Wednesdays With My Wax Technician

I like to imagine that there was some tenderness in the way that woman looked at my vagina, before she ripped off its coarse hair with a cloth strip. It was a small and forgotten intimacy, wedged into my lunch hour alongside a teriyaki chicken rice-ball, which I had eaten in a hurry on my way. 

“You’re paying with credit?” She asked this without looking at me. She had a professional detachment, an unwillingness to look into her customers’ eyes after seeing some of their other parts. 

“Yes,” I said, holding out my card. 

I walked out of the parlor with a lightness, the kind of airy liberation one can only achieve from waxed genitals.  

There was, to be sure, some pleasure in it all. There was the almost-hot gooey luxury of the wax as it spread, like a warm and sticky butter, or a long and languishing kiss, into peaks and valleys that were much more mysterious to me than to anybody else who had ever interacted with them. There was the assurance that when I reached down there later, I would be met with something smooth; no more ridges, no more knots, just nakedness, but for a slender landing strip. There were the bikini pictures where I looked like a Barbie doll, hairless and plastic, taken by ____ . 

The pain? Yes—it hurt. The hair came off in batches, and the wax technician placed the pressure of her gloved fingers where it burned. “Okay?” she asked every once in a while. She was kind even as she ripped, mercilessly, hair from follicle. 

After a few strips, one got used to that burning, jolting pain. It was momentary, after all, and surrounded with pleasure. What better sort of pain is there? 

And, at the end, there was a cream to look forward to. It smelled of aloe and felt like ice, the way a glass of cool water does at the end of a hot day. 

I looked forward to my waxing appointments, and my friends berated me for this. “Why? It’s so painful!” 

Truth is, I loved a lot of things about it. 

I loved the small, empty talks we had as she warmed the wax. She asked me about my day, and I told her with an honesty which surprised me. Disappointing meetings, missed calls. Bad sex, breakups. Dead cat. I did not need to hide anything from her, because she would see my asshole within the next fifteen minutes. 

I loved the way she looked at me with professionalism rather than desire. She stared me down not for lust, but because she needed to know how long my little hairs were. I felt as something would on an assembly line, tweaked and meddled with for nothing more than the completion of a job. I loved the way the popsicle sticks in the trash looked like they were dipped in caramel, covered in sticky sweet. As though a child had eaten too much ice cream. I loved the waiting room, and the awkward peripheral glances we shared while waiting to be stripped of hair that God gave us. A common purpose. Best friends get waxed together out of solidarity; that same solidarity can exist amongst strangers, knowing that they will soon endure the same pain. 

Most of all, I loved that pain. 

That pain, which was for what? Beauty? Sexiness? Freedom? 

***

I went back to work after my wax appointment, in my flowy and loose pants. I sat at my desk, shifting around, smiling because I knew something that nobody else did. A silly, frivolous, intoxicating secret. 

We had a meeting that evening about the branding for a shoe company. The challenge was, of course, that they sold ugly shoes for exorbitant prices. 

Still, I had been stressed about my presentation for weeks, because I coveted this account. We all coveted it. It was big, and it could help with a promotion. 

When I began showing my slides, something awakened in me that I did not know was there. I spoke with clarity and confidence about the hideous brand, which I did not believe in. At the end of the day, I was told that I got what I came for, and paid no attention to the side-eye glances from my irritating, collagen-guzzling colleagues. 

“Thank you,” I said, before walking toward the elevator, and demanding, with a sharp and assertive button-push, that I be taken to the first floor. 

***

I had a date after work, which was not the sole reason for my wax appointment. Some part of me knew that nobody was scared off by pubic hair in this day and age. Pubes had come back into style, like film photography and baggy jeans. 

Rather, I saw that it was getting unruly down there, and it was the only time that my schedule had aligned with my technician’s availability. I usually got waxed on weekends, when I had the afternoon free to lounge without underwear, without makeup, and watch the television. Scheduling it on a weekday was by pure coincidence. 

No. That was a lie. I must admit it was a little bit about my date. Some other part of me maintained stubbornly that the image I would present to my sexual partners would stay as it always had. I would be smooth, slippery. Clean lines, everywhere; I sought a perfect bodily geometry, a ruler-sharp landing strip that matched my straight legs in downward dog, all my Pythagorean poses. Sun salutations every morning. Yoga, for flexibility. This, and my manicured vagina. Exactly what women talked about on television when they asked their friends how they should prepare for sex. 

