PART 1:
Let’s get straight to it, like a poor man with a per-minute prostitute.
I had been with a guy for a month and we had already tried all sorts of exciting sexy up/down/in/out/wet/dry positions and god said, let it be good, and it was good. Then, last week, a little sparrow arrived on my windowsill chirping away. He sang, ‘It’s his birthday tomorrow, it’s his birthday.’ And I said, ‘Thank you sparrow, send love to your folks.’ And off he went.
Oh good lord, a birthday with a new relationship which is 5 shots short of serious. What to do, what to wear, what to buy, what to lick!
With little desire to spend my paycheck that always goes to feeding the starving and building orphanages, I had to take a nap to consider my options. In my dream an angel appeared, she was clothed in spandex with a pink whip and a petition against Eskom. I signed it. She asked me for R5 and then whispered ‘Hollywooood’ and she disappeared into a crowd of Indian dwarves
Hollywood! Let’s not be fooled by the shiny lights and fake boobs of the pantie-less 75 year old ladies whose wrinkled lips and tongues dangle aimless and muscle-less reaching the cold water in the loo when squatting down for pee. Let’s not be fooled!
Hollywood means one thing here! All off! Gone. Vamoose, Asta LaPasta baby. Shaved, plucked, ripped, torn, smooth as a baby’s…I’ll stop there. No grizzle, no forest, no 5 o’ clock shadow, no spike, no in-growns, no George Double-U. Nada! Just a warm, soft, nestling bed – an undisputable and 99% guaranteed fool proof pressie for Birthdays or Christmas or St Virgin’s day.
Hollywood, here we come.
PART 2:
There I was, with a dream in my heart and good intentions at my side, ‘Practice selfless, random acts of kindness’ they say; if a full bikini wax didn’t fit on that list, then no charity or NGO work ever could.
I arrived at the little beauty salon, underwearless, but still with trousers on so as not to tempt the parking guards. I wasn’t underwearless for this occasion, I always am.
Unfortunately my visit was uncalled for, which meant, that I hadn’t called first. Turns out, there are a lot of people who need beauty! Shocking, I know. The lady that I usually go to for my ‘trims’ or Brazilian airstrip was frantic and totally booked out for the rest of the day and for the next three weeks! I should also at this point, mention that she was deaf. The greatest waxer I had ever met, but deaf nonetheless.
I had driven far and drank little that morning and so my PMS that seems to last all month was in full bloom, self-pity and monogamy were on my mind as I weighed up having to buy a normal present, from his normal girlfriend, for our normal lives. OH GOD NO! So, I asked if there was anyone else who could take me and mow the lawn, but the lovely young and slightly gothic girl behind the counter didn’t speak a word of English or any other European dialect like slow-English, word-at-a-time English, are-you-stupid English. So, I resorted to my very sad and pitiful Afrikaans, ‘Is daar enige ander mense wat kan vir my vat om my bikini te doen?’ I asked with a knowing shame. So far, it wasn’t looking anything like the lesbian fantasies that I’d been having since the thought of a full-bikini wax had come to me in a dream. Then, like in the unmade fil, South African Beauty, she beamed at me…beaming. She nodded and stood up, closed the front shop door and said, ‘Kom’.
Sweet Hesoes, it was happening, and all I could think of was, ‘but I haven’t shaved!’
It was a short corridor, the brilliantly talented deaf wax lady was working behind the first door, I felt a deep jealousy toward the lucky manwoman that was getting their back defurred as I thought of her gentle, delicate hands working ‘tuft by tuft’ so as to cause as little injury as possible. I had to accept it right there, I was with the Afrikaans goth now, it could either mean a lifetime’s worth of illegal ‘doctor-patient’ happenings, or getting my clitoris ripped out. The former was surprisingly more tempting.
She smiled and asked me to take my clothes off in her vernacular. There I stood, half naked and vulnerable at a quiet beauty salon in Cape Town with scarring and terror imminent. Had I told anyone where I was going to be? Who will keep my car? Should I call my mom? How many roads must a woman walk down, before she agrees to a full bikini wax?
