Yet another post in which I am wearing no pants.

Gentlemen, you have no Goddamned idea what we ladies go through for you.  Now, believe me, I’m no Princess Peach, here, and I completely eschew most beauty rituals, because, frankly, they’re ridiculous, but I’ve tried most of them…sometimes even twice.  Most of them involve an element of pain, and some of them even involve humiliation, but they are almost universally expensive and have extremely short-term effectiveness, necessitating you to repeatedly visit someone to paint, dye, pluck, pry, cut, scrape, or generally manipulate your body parts into a form that is neither natural nor entirely believable.

Frankly, there are things done in salons that I’m 90% positive would warrant a war crimes tribunal, if not for the fact that we voluntarily made an appointment and paid for it.

Now, while there are many services that these black smocked sadists perform, I’m going to skip right over the easier, less malevolent ones, and go right to the big daddy of them all…the bikini wax.  And I’m not talking about someone taking the edges off, here, I’m talking the whole kit and caboodle, in which they remove all evidence of mammalian ancestry and/or puberty, and send you right back to being a 10-year-old amphibian…at least in the shorts.

Before I go any further…I love the lady I go to.  Truly.  As much as you can love anyone whose last name you don’t know, but who is about to make you cry, via your vagina.  If I have to pay someone to do this to me…this is the girl I choose.

Now, as I understand it, you have a choice when undergoing this minor surgical procedure, of using disposable panties, which are merely for show, and are basically paper floss, or you can just embrace the fact that, after today, this woman is going to be able to identify your labia minora in a lineup, so you might as well drop your trousers, and let her do her damn job without the added complication of navigating fake panties, all while trying not to burn or damage (well…damage MORE) your ladybits.

From here, this poor woman, who as much as she is charging me for this service, is probably underpaid, given that she successfully juggles scrutinizing my undercarriage while carrying on a conversation with me about anything OTHER than what she is doing…effectively making my vagina the undiscussed elephant in the room.

This is when things truly get going.  And memo…it hurts…a lot.  The closest thing that I can compare it to is a bee sting…in a place where you hoped to never be stung…twenty times.  As she pulls the first strip, I go completely blind, but, unfortunately, not mute.

“Fuuuuuuuck,” I gasp, gripping the edge of the table.

And this is when it get’s weird.  Did you hear me?  THIS is where is gets weird.

My esthetician, (bullshit…she’s a bushwaxer ), SLAPS me right where she just clear-cut my lady forest.

Slaps.  It.

Even stranger…her doing this completely takes out the sting.  My eyes must have belied the confusion, because she explains, “It re-sets the nerves.”

A 40-year-old Dutch woman is now slapping me in the puss, and I’m not only paying her for this…I’m grateful she knows to do it.  What the fuck is wrong with this picture?

Several tear-inducing, blood-letting minutes later, in which I thank the good Lord above that I, in no way, take after the Italian side of the family, which would have, undoubtedly, made this procedure last three times as long and require a transfusion of both blood and valium….she is finally done.  Or…I thought she was.  Now, she begins carefully INSPECTING to make sure she got everything, and when she sees a stray that escaped…plucking it out with tweezers.

You know how much it hurts when someone pulls out one of your arm hairs, gentlemen?  Yeah…well, try your labia.  Well, first GROW some labia…then have someone pluck them.

Finally, after a dusting of baby powder (because your entire crotch now looks like it belongs to an actual baby), you’re free to awkwardly pull on your underwear while trying not to wince, and she pulls out a credit card machine, and the whole affair takes on a vaguely brothel-like aura of dirty deeds done for a price, where no one wishes to make eye contact.

At this point, despite the pain and humiliation, or perhaps because of it, you not only pay her…you tip generously, because you completely developed Stockholm Syndrome, and you think that the two of you have been through battle together.  Better…you schedule your next appointment…because it will grow back…and next time…it’s going to be angry.