Stuck on You

So clearly, Howard and I cannot be trusted to be alone together.

DS was away this weekend, and the weather threatened to housebound everyone. Weather folk everywhere warned of below-zero air temperatures and death-experience wind chills. I heard it all week: Don’t go out: it’s not safe. Find something to do indoors.

Everyone who read my last post knows that Howard and I don’t dare do anything indoors when we’re without DS. Clearly something happens to the air in our home that renders us incapable of logic, decision-making or sense. I wanted to take down the jungle gym in the basement to make room for more exercise equipment, but where to store it? Even the garage was too cold to attempt.

Ditto my desire to ‘freecycle’ the dresser, queen bed, train table and anything of Howard’s I could coax out of the house and on to the lawn. There would be no rain or snow, so the equipment would be ‘safe’ for garbage pickers to nab. But who would dare go trolling for freebies during Tundra Sunday? We needed more options. Painting was out—obviously. Cleaning was done, and anyway, I was not in the mood. I’m PMSing big time, and if I even lift a dust rag during these days, I start screaming. Must try something else.

In the end, Howard and I did our usual go-round of errands. We froze, and since we opted for sushi at lunch, we starved, but we got all the running done by 4pm on Saturday. Howard made stew, we watched a movie, and all was well.

Then suddenly it was 6pm, there was no DS to entertain us, and no chance of doing anything outdoors. What to do, what to do…..ah! I’ve got it! Remember that dumbass idea we had where we’d wax all the hair off of Howard’s body, even though we have no equipment and no knowledge of the process? Yeah! Let’s do that!

Sometime last summer, in a discussion that defies any attempt to translate out of Married CoupleSpeak, Howard and I decided to shave his back. It looked so good, we shaved his chest, and he went around all bare and proud until his pokey stubble stabbed me one night in bed and then the regrowth itched Howard so badly, he started looking like a cartoon dog with fleas.

We shaved again, and then again & again, wearing down the blade on his hair clippers, each time trying to get closer to the skin. I nicked him every time, and he bled every time. I was lucky enough that I never snagged anything ‘precious’, shall we say, but still, blood is blood, and anyway, the stupid stuff kept growing back.

We talked about sending him out for a professional ‘wax on/wax off’, but the only spas who do that are in BoysTown, in the city, and we worried about the exact meaning of ‘Full Monty with Surprise’. We toyed around with it a bit each time I mowed his chest, nightmares of “The Wall” and all form of silent-era Horror film flashing before me. Could we do something else? Well sure; we could Nair the poor man’s whole body, but we feared we might never get the smell out of the bathroom. We could do laser removal or electrolysis, but dang that hurts, and anyway, if ‘Buff Chest’ costs $240, what in heaven’s name would a de-seeding run? No, no. There had to be something more civilized than Rocky Horror to fix this.

Waxing it is. Howard and I dutifully strode our ignorant selves into Sally Beauty Supply, picked up the Microwave Waxing kit, an extra box of muslin strips and off we went. We got home, Howard de-shirted and I plopped the coffee mug-like wax container into the microwave. Thirty seconds on high, apply evenly to the skin, lay the muslin strip over, pull in opposite direction. Voila! No more hair, and no more shaving. Easy stuff, awesome results.

I guess we should have listened when the clerk at Sally Beauty tried to warn us. “You understand this hurts,” she said, her eyes on Howard. He nodded, eyeing a bottle of skin numbing solution. “Yes, I know.”

“No, listen,” she said, her voice emphatic. “This really, really hurts.”

Howard looked up from his topical Novocain. “Okay,” he said. The enthusiasm had drained, but the resolve remained. “We really want to try it.”

Now I can’t verify this, of course, but I’m pretty sure that woman is still laughing at us. I’m certain because I can virtually guarantee that she heard Howard screaming all the way from Wheaton.

We really did think we had everything under control. We were like the parents in Bill Cosby’s famous childbirth routine. We were intellectuals. When we want to know something, we read a book. Well, Howard and I were clearly uber-intellectuals this time, because we opted out of the book, the magazine, the pamphlet and even the internet. When it came right down to it, we consulted exactly two things: the 3-line directions on the wax mug and each other.

Lord, here comes the flood.

First of all, the substance in the mug is not wax so much as it is glue. Stringy, sticky impossible-to-regulate glue