I also woke up before my partner, always, and retouched my makeup before sliding back into bed. This, I thought, was very important. Image control. I was a marketer, after all, and I knew that image was everything. Well, almost everything. 

I walked over to the bar at the corner of the street and fixed my hair using my phone as my mirror. I recognized him on entering. He was tall, scruffy. Rarely do men put in the same amount of effort. This, I thought, was good. The more effort he put in, the more he would understand the amount I did. This was unacceptable. 

The waxed and painted women’s ritual was shadow-work. It consisted of hours and hours that should never be brought to the fore, nor made the center of our focus. I liked men who were blissfully unaware and women who kept their armpit hair long. Who had tattoos and no clue what the difference was between foundation and tint. 

“Hi,” he said. 

“Hello,” I said. 

I sat down across from him, and he took a sip of the beer he had already bought himself. “Want a drink?” 

“Yes,” I said. “We are at a bar.”

“You’re funny,” he said. 

“Thanks,” I said. 

The rest of this conversation passed exactly as I expected it to, and too uninterestingly for me to want to share. 

We did the same old thing: we debated, for a second, whether we would go back to his place or mine. Settling for mine, we took the train four stops, and walked for five minutes in the humid night, and stumbled into the elevator, and fell into my bed, and took off our clothes, and rolled around for a bit, and took off our underwear. And he, as men are so often, was pleased with what he saw. “It’s just so clean,” he said. “And sexy.” No shit, I thought. It’s a vagina. 

Even in the absence of a visually obstructive and knotty bush, he did not know his way around me. He fumbled in the dark, and repeated again and again that he thought I was sexy, and that it was so smooth and warm and tight. You know, all those things that men say. I began to wonder if my decision to get a wax had changed very much for him at all, or if he just did not know better than to assume that the more hairless the more erotic, the more beautiful.

The sex ended quickly for him. For me, it had never really begun. 

I still felt very good about myself afterwards. 

In full awareness that his words meant very little, maybe nothing at all, I basked in them. I took great pleasure in being the kind of woman that woke up pretty and that presented, even between her legs, something well-organized, a trimmed hedge.

When I woke up, I slipped on some eyeliner and some concealer, and then wiggled back into bed, feeling contented in a way I had not for a very long time. When he woke up to my work alarm he said, groggily, “Good morning, beautiful.” 

I smiled, got up, and scrambled eggs. 

*** 

I never saw the man again. But I had done the presentation, and done it well. I had brought him to bed with me, and fed his delusions. I gave him a body which was ephemeral, existing only for the few days post-wax before the hair begins to grow again. I gave him a face which was temporary, a spell easily broken by makeup remover and a cotton pad. I felt fantastic. 

The morning he left my house was the same morning I was called into my boss’ office, and told that I was in the running to be promoted. A stroke of luck? Maybe. It was more than just that, though.

I scheduled my next waxing appointment for a weekday, between meetings. And the next one. And the one after that. It was my new pattern; I noticed that I over-performed after my wax. 

I felt good. More importantly, I felt better. One day a month, I did everything right. 

So, I began to covet the familiar discomfort of underwear against just-waxed skin. I would shine a torch light on my vagina, lean in and look. I was anxious, ever waiting new hair to sprout, so that I could have it removed. One must be hairy to deserve a wax. 

Thankfully, I grew it quickly. My hair came back again and again, as though it knew that I so enjoyed the process of removal. I used to hate my fast-growing hair, my long thick eyebrows that I had to get threaded away, the peach fuzz I was ridiculed for in middle school. Not anymore. I awaited the new bloom; each month, a bountiful harvest awaited me. 

Over time, I told my wax therapist more and more about my life. The men, the women. All of it. She smiled and nodded. She ripped my hair off with focus and grace. Then I went to work and did my presentations.

Afterward, I would find somebody to have sex with, to hold for a night, while I remained at this peak. I knew this was terrible wax hygiene, but I never got an ingrown or an infection, so I lived dangerously. 

***

“Have you considered laser?” My colleague Emily asked after I told her about my monthly wax. “You’ll go through a lot more money if you keep waxing.” 

She meant this as a kindness, an informational gesture. But I felt it to be an intolerable and irritating suggestion. Did she think I just didn’t know that laser hair removal was a thing? 

“Have you ever gotten waxed?” I asked, defensively. 

“Yes,” she said. “I went back to shaving, though. I only do it sometimes.”

“Why’d you stop?” 

“Was too painful, I guess. I took two Tylenols, and still cried.” 

“Yeah. It hurts a bit.” 

“But you won’t consider anything else?” 