The road to hell was indeed paved with good intentions, but the front door to hell was built with hot wax and a hairy guava.
PART 3:
There I lay, my gat was indeed kaal and the midsection area in question lay exposed to the elements. She tried to make small talk with her weird African dialect, but all I could do was nod and agree and giggle accordingly. In retrospect, I hope she wasn’t telling me about her dying sibling. Things started off okay, I have an exceptionally high tolerance for pain and in cases like piercings and the odd lip bite, I even quite enjoy the pumping adrenalin of it. I have a bad habit of laughing when I’m in pain, the more it hurts, the more I laugh.
The outer edges of the hedge are usually manageable and she got through them like a semi-professional hairdresser shaving a bald man, easy and simple. For those of you who have never witnessed nor experienced a Hollywood or any other similar case of human torture, it is waxed from the outside in, from the fine and sparse to the dense and coarse, like a magical forest.
I was comfortable and relaxed, shaky, but at peace. Then…a cold shudder hit me as I felt a storm cloud loom overhead. My white-faced black-haired hair-remover turned a luminous version of pale. We both knew. The next moves required her to place her full hand on my fruit so as to avoid removing any internal organs with the waxstrip rip off. A full hand on my fruit! We were arguably the same age, but she seemed younger and far less ‘informed’ by the cruel outside world. To say the least, she was innocent with no chance of parole. The tension could have been plucked with a blunt tweezer. The air was snappable and my tummy growled. Then, like a female Jesus, Grace walked in. Grace, the talk, confident, experienced, deaf, waxing deity! She jumped to stop my Afrikaans geisha from putting boiling sticky goo between my labia and yelled a beautifully impressive, ‘Nooooooo’ in midflight. I pierced my eyes closed.
I tried to interpret the speech that was coming out, I didn’t understand either of them, all I knew was that I needed to wee. I was lying with my legs spread eagle, a strange local foreigner girl on my left leg and a deaf waxing god woman on my right and somebody was going to have to touch my poonani.
Then, I felt a warmth on my lovely lady lips. A soft and gentle recognizable warmth, followed by some more warmth, a smaller patch of it, but still, warmth. I opened my eyes and looked down, and there, right before me, were two ladies mid-demonstration using generic larger than life sign-language, each with one hand on one lip and a wax strip in the other. In some kind of sick and twisted slow motion, they both dabbed their wax sticks onto the very curve of my womanhood, patted it dry, as they leaned to the patch and prepared for the rip. Now, for just a moment, I must mention that there is a patch on a female that is far more sensitive than the other patches. It is the top of the ‘line’, where the split ends and the worlds meet as one again, this is the patch in question. The pain is comparable to falling groin first onto a serrated spear.
Be mindful. Don’t think. Think puppies. Think…
R.I.P!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Rest in peace, rest in peace, rest in peace!
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
Like a well-choreographed Grade 7 dance eisteddfod, they had tugged my rug in one violent and cruel act of synchronized waxing. I was in hysterics. I was laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe. I was sure I was going to wee everywhere. Tears were streaming down my cheeks. I was in some kind of hysteria-pain-shock. I was hyper and ventilating. I hadn’t even noticed that both were now rubbing me gently down under, patting me with talcum powder, stroking the suffering skin and reading my lips, so to speak.
It was over. They had done it. I had done it. I was a bare naked lady. A happy consumer with a ‘lovely to touch, lovely to hold, and if you wax it, consider it gold’ finished product.
Then, home sweet home for the celebrations. ‘Happy Birthday baby, I have a surprise of you.’ I said in my sexiest voice as I pulled down my pants. ‘Da da da da daaaaa’ to my best royal trumpet impression. There I stood, gift in hand and grin on face, ‘Do you like it?’
After slight deliberation, he stared at it for a while and then looked up at me, ‘You look like a f—ing 10 year old!’
He grabbed his bible and left.
And there I lay, spread bald eagle, in my birthday suit.
I think it is inspiring…