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The Close Shave
When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick the flowers in other people's gardens . . .
So maybe I ought to practise a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.
"Warning" by Jenny Joseph
This poem is more or less how I live my life, but the words are still missing something. They are missing the hideousness incipient in many old women. I used to look at some scary old ladies with beards, moustaches, and big dangling wattles with enormous black hairs, and I'd shudder. Now I know that if I make it to that age, I'll probably end up resembling them. Rather than fear the thought, I delight in it. I can't wait to be a hideous old woman. I want to be able to scare small children with a single glance. I want the power to shrivel men's dicks with a mere glance at my hirsute visage. I plan on being the ancient Medusa of hairiness.
My earliest memory involves hair. I was very young--I couldn't walk yet--and my father was holding me in his arms. I was staring at his face, and then I started staring up his nose. That's
when I saw the nose hairs. I didn't have nose hairs at this point, at least, not lustrous black ones like he did, so I was pretty fascinated. I reached up to yank them out, and Dad pushed my
hand away saying, "No, no." It's a pretty silly first memory, but the depilatory characteristics of it seem to have set the stage for my life.
Sometimes I think my life can be encapsulated as a losing battle against hair. When I was a little girl, I used to have long, glorious dark blonde tresses. I was an active child, and my hair was very curly, so my frustrated mother finally had my locks chopped off after too many tangles with my malevolent tresses and too many combs losing teeth in my scalp. My hair remained relatively short until I was in grade five and I decided to grow it out again. Then it became almost non-existent. I went to the barber shop for a trim one day back in 1981, and the barber mistook my ten-year old androgynous form for that of a boy and gave me a serious military brush cut. I went home crying, but was somehow vindicated when I became the first punk skinhead in my school.
As my hair grew out, the old battles with the comb came back. My hair was an enormous ball of frizz: a Caucasian Afro of magnificent proportions. When I'd go to a beauty salon, hairdressers
would stare slack jawed with their shears dangling helplessly by their sides. They'd make a few tentative stabs at getting my unruly hair under control, but it would invariably go back into its
giant poof.
Even in the 1980s when big hair was de rigueur, my mane would not fit into even the largest of banana clips. People would stop and stare, and I was often referred to as "Hey! You with the hair!" I tried in vain to make my hair conform to the styles of the time. I had my hair hacked into a mullet, and I tried to tease my fringe up nice and high. This only made me look like a puffer fish with a perm. Besides, I couldn't get the back of my hair flat to my head. This was the style of the day: skyscraper tall in front, and flat as a flapjack in back. The style was very similar to those false-front shops so prevalent in old Western towns.
It's just as well. This hairstyle is as ugly and ridiculous as any mullet could ever hope to be.
At some point in my mid-20s, my hair decided it was too old to rebel, and settled down into an easily-coiffed wave. I don't know what good thing I did to deserve this boon, but I didn't dare
question it. However, I was now left with all sorts of spare hair time. I took notice of other hairy bits which had previously escaped my attention, such as my unibrow. In folklore, a singular eyebrow is symptomatic of lycanthropy. Maybe I was a werewolf. Or maybe I was a muppet. After all, Bert from Sesame Street sports the same sort of facial hair. My attempts at plucking were uneven and sometimes resulted in bizarre divots. I was in modelling school at this point, and my instructor suggested I get my brows done professionally. I trooped off to a beauty salon and was introduced to the horrors of waxing.
The aesthetician sat me back in a reclining chair, much like a dentist would use. The similarities between dentist and aesthetician did not end there. The pain was also similar. First of all, she gently washed and massaged my face, then applied hot strips of wax above my eyes. Then, with a mighty RRRIPP! she tore the wax (and half of my face from the feel of it) off. My eyebrows felt like they had fresh half-moon shaped brands. My eyes filled with tears, but the aesthetician didn't stop this horrid torture until the job was done.
After she rubbed cold cream on my throbbing eyebrows, I looked in the proffered mirror to survey the damage. My unibrow was gone, and if I ignored the fluorescent swollen pink bits, the brows looked pretty damned good. The swelling only went down a day later. Now, I keep my eyebrows carefully tweezed lest I go through the wax torture again.
