do it justice.
They should put “don’t try this at home” and “leave it to the professionals” warnings on waxing kits. I did the same thing with my bikini line. Except I applied the wax to both sides and then after ripping the first side off with the fabric strips, used hot water and my fingernails to get the wax off the other side. No way in hell was I going to do that ripping business twice. Have you seen the explanation for a Brazilian bikini wax? Torture, plain and simple. I’m trying to learn to embrace my furriness.
Wow, I thought I was the ONLY ONE who believed those promises of painless, pleasant, self-removal of body hair! Years ago, before I went to a professional for a bikini wax, I bought myself a little wax kit at the CVS and skipped merrily home to use it on my poor sensitive girlie area. I can’t believe that I actually got through it. I think I retreated to some pain-denying state of mental fortitude until it was all over. . . THEN, when I went to an aesthetician for my first “real” wax, she tactfully asked me if I had children, explaining that sometimes hair growth is heavier after one has given birth. Well no, I hadn’t. Thanks so much, Aesthetician Lady. I could just picture her gossiping to her fellow salon workers about the unbelievably hairy woman she had just waxed. Painful AND embarrassing.
Why do we do stuff like this to our bodies? Especially when our husbands love us just the way we are and say so?
After several attempts similar to yours (though I laughed at yours, not mine – sorry), I went to the local salon, where the calmly, easily and almost pain-free ripped the hair from my offending body parts. I was done in ten minutes and no worse for wear.
Good lord, I’d be squirting my kidneys out of my nose with laughter if I too, had not fallen for the same painful ruse.
The blood. The pain.
And that freaky smell that haunts me to this day. I feel your pain, asshole. Yes I do.
SJ and the Armpit Hickeys.
You could have a great band, there.
At least you didn’t go and invest big dinero for The Epilady or other tourture device masquerading as a miracle cure.
Okay, it’s time for a quick story about an Epilady.
Once, when I was sixteen, this girl named Sarah took a liking to me from across a crowded room, and she arranged for a mutual friend, Dean, to deliver the following verbal missive to me on her behalf: “If you call me, I will be your sex kitten forever.” So Dean takes me aside one day and says he has something he has to tell me. Says a friend of his made him promise he’d tell me verbatim. And he gives me the message.
And I naturally go, “What?”
And Dean shrugs and goes, “That’s what she said.”
“Was she joking?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What does that mean, exactly? Is it code for something?”
“I have no idea.”
“Does she have, like, what; a cat suit or something?”
“Again: no idea.”
“Is she cute?”
“She used to go out with David Biers.”
“THAT Sarah? You’re kidding.”
“Nope.”
“If you’re fucking with me I’ll tell your mom about your porn collection.”
“I’m not. I swear on Miss October’s big sticky rack.”
“Well. Hell. Gimme the number.”
So I call this girl. And what I hadn’t counted on is that she was shy on the phone. Like, kind of creepy-shy? She has some of that breathy-voice-little-girl thing going on? And she’s weirdly hesitant. And contrary to the usual pattern for stuff like this, she actually gets more hesitant as the conversation goes on. And after about twenty minutes I start to get the twitch, so I make up some excuse to get off the phone. But before I go, she asks me for my phone number. And this was all pre-Columbine, so I figured sure, why not? Gave her my number.
So over the next couple of weeks she starts passing me notes in the hall telling me how much she likes me. And she sits next to me in class and gives me the look. And she also calls me a bunch of times. And every time the conversation follows the same basic pattern; she starts out kind of hesitant and weird, and just gets worse the longer we talk, which makes me nervous. So I usually start trying to get off the phone after about twenty minutes, and she always does the same routine, “Oh, no, don’t go. Can’t we just talk a little longer?” And yadda yadda.
So one day we go into this same thing, the “don’t go” thing, and suddenly it hits me. And I’m like, “Um, say, Sarah. Are you doing something right now?”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, okay. You’re talking on the phone. Are you doing anything else?”
“Um, yeah.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m using my Epilady.”
“Where?”
“Where what?”
“Where’s your Epilady?”
“It’s right here.”
“Here where?”
“Here here.”
*sigh*”Okay. Sarah, I’m sorry to be so direct about this, but you’re not by any chance using your Epilady as a dildo, are you?”
“Um. Maybe.”
“Right. Okay. Listen, Sarah. I find it kind of troublesome that you’ve been doing this during all our past conversations without telling me. It’s… Um. I feel a little violated. You know?”
“Yeah.”
“So I’m gonna go now, okay?”
“Okay.”
“And, uh, it might be a better idea if you didn’t call again.”
“Okay.”
“Bye, Sarah.
“Bye Josh.”
And that’s the Epilady story. It’s not actually as weird as lots of other sex stories I have, but I can’t hear the word “Epilady” without thinking about it.
I have my own waxing pot, like they use in the salons (black market connections, dontchaknow!)
You have to melt the wax for about half an hour before you can actually use it. The moral to this story is do not leave the pot containing said wax in a spot where a curious long-haired cat can dip it’s paw inside.
I think your imagination can fill in the ending better than my abilities will permit.
Love your story, SJ.
Too too funny… Your ordeal reminds me of that episode of Cheers where Rebecca Howe mangles her legs with an Epilady type thing and blots the blood off her legs with her consumer complaint letter before she mails it off. You should do the same! Mail them a clump of bloody hairy sugary carnage in a pretty card and demand yer seven bucks back. Don’t forget to scan it in and show it to us first though. ;P
aahhh yes. well, go for a brazilian bikini wax if you’re looking for a little more pain. wow.
I have so been there and done that.
I would like to introduce you to another instrument of torture…the epilady.
This little tool of the devil is an electrical device with two flexible coils that go in opposite directions to pull out hair as you drag it down your chosen appendage.
This is the only thing I own that I have not been able to give away.
Every time I lend it to someone, it comes back like a boomerang within a day or two.
It still sits menacingly in the cupboard under the sink in the bathroom securely subdued in the fake leather pouch it came in.
Thanks for the laugh.