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The Ripper by Kimmy Beach

She’s right in there with her tongue depressor dripping green paste, her cloth strips and mercifully warm hands. I’m not sure how I got talked into this. Rebecca gave me a gift certificate for my 40th and I thought maybe I’d get a nice pedicure. There’s no going back. We’re half done. If we stop now, I’ll look like an aging, deranged porn star: half smooth, half hairy.

“Pull this and hold it over here,” she says, positioning my hands over my genitals and tugging. “Trust me.” My God! She continues the story she began back at my calves: the easy part when I was able to concentrate and make reassuring noises about what a player her last boyfriend was, and yes, she was right to dump him via text message from the bar.

“So my stupid sister goes, ‘Hey, come on over here, Trish. You should meet this guy!’ So, like, I go over and he’s all ‘Nice to meet you’.”

Rip!

“And I’m all ‘whatev, nice to meet you too.’ Here, hold this.”

Rip!

“My sister knows I just got over Dan and she’s already, like, trying to hook me up. But it was like 2:00 am and we came out of the bar and I’d had one of those loaded hot dogs so I was pretty much up for anything.”

Rip! That was close.

I stop her mid-adventure. “Um, can I please get a look at what you’re doing down there?” She grabs the mirror and holds it between my legs. My exposed skin is a red; blood droplets where the hairs were torn free.

“Okay, lay back down. So anyway, I tell this guy, Will, ‘Look, I’m not into anyone new right now.’ Like, you know I told you about Dan? Well, he got back on crack and I caught him with a prostitute in our bed. He said they were just, like, watching a movie and fell asleep, but I was like, ‘Who takes their red hooker thong off to watch a movie?’”

Rip!

“AND he still owes me two hundred bucks! Like, I lent him the money ’cause he said it was for rent and food and whatever—can you hold all this more out of the way?—but I know he spent it on crack!” She tears a distressingly intimate strip off me as she says the word crack.

I’d like to keep her calm while she’s robbing me of the hair God gave me. “So,” I say, “how’s the sex with the new one? Will, is it? And can I have some cooling gel, please?”

“Best I’ve ever had!” she says, calming down noticeably as she smooths the cold gel on my stinging skin. “He loves my Brazilian. I’d never go back!”

She’s young enough to be my daughter. I don’t bother to tell her there is no going back.
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Kimmy Beach is a writer, editor, mentor, and workshop facilitator. She has published four collections of poetry with Turnstone Press (Winnipeg, MB). Her fifth collection, The Last Temptation of Bond, is under final consideration and will hopefully see the light of day soon. In the spring of 2012, she will be hosting a writing retreat on the Greek island of Crete. Kimmy lives in Red Deer, Alberta, and you can find her online at http://web.me.com/kimmybeach/Kimmy_Beach/Home.html.

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