Things I’m tired of in no particular order: Gangnam style, mainland people stopping at the top of escalators, people saying “so busy” when you ask how they are, waiting for drinks at bars, drunk people telling you how drunk they are, inane stories about soccer, rugby or cricket, and complaints about beautifying yourself from both men and women. I want to focus on the last one.
Beauty is hard. If it were easy, everyone would be beautiful. Most of it is genetics, but then there are the controllable factors—how fit your body is, how manicured you are, the quality of your skin (give or take 20 percent), teeth whiteness and straightness, and clothing. Women have it worse in a general societal sense as they’re expected to wear makeup and look fabulous and not sweat and never get old. It’s a bit worrisome that plastic surgery may one day become the new normal and people without stretched skin will be frowned upon. For now we can take comfort and consternation in the expectation to be fit, put together and tweezed and waxed accordingly.
The two pains women describe to me as terrible are waxing and childbirth, which always makes me smile because I imagine a baby with a hairline mustache being waxed as the doctor cuts the umbilical cord. There is no commonly accepted male pain except passing a kidney stone, though I’d venture that having one’s arm wrenched from its socket is up there (this happened to me a few months ago). Now, despite what old Schwarzenegger movies tell me, I can’t bear a child, so to really test out the pain theory I’m only left with one option. And I’m not getting my legs waxed because that’s weird so my only option would be... dun dun dun!
Yes, I embraced my inner metrosexual and went for it: the dreaded boyzillian, where everything down there is taken off. And I mean everything.
I signed up at Nude (68-70 Wellington Street) where I was informed that this would be simple and generally painless, which I believed about as much as a speaker at a conference saying “I’m going to keep this short.” They weren’t sure of the availability, so I was ready to wait a few days, but then the phone rang telling me to come in an hour. My heart sank and testicles rose—I’m a guy, hair is de rigueur, and to have someone pour hot wax on your scrotum is as much fun as dental work. Dental work for your balls. I headed to the salon assuming I had had a very terrible idea.
You know how this story should go since it’s been written many times since waxing became a thing: guy is a guy. Guy loses a bet or has some other makeshift excuse. Guy gets a waxing and OMFG it hurts a lot and it’s scary. Guy then learns something about himself. You all giggle at his misfortune. This is not one of those stories.