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WAXING ELOQUENT

As an erotica writer, I had to try it at least once in my life.  For the sake of the authenticity of my art.  And so, purely out of professional duty, I did indeed let a lady in a white coat dab my crotch with searing hot wax and then, just as the burn was fading, yank it off.

That is, I had a Brazilian wax job.

Okay, what I actually had was more of a Venezuelan wax job because I didn’t go all the way “south,” so to speak.  But it was still an eye-popping experience.

While I’m confessing—or “oversharing” in contemporary parlance—let me say first of all I live in a part of the world where the late 1960s spirit lives on and it’s okay for a woman to be natural with regard to body hair.  However, apparently much of the rest of the world still adheres to the practice of rendering all visible adult female skin hairless by whatever painful means necessary—electrolysis, wax, razors.  I’ve read that in Middle Eastern hamams the scandalized locals hand “natural” American women disposable razors and insist they shave their privates bare before they are allowed to enter the bath.

For years I’ve been hearing or reading about the Brazilian wax job.  First there was Ginu Kamani’s “Waxing the Thing” in Best American Erotica 2001. In this story, set in India, a young woman finds plenty of work among wealthy matrons because a smooth twat was considered “high class.”  The narrator of Tracy Quan’s Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl was almost shrill in her insistence that waxing is a requisite to female sexual desirability.  Then there was Rebecca Brown’s extremely popular article in Divine Caroline detailing a visit to a salon, where the motto is “a clean girl is a happy girl.”  The article shot up to the most-read on the blog.  But who exactly was reading it?  Besides me, that is.  Curious women?  Voyeuristic (and possibly envious) men?  What is our obsession with the waxed mons?  And why is prepubescent smoothness associated with cleanliness?

Gradually, I began to wonder if I shouldn’t experience this cultural phenomenon just once, just as anthropologist colleagues have gamely sampled bonbons made of pure mutton fat in Mongolia or consented to a baptism in a Tokyo train station by a Japanese religious cult.  It would certainly provide an inside glimpse into American sexual culture.  I’d written about shaved pubes before, and some of those stories went on to acclaim, so there was even a chance I might even be able to use the experience in my erotica.

Yet years went by before I actually got the nerve to do it.  And then, just today, I did.

It helped that I’d found an aesthetician that was already waxing my lip and chin to my satisfaction—okay, I’m conventional to the extent I don’t want to look like Brad Pitt with last fall’s facial decoration, city ordinance be damned.  I was willing to go all the way the first time—I almost always have been —but my aesthetician recommended I start with a bikini line wax. Not that I wasn’t a bit nervous.  I popped a couple of Motrin an hour before, because I’d been warned that the skin on my inner thighs was more sensitive than my chin.  I already knew that, but appreciated the reminder.

The day arrived and my aesthetician greeted me with a smile, told me to undress from the waist down, and handed me a pair of special panties.  The waxing garment was basically a black paper thong, made from the same material as a medical examination gown, with a stretchy string to go around the hips.  I reclined on the table, my legs slightly parted.  My aesthetician approached me with a spoon-like object coated in green.  She blew on it gently and touched it to my flesh. I’d had my face waxed numerous times with this fancy and supposedly gentle French wax, but I’d never seen the process as it happened.   And it had never felt quite so… molten.

Thighs are more sensitive than chins.

“Is it too hot?”

“It’s, uh, bearable,” I said, thanking the Motrin and remembering the most torturously broiling baths I’d experienced when I lived in Japan that made me feel like a cooked lobster.  This was hotter.

To distract myself, I glanced down at my roasting thighs.  The wax was a lovely aquamarine color.  It glittered under the lights, rather like mermaid scales.  I watched, mesmerized, until the wax cooled.

I was about to join the ranks of “clean” ladies from Turkey to South America.

The aesthetician slipped her fingers under one edge and pulled.

Yes, thighs are definitely more sensitive than chins.  For one cringing moment four thousand fire alarms went off in my crotch, but the stinging didn’t last too long.  On the other hand, unlike the scene in “Sex and the City” where Carrie unwittingly gets a Brazilian in one swipe, my Venezuelan waxing took numerous applications of near-blistering aquamarine goo.  It hurt, but let me tell you, I’m a professional.  Which means I’ll do anything for a good story.

When we were done my newly “clean” skin was pink and disoriented, as if it were asking me, “What the fuck just happened here?”  The aesthetician rubbed a soothing gel on the skin.  I slipped on my panties and jeans, conscious of the tingling coolness down there.  I walked home feeling as if I harbored a secret, rather like pregnant woman who isn’t yet showing.  So the next time you see a woman smiling privately to herself, she could either be newly pregnant or fresh from her Brazilian (especially if it’s Saturday, which I hear is a big day to get waxed).

So what’s my verdict on today’s trend in female “cleanliness”?

Later, at home I dropped my pants and studied myself—for research purposes, of course.  I didn’t look much different than I do when I touch up with the razor before I travel to places less tolerant of stray curls peeping from bathing suit bottoms.  By visuals alone, my Venezuelan was hardly worth the time, money and ripping pain.

Then I touched the depilated skin delicately with my fingertip, running it along the crease of my thigh.  I was still slightly sore down there.  But the flesh was smooth and utterly soft, like satin. Baby-skin-buttery soft.  The softest thing you can name.  I imagined my husband’s expression when he touched it for the first time.  Imagined his hand cupping my mons, exploring the silken, exposed flesh.

I knew then my waxing experience would definitely make it into a story.

XXX

Donna George Storey is the author of Amorous Woman, a very steamy tale of an American woman’s love affair with Japan.  Much of her work is indeed based on personal experiences.  Her erotic fiction and essays been published in numerous journals and anthologies including Clean Sheets, Forum UK, Scarlet, Best Women’s Erotica, The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica, Best American Erotica and X: The Erotic Treasury. Read more of her work at DonnaGeorgeStorey.com, or check out her provocative book trailer at YouTube.

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