Virgin (11 page)

Silently I handed her my debit card and paid thirty-four pounds for my Hitler moustache. I didn’t say another word to her and barely mumbled “bye” to Yasmin as I escaped from the shop and let the flyer-clad door swing shut behind me. I pulled my phone out from my bag and rang Emma immediately.

“Heya,” she answered. “All ready for the big date?”

“I have an emergency,” I blurted out. “I just went to a salon and got a Playboy Brazilian wax and now my vagina has a tiny Hitler moustache in the middle. The rest of it looks like it has acute chicken pox. Please tell me this is normal.”

“Oh-kaaay. The chicken pox thing is definitely legit—mine always looks gross afterwards but the red dots will disappear soon. But the Hitler thing? I don’t understand, babe. Didn’t you get a normal Brazilian like we discussed?”

“It went wrong,” I wailed. “She told me a Playboy was the best type of Brazilian. And it hurt so badly, and it looks so weird.”

“Okay, calm down. I’m sure it isn’t as bad as you think. Why didn’t you just get them to take the little bit of hair off and have a Hollywood?”

I stopped mid-step. “Fuck. I don’t know. I should have. I can’t go back in though, I just can’t. It was so embarrassing and so gross.”

“Where did you go?” she asked.

“A depressing place in Bloomsbury that was freezing cold and cost thirty-four quid.”

“You should have gone to my salon! It’s cheaper and really nice and— Oh my God, please tell me your beautician used sugar wax?”

“What’s sugar wax?”

“It’s the one where they layer it all over you, and then peel it off at the end. They don’t use strips so it hurts waaaay less.”

“My beautician used strips,” I moaned.

“Oh, Ellie,” she said. “Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. Are you on your way to meet him now?”

I looked down at my Casio watch. “Yep, and obviously I’m early. He’s going to think I’m so keen.”

“Just go hang out in the loos and make yourself look even more beautiful than you already do,” she suggested.

“Okay. Thank you.”

“You’ll be amazing. Good luck!”

My Hair Lady

Everyone knows women have pubes, leg hair and even underarm hair. But we want to focus on the neglected body hair that everyone ignores. The hair that sprouts up in places we never knew the names of until we Googled them frantically to check that we were normal. So, these are places that we have found noticeable body hair growing on our own bodies.

NB: EM is blond so she will never really understand the pain of this as much as EK, who is dark-haired and of Mediterranean origin. However, EM insists that even though her hairs are blond, they are plentiful and long.

Arm hair. Everyone has arm hair and it shouldn’t be a thing, but for some reason, salons have decided it is normal to offer arm waxes and every model is airbrushed to hide her arm hair. EM’s mum even tried to make her wax off her downy forearms so she would look more “feminine” at a family wedding. She refused.

Nipple hair. This is a thing. We both have fine—or even not so fine—hairs growing on our areolae (that’s the name of the outer ring bit). We haven’t checked the biological reason for this but are positive there is a good one.

The snail trail. It’s normal, it’s natural and we all have it. If you can work yours along with all this other hair, we are majorly jealous and admire you.

Toes and finger hair. There was a scene in
Miss Congeniality
that showed Sandra Bullock getting all her digits waxed so she could be transformed into a beauty pageant winner. It was shit. We’re going for the
Little Miss Sunshine
vibe instead.

The ’stache. Both of us have hair on our upper lips. EK used to bleach hers but realized this left a blond downy patch on her face that was still very visible. She now waxes it, as does EM.

Cleavage hair. So, this is a thing we’ve only just discovered on ourselves. Maybe it’s a sign of late puberty (yes, we are in our early twenties), but both of us now have very faint hair down our cleavage. Who knew?

I was in Soho and still had half an hour before meeting Jack. There was a pub nearby so I decided to go inside and use their loos. I ran upstairs, crinkling my nose at the smell of beer-stained carpets, and locked myself in the single loo. I pulled my trousers and underpants down, then froze as I realized my best black lace knickers were stuck to my vagina. I yanked at them, and they tore away from my skin. The lace was still intact and they hadn’t ripped but there were three bluish blobs covered with black fluff on my vagina.

Oh my fucking God. The wax hadn’t all come off on the strips, and it was stuck on my skin along with knicker fluff. I rubbed at it frantically until I realized it had hardened and wasn’t coming off. I needed to use some water, but it was a public bathroom. I couldn’t just rub my vagina next to the sink, could I?

Praying to God no one would walk in, I hobbled to the sink with my knickers and jeans halfway down my legs. I quickly started rubbing away at it with water and a runny pink soap I squirted from the plastic dispenser. The wax went gloopy when it was mixed with the hot water, and it spread across my skin. I had made it worse.

Feeling panicky, I rubbed as hard as I could and then tried to peel it off. The sticky wax caught under my fingernails and I tried to scrape it off with loo roll, but the paper stuck to the skin on my hands and vagina.

I looked at myself in the mirror, bent down with my legs spread open and my hand on my vagina, stuck there with wax and loo roll. This was not how I’d imagined the start of my first ever grown-up date.

The door swung open and a middle-aged woman wearing a brown fur coat stood in the doorway, staring at me in disgust.

My mouth dropped wide open and our eyes met in the mirror. There was a squeal and I looked down and saw the child next to her.

“Mummy,” he asked. “Why is that girl rubbing her front bottom?”

The woman put her manicured hand over the little boy’s eyes and spun him around. She looked at me with something close to revulsion and shook her head slowly.

“You’re disgusting,” she hissed under her breath as she propelled her son out of the bathroom.