“No,” I said, decisively. 

“Why?” 

“I can’t really explain. There’s something about it, though. So precise, so meticulous. It hurts, I guess. But afterward, I feel really free.” 

“Free from hair?” 

“No. Just, like, free. Beautiful. Perfect, if only for a day.”

“Can’t you get that with laser?” 

“Well. You’ll keep the hair off with laser, for sure. You could keep it perfect. But I don’t really think it’s about that. I think it’s about the removal, you know? There’s a satisfaction in that. It’s about watching the hair grow, and then pulling it off.” 

It was the drama of it, the thrill. There was an allure to the pain-then-pleasure. A similar feeling to the one you get when pulling the plastic sheet off of a new iPhone, but bigger, more daring. How it feels, maybe, to be the iPhone, and have that constrictive plastic sheet torn off of you. To breathe again, to touch the light with bare body. Bare—not just hairless, but skin-cleansed. Dead bits ripped away. Heat-cleansed, all pores emptied. 

I used to watch those pore-strip videos to see the small bulbs escape, leave the body on thin skin-like rectangles. It was something like that; or, at least, it appealed to the same impulse. The same desire of the flesh to rid itself of its unwanted material, to cough up the phlegm glued to the side of a throat, to throw up the vodka-scented bile after a long night out; I loved collecting the hair gathering in communion in the shower drain, scooping the rice from the bottom of the sink. I loved it the way I loved sad movies, the way I liked to go to the gym when I was very upset. There was nothing quite like weeping and sweating at the same time, and watching the droplets fall. 

I was at my most confident when purged; when I was smoothed; when my peaks and valleys were a flat and even ground. I was at my best when I looked as though I had been sand-papered to perfection. I was sanded again and again: waxing, face-peels, scrubbing, exfoliating, nail-filing. I sometimes wondered whether it was possible to sand something into nonexistence—whether I would look in a mirror one day and see that my body had disappeared from how intensely and often I had ripped and scrubbed myself away.  

***

It was a Wednesday, and I had an important presentation upcoming—this time about a new jelly cleanser that I actually disliked. 

The company that produced it sent me a sample the week before, and I pretended to myself that it did wonders for my skin. In reality, it broke me out, leaving red bumps that bothered me for two days. My disappointment would not stop me from advertising the product; things like that never did. It never mattered if something really worked, only that it looked pretty, and that it was packaged with numerous expectations it could not hope to independently deliver on. Most of my career was spent lying to myself, convincing myself of things. It was only once I was deceived that I could begin to deceive others. 

Besides, I had recently secured a sizeable raise, and everything in my life was looking very promising. My fiscal success emboldened me, and I was proud to note that I was close to becoming debt-free. I had a string of unsuccessful but moderately-pleasing sexual encounters, usually scheduled strategically to coincide with days I had presentations, days I knew I would be ready to celebrate. 

I was happy right where I was, in a room that smelled like tea-tree oil and hand-sanitizer.

My wax technician waited outside for four minutes while I undressed my bottom half and lay on the white paper-sheet. I put the towel over myself for modesty, even though modesty meant very little here. 

She came in and asked: “How was work?” 

“It’s been good,” I told her. “How’s yours?” 

“Good,” she said, smiling as she twirled the wax-covered popsicle stick, blowing gently on it. She stretched my skin out with her left hand, and applied the warm pink goo with her right, “Too hot?” 

“It’s fine,” She put the cloth over the hardening wax, pressed down. 

“Ready?” She asked this kindly, but expectantly. She knew me, and knew that I took the pain monthly without protest.

I nodded and closed my eyes as she lifted the hair up and off of me. For a second, it burned a sweet burning that smelled like artificial strawberry. 

Then I watched the cloth fall into the bin, where I imagined another women’s hair sitting limply, each strand laden with stubborn doubts, apprehensions, all these nasty things that ought to be ripped away again and again and again, pulled out firmly from aching roots. 

I was already anticipating, at that moment, next month’s visit, the next moment of second-long euphoria of freshly-waxed skin. This was a glorious moment, one that felt so clean. It was a momentary rebirth, reincarnation. Here I was. New, almost unborn. I could barely wait for when this hair returned, for when I could get it ripped out again. 

Divya Maniar is a Singaporean writer and dancer. She studied Comparative Literature and Philosophy at Brown. She has work in Joyland Magazine, Hobart, Heavy Feather Review, and elsewhere. Find out more about her at http://divyamaniar.com, and find her on twitter @divyalymaniar.