UrbanUpdate

I hate grooming my pubic hair. Wait, no. Come back, ladies. I do groom it, but it’s always a fraught process that includes clippers and razors and a giant fear of cutting myself. Plus, there are all the questions. _How cleared out should it be? If you have a lot of leg hair, where is the line where you should stop shaving? How about a happy trail—is that something to be kept or gotten rid of? We have barbers for these sorts of decisions on our head, why not down below? _At least, those were my thoughts when I decided I’d get my balls wad for this great website. But let’s back up a little bit.

Like most crises of confidence, this one occurred in the West Hollywood International House of Pancakes. I was an hour away from an appointment to get my Downtown Julie Brown and the MTV VJs cleaned up, and I was regretting ever bringing this dumb idea to my editor. So all I had to do was call and cancel. Last-minute cancellations suck, but having hot wax slathered on your balls and then peeled off probably sucks a lot more, I thought. But then I couldn’t get ahold of the place. Shit. Their phone kept going to voicemail, and the website I booked the appointment through didn’t have a cancellation option. Shit, shit, shit. I couldn’t just not show up without warning. My Midwest upbringing wouldn’t allow it. But what were my choices? I could go and have my pubic hair, which to be honest has always been good to me, be forcibly stolen from my body—or I could be rude and maybe, as punishment, incur a slight cancellation fee.

Fucking Midwest upbringing.

When I got to My Little Wax Bar I was edgy. The appointment I had booked was for the "Men’s Brazilian," and the fact that it was so formally named and not called the "Bro-zilian" or something did not put me at ease. Also not putting me at ease was the fact that the office is located in a small, quaint house in West Hollywood. Sure, other people might find that cute, but to me it looked like the type of place where murders happen in Stephen King books. "Oh really? It was the innkeeper who did it? But their bed-and-breakfast was so cute!"

But then I met my pubic ecutioner, Lacey Shaver. (Yes that is her real name and yes it is glorious.) Lacey had me in the full Winnie the Pooh (shirt on, naked below the waist), up on the table, and at relative ease within moments. I mean, I wasn’t, like, "ready to take a nap" comfortable. There were big pots (vats? cauldrons?) of hot wax ominously bubbling and about to be used to do unspeakable things to my body nearby. But regardless, Lacey is a pro. She instantly made me feel we were old friends. Old friends who occasionally engage in an old-fashioned dick-looking-at contest, but old friends nonetheless.

She started by asking me what I was looking for. I had signed up for the Brazilian, but I didn’t think I wanted hardwood floors. I have a decent amount of leg hair and some hair on my chest, so I didn’t want my body to be covered in hair except for a LAND THAT PUBERTY FORGOT-like zone. She reassured me that most people didn’t want that sort of thing (go figure) and we would trim up the top but use the wax on the ball-taint-ass highway. She sounded like she knew what she was doing and so she grabbed my dick and a pair of scissors and began trimming. By the way, typing the phrase "she grabbed my dick and a pair of scissors" sent chills down my spine, but in the moment I was surprisingly comfortable.

Lacey broke the ice ("broke the ice" is a relative term when someone is disinterestedly holding your penis, but still) by telling me most of her male clients (and most of her clients are men) have three concerns coming in for the first time. 1. Will it hurt? (Check) 2. Will they get aroused? (Semi-check.) 3. Penis size. (Nah, whatever.) At this point, I was about to get my answer to question number one, because we were done with the trim and it was time for the wax...

Let me just say, I have a newfound respect for women. Holy motherfucking shit. People always talk about how women are tougher than men because of child birth, and sure, that’s true. But the bar to win that argument should be set much, much lower. Like say at getting their genitals wad frequently, because MOTHERFUAFHCADFJIADJFIAFJKOAKFOQJ... It hurts. There’s no getting around that. But shockingly, once you get past the wax being ripped off Dick Nixon himself, which if I’m being honest made me question my belief in a higher power (I’m sorry Vince Gilligan, my faith will not shake again), it actually gets easier. Balls and butt and everything in between was surprisingly comfortable and truthfully the whole thing was over quickly. I was a human weather vane for no more than thirty minutes.

Once I was done, I was ready to come back and report that overall the process wasn’t as scary as I thought, but probably wasn’t worth it, either. But then something crazy happened. As I walked around, I realized how comfortable I felt. It’s not like I had pounds of hair down there before. I wasn’t smuggling a pair of Gremlins or anything. I kept things pretty trimmed up, but still this was better. Lighter. It was almost airy. I realized that in four to six weeks when the time came, I would be going back to that little house and disrobing once more. I was a convert.

I’m not saying having your balls wad is the greatest thing on the planet. It’s definitely not, so long as pink Starbursts and Olive Garden breadsticks survive. But I am saying that if you find yourself in Los Angeles, you should look up the brilliantly named Lacey Shaver and let her do her thing to your thing.

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