Dear Guy Who Scheduled My Accidental Brazilian,

Sadly, my intimate grooming had been neglected over the Midwestern winter. When I noticed that my pubic hair was creeping like kudzu up my belly and down the insides of my thighs, I decided it was time for professional intervention. After all, I had a vacation planned soon and preferred not to spend the entire time concerned about the state of my bikini line or sneaking a furtive crotch scratch once the inevitable red welts appear three days after shaving. Thus my call to you.

I confess that I was somewhat disconcerted to hear a young man’s voice when I called. I am not a regular consumer of spa services, and am a little uncomfortable discussing my private grooming needs with a stranger, let alone a male stranger. But I am a grown woman, so I persevered.

When I asked for an appointment for a bikini wax, I thought I was making a simple enough request, but you seemed nonplussed.

“You mean a Brazilian?”

“Noooo, not a Brazilian. Just a bikini wax.”

I resisted the urge to shout this into the receiver. Your experiences with 20-something girls notwithstanding, not all women want to look like porn stars or ten-year-olds. Many of us like having pubic hair. We just don’t want everyone at the pool to see it.

“NOT a Brazilian,” I clarified.

“Um. Okay.”

It seemed to take you an awfully long while and an inordinate amount of clicking around before you were finally able to come up with and confirm a time an hour hence. I wondered if you were Tweeting to your friends about my grooming plans or updating your Facebook status to announce that you were speaking to some woman who did not want her lady parts snatched bald.

At any rate, when I arrived, I hid my mortification at having to talk to a young man about the status of my genitalia and said that I was the person who had called recently. You introduced me to Jeanette, a big boned gal with a loud voice and clinically cheerful demeanor.

“Well, come on back honey; we’ll get you all taken care of.”

Now, GWSMAB, perhaps you cannot appreciate how delicate a procedure a bikini wax can be. When a person you’ve never met before asks you to “strip from the waist down and hop up on that table” about as matter-of-factly as a dental hygienist asks you to open up just a little wider, you don’t really ask questions. And when they start to spread hot wax on your upper thighs, you remind yourself that you signed on for this and that it will be over quickly. And when you suddenly feel the hot wax in places you had not bargained for—places that only your husband and gynecologist dare to venture—you think maybe you’re imagining things. Like that perhaps the heat is merely radiating from proximate locales or that there’s no way Jeanette is going to…

“WHAT THE FUCK, YOU SADISTIC, SATAN’S-SPERM-BELCHING HARPY?!?!?!?”

Fortunately, I did not scream those words. I opened my mouth to do so, but only a small, startled gasp escaped. Jeanette prattled along and continued to put wax in unspeakable places, continued cheerfully ripping the benign looking fabric strips off with a rapidity and efficiency that both fascinated and horrified me. Having boarded the wrong train, there was nothing to do but wait for the next stop, when she said, “There, honey. All done. It always hurts worst the first time of the season, but don’t worry. It always gets better.”

I must have muttered something in reply as I sat up and looked at my angry, red, and unrecognizable pudendum. I somehow managed to dress and stumble out to the reception area, where you and your glasses informed me that I owed 55 motherfucking dollars for having been violated on a table by a stranger. When I reminded you that I had been told on the phone that it would be $35, you said (and I am trembling with rage as I remind you of this):

“Oh no. That’s for a regular wax. The computer says you scheduled a Brazilian. That’s $55. Would you like to add a tip?”

The computer said so? Really? Your computer is a lying bastard. Your fuck up cost me twenty extra bucks, every last shred of my dignity, and any feminist cred I’d ever managed to accumulate. At the time, the best I could do was to angrily mutter, ‘No. No tip.’

So please, take my advice and find a job more suited to your extremely limited capabilities and perhaps more in keeping with your vacuous world view.

Sincerely,
Kate Geiselman