I stared at myself in the mirror, wondering how this was my life. I could hear her hushing the boy outside: “Orlando, sweetie, are you feeling okay?”

I snorted. Orlando was five years old and didn’t have a vagina covered in dried wax. He was bloody fine. I, on the other hand, wanted to crawl back into the loo cubicle and never leave.

I stood inside the restaurant, looking nervously for Jack. I had tried to sort out the mess as best as I could, eventually resorting to my Vaseline lip balm and scarf to scratch the wax off. My skin was now raw and had a couple of actual blood spots on it. I ignored the itchy feeling of the lace rubbing against the sore skin and scanned the room.

The restaurant was a tiny little Japanese place with a conveyor belt. I loved sushi but my experience was limited to YO! Sushi with its nice commercial chains and colored plates. This place looked kind of grimy but it had Japanesey plates on the belt and there were loads of Asian people, which could only be a good sign. It still looked like it had pretty low hygiene ratings, though.

I saw Jack sitting on a stool by the belt and I walked over to him. My heart started to beat wildly and the nerves crept up on me. In a way, the wax crisis had been a blessing because it had distracted me from my nerves, but now they were swooping back to me in full force.

I smiled shakily and called out, “Hi,” as I approached him.

“Hey, Ellie,” he said, standing up to give me a hug. “Did you find it okay?”

“Yeah, it was easy, thanks,” I said as I took off my leather jacket and sat on the stool next to his. I awkwardly laid my jacket across my lap as there was nowhere else to put it. It slid off my legs and fell onto the floor.

“I’ll just, um, leave it there,” I said, and kicked it gently against the side of the counter.

“Right. So, how was your week?” he asked.

“Not bad, thanks. Hung out with a friend—you remember Emma, right, my friend from that party? She was back from holiday last night so we ended up having a six-hour coffee. How about you?”

“I’ve never understood how girls can chat for so long,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ve had a quiet week. Just at work, then as much writing as I could during the evenings.”

“That’s so cool you’ve been writing so much. Is it more of the political columns and stuff?”

“I’ve actually started a series of short stories—which aren’t political, for a change.”

I perked up. “Ooh, I love creative writing. What are they like? Can I read some?”

“Sure, I’ll show you one now,” he said, and pulled a Moleskine notepad out of his pocket. I looked at him in surprise.

“You have them with you?” I asked curiously.

“I was writing earlier,” he explained. “You’re welcome to have a read, but shall we order first?”

I took the laminated menu he offered me. We quickly realized sharing dishes wouldn’t work as we wanted totally different things. Relieved that we wouldn’t end up fighting over the last maki, I happily selected my own choices.

“So, can I read it now?”

He grinned. “Okay, but you can’t be cruel. Deal?”

“Deal!”

I picked up his notebook and absentmindedly nibbled on a fried prawn roll from the conveyor belt as I read. It was a six-page story about a young boy playing by a spring and enjoying nature. It was Wordsworth-meets-Enid Blyton, and it was the exact opposite of what I had expected him to write.

“Wow, Jack,” I said. “I had absolutely no idea you could write about things like this. I’m so surprised. It’s not at all political—unless the whole thing is a metaphor and I’ve completely missed the point of it?”

“Don’t worry; there’s nothing political in there at all. It’s all just memories. So did you like it? What do you think of the writing?”

I hesitated. I had enjoyed reading it but parts of it were a bit clichéd. The line
drops of dew hanging off his lashes
hovered in my mind. I decided to be honest. “I really liked it, Jack. It’s well-written and it’s . . . it’s calming. It makes me think of . . . childhood. There’s a couple of lines I would change but on the whole I like it.”

His face broke out into a beam and he looked so hopeful and sweet that I felt a rush of affection for him. “Thanks, yeah, that’s exactly what I was going for,” he said enthusiastically. “It’s supposed to be kind of lyrical. I don’t know—I just thought I’d do something different and take a break from the political satires. This is a bit out of my comfort zone.”

“I think it’s really good you’re trying new stuff, and that you have all these ideas. It took me almost three years of university to get my act together and apply to write for the magazine.”

“Oh shit, I forgot to ask—did you get the columnist position?”

I sighed. “I still haven’t heard back. They said they’d let us know by the end of the week so I guess I haven’t got it.”

He squeezed my arm and I smiled at him from over my sashimi. “You never know, they might still give it to you,” he said. “And even if they don’t, I’m sure you’ll find something else.”

“Yeah, maybe I will,” I said. “I applied for a bunch of internships so hopefully one of them will reply at some point.”

“Hey, get you,” he said, looking genuinely impressed.

I was enjoyed his admiration. I took it a step further. “And I kind of started an anonymous blog with my friend.”

“Tell me more.”

Shit. I couldn’t really tell him any more without giving away that I was a virgin who spent a lot of time freaking out about vaginas. “Um, it’s kind of just about womensy things. Strictly girl stuff.”

“You’re not really selling it to me here, Ellie.”

I laughed. “Yeah, there’s a reason I prefer writing to speaking. I’m not so good with the latter.”

“Ah, I don’t know, I think you’re doing pretty well,” he said, looking straight into my eyes.

His eyes were so green I was momentarily distracted from the fact that he was flirting with me. I closed my mouth and pulled myself back to reality.

“Um, thanks,” I said. Damn, that wasn’t the come-hither response I’d been aiming for.

He grinned. “But, if you’re done with talking, I know something else we can do instead . . .” My eyes widened and I stared at him. Oh my God, sex. He was about to invite me back to his place and I hadn’t even finished my sashimi. “Drinking. Do you fancy a couple of pints?”