Ironically enough, I have since begun getting what is colloquially known as my bikini area waxed. Apparently, I don't have enough pain in my life. However, I do loathe body hair, and sometimes believe the world would be a better place if it had never been invented. I mean, whose idea was this, anyway? Did some great creator decide, hey, wouldn't it be funny if men could have more hair on their backs than on their heads?
The first time I had the timber line clear-cut off Mount Venus was early in the summer of 2001. I was really sick of my groin looking like a scalded and freshly-plucked chicken every time I went swimming. With a certain amount of trepidation, I made an appointment to see an aesthetician up at a mall. It was all rather seedy and tawdry, actually. I paid a woman to flip up my skirt and maul my crotch, and I didn't even get a half second's enjoyment out of the experience. I could hear mall muzak playing in the hallways, loud hip hop music in the trendy clothing shop next door, and the top 40 pabulum playing on the radio in the salon.
I don't think the aesthetician relished the experience any more than I did. Yanking the hair out of strange women's crotches just doesn't seem like a very rewarding job. Once again, I was plunked down on an inclined chair/bench. This time, my skirt was hauled up around my waist. The woman gave me a tissue. "Wrap this around the edge of your panties so I don't get gunk on 'em."
I did as she requested.
She dipped a spatula into a tub of warm wax and smeared it onto my upper thigh. She laid a strip of gauze over top, patted it down, then yanked it off. My eyes teared slightly at the sting, but it wasn't that bad. "That didn't hurt too much," I said.
She smiled grimly. "Good."
Then she moved in a bit closer to my grotto of love. Once again, the waxy spatula smeared itself onto my hirsute bits. The cloth was patted on, and then my leg and crotch were torn asunder. At least, that's what it felt like, to put it mildly. It was as if the top eight layers had been ripped off me. If Shakespeare had only known about waxing, he would have written it into The Merchant of Venice as a good way to obtain the pound of flesh.
Somehow, I managed not to scream or recoil. Perhaps I am a closeted masochist. I hope not.
Yet I stayed in position as this Torquemama repeated the process even closer to my holiest of holies. This time, my eyes teared up in anticipation. This was really going to hurt, I thought.
I was right.
The process was repeated on the other side. When the waxing was over, I felt both relieved and sore. Unfortunately, she wasn't yet finished. She reached for a pair of tweezers and began methodically tearing out all the survivors of the molten wax blitzkrieg. I'm sure she was pinching me in the process. Although the tweezing didn't have the all-over style of searing pain that the waxing did, it felt like she was grasping below the surface of my skin (catching skin in the process) before yanking.
When it was all through, she said, "How does that look?"
"Great," I said. The Black Forest could have flourished in my lap and I would have told her it looked dandy. The truth is, I once again looked like a freshly scalded and plucked chicken. The skin was red, and bumps showed where all my hairs had been pulled out. My skin was suffering from follicular dry heaves. Later, when I got home, I discovered she had missed several patches, but there was no way I was going back to see her.
Believe it or not, about a month and a half later, I went and did it again at a different salon. This time, the experience was much better. The hair no longer looked like a brillo pad, to begin with, and the yanker-outer-woman was much more experienced. The pain was nowhere near as intense. In fact, it was quite bearable, and although my skin was once again red and swollen afterwards, it looked fine by the evening. Also, she didn't leave any hirsute patches.
The experience was vastly superior to the time I decided to do my own depilation in a place I couldn't actually see. If you ever get the sudden urge to shave your butt cleavage, do not give in to it. It can only lead to a literal pain in the arse. Trust me on this.
Hair has also been a big part of my life as a dancer, and plays an important role in Zar trance rituals.
(To be continued....)
When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick the flowers in other people's gardens . . .
So maybe I ought to practise a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.
"Warning" by Jenny Joseph
This poem is more or less how I live my life, but the words are still missing something. They are missing the hideousness incipient in many old women. I used to look at some scary old ladies with beards, moustaches, and big dangling wattles with enormous black hairs, and I'd shudder. Now I know that if I make it to that age, I'll probably end up resembling them. Rather than fear the thought, I delight in it. I can't wait to be a hideous old woman. I want to be able to scare small children with a single glance. I want the power to shrivel men's dicks with a mere glance at my hirsute visage. I plan on being the ancient Medusa of hairiness.
My earliest memory involves hair. I was very young--I couldn't walk yet--and my father was holding me in his arms. I was staring at his face, and then I started staring up his nose. That's
when I saw the nose hairs. I didn't have nose hairs at this point, at least, not lustrous black ones like he did, so I was pretty fascinated. I reached up to yank them out, and Dad pushed my
hand away saying, "No, no." It's a pretty silly first memory, but the depilatory characteristics of it seem to have set the stage for my life.
Sometimes I think my life can be encapsulated as a losing battle against hair. When I was a little girl, I used to have long, glorious dark blonde tresses. I was an active child, and my hair was very curly, so my frustrated mother finally had my locks chopped off after too many tangles with my malevolent tresses and too many combs losing teeth in my scalp. My hair remained relatively short until I was in grade five and I decided to grow it out again. Then it became almost non-existent. I went to the barber shop for a trim one day back in 1981, and the barber mistook my ten-year old androgynous form for that of a boy and gave me a serious military brush cut. I went home crying, but was somehow vindicated when I became the first punk skinhead in my school.
As my hair grew out, the old battles with the comb came back. My hair was an enormous ball of frizz: a Caucasian Afro of magnificent proportions. When I'd go to a beauty salon, hairdressers
would stare slack jawed with their shears dangling helplessly by their sides. They'd make a few tentative stabs at getting my unruly hair under control, but it would invariably go back into its
giant poof.
Even in the 1980s when big hair was de rigueur, my mane would not fit into even the largest of banana clips. People would stop and stare, and I was often referred to as "Hey! You with the hair!" I tried in vain to make my hair conform to the styles of the time. I had my hair hacked into a mullet, and I tried to tease my fringe up nice and high. This only made me look like a puffer fish with a perm. Besides, I couldn't get the back of my hair flat to my head. This was the style of the day: skyscraper tall in front, and flat as a flapjack in back. The style was very similar to those false-front shops so prevalent in old Western towns.
It's just as well. This hairstyle is as ugly and ridiculous as any mullet could ever hope to be.
At some point in my mid-20s, my hair decided it was too old to rebel, and settled down into an easily-coiffed wave. I don't know what good thing I did to deserve this boon, but I didn't dare
question it. However, I was now left with all sorts of spare hair time. I took notice of other hairy bits which had previously escaped my attention, such as my unibrow. In folklore, a singular eyebrow is symptomatic of lycanthropy. Maybe I was a werewolf. Or maybe I was a muppet. After all, Bert from Sesame Street sports the same sort of facial hair. My attempts at plucking were uneven and sometimes resulted in bizarre divots. I was in modelling school at this point, and my instructor suggested I get my brows done professionally. I trooped off to a beauty salon and was introduced to the horrors of waxing.
The aesthetician sat me back in a reclining chair, much like a dentist would use. The similarities between dentist and aesthetician did not end there. The pain was also similar. First of all, she gently washed and massaged my face, then applied hot strips of wax above my eyes. Then, with a mighty RRRIPP! she tore the wax (and half of my face from the feel of it) off. My eyebrows felt like they had fresh half-moon shaped brands. My eyes filled with tears, but the aesthetician didn't stop this horrid torture until the job was done.
After she rubbed cold cream on my throbbing eyebrows, I looked in the proffered mirror to survey the damage. My unibrow was gone, and if I ignored the fluorescent swollen pink bits, the brows looked pretty damned good. The swelling only went down a day later. Now, I keep my eyebrows carefully tweezed lest I go through the wax torture again.
Ironically enough, I have since begun getting what is colloquially known as my bikini area waxed. Apparently, I don't have enough pain in my life. However, I do loathe body hair, and sometimes believe the world would be a better place if it had never been invented. I mean, whose idea was this, anyway? Did some great creator decide, hey, wouldn't it be funny if men could have more hair on their backs than on their heads?
The first time I had the timber line clear-cut off Mount Venus was early in the summer of 2001. I was really sick of my groin looking like a scalded and freshly-plucked chicken every time I went swimming. With a certain amount of trepidation, I made an appointment to see an aesthetician up at a mall. It was all rather seedy and tawdry, actually. I paid a woman to flip up my skirt and maul my crotch, and I didn't even get a half second's enjoyment out of the experience. I could hear mall muzak playing in the hallways, loud hip hop music in the trendy clothing shop next door, and the top 40 pabulum playing on the radio in the salon.
I don't think the aesthetician relished the experience any more than I did. Yanking the hair out of strange women's crotches just doesn't seem like a very rewarding job. Once again, I was plunked down on an inclined chair/bench. This time, my skirt was hauled up around my waist. The woman gave me a tissue. "Wrap this around the edge of your panties so I don't get gunk on 'em."
I did as she requested.
She dipped a spatula into a tub of warm wax and smeared it onto my upper thigh. She laid a strip of gauze over top, patted it down, then yanked it off. My eyes teared slightly at the sting, but it wasn't that bad. "That didn't hurt too much," I said.
She smiled grimly. "Good."
Then she moved in a bit closer to my grotto of love. Once again, the waxy spatula smeared itself onto my hirsute bits. The cloth was patted on, and then my leg and crotch were torn asunder. At least, that's what it felt like, to put it mildly. It was as if the top eight layers had been ripped off me. If Shakespeare had only known about waxing, he would have written it into The Merchant of Venice as a good way to obtain the pound of flesh.
Somehow, I managed not to scream or recoil. Perhaps I am a closeted masochist. I hope not.
Yet I stayed in position as this Torquemama repeated the process even closer to my holiest of holies. This time, my eyes teared up in anticipation. This was really going to hurt, I thought.
I was right.
The process was repeated on the other side. When the waxing was over, I felt both relieved and sore. Unfortunately, she wasn't yet finished. She reached for a pair of tweezers and began methodically tearing out all the survivors of the molten wax blitzkrieg. I'm sure she was pinching me in the process. Although the tweezing didn't have the all-over style of searing pain that the waxing did, it felt like she was grasping below the surface of my skin (catching skin in the process) before yanking.
When it was all through, she said, "How does that look?"
"Great," I said. The Black Forest could have flourished in my lap and I would have told her it looked dandy. The truth is, I once again looked like a freshly scalded and plucked chicken. The skin was red, and bumps showed where all my hairs had been pulled out. My skin was suffering from follicular dry heaves. Later, when I got home, I discovered she had missed several patches, but there was no way I was going back to see her.
Believe it or not, about a month and a half later, I went and did it again at a different salon. This time, the experience was much better. The hair no longer looked like a brillo pad, to begin with, and the yanker-outer-woman was much more experienced. The pain was nowhere near as intense. In fact, it was quite bearable, and although my skin was once again red and swollen afterwards, it looked fine by the evening. Also, she didn't leave any hirsute patches.
The experience was vastly superior to the time I decided to do my own depilation in a place I couldn't actually see. If you ever get the sudden urge to shave your butt cleavage, do not give in to it. It can only lead to a literal pain in the arse. Trust me on this.
Hair has also been a big part of my life as a dancer, and plays an important role in Zar trance rituals.
(To be continued....)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2013-01-26 04:10 pm (UTC)From:WELL DONE.
I can't wait to read the continuation.
Signed,
Another Hairy Girl
no subject
Date: 2013-01-26 10:23 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2013-01-26 10:27 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2013-01-26 10:35 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2013-01-26 10:36 pm (UTC)From:http://shanmonster.livejournal.com/764287.html
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Date: 2013-02-02 07:11 am (UTC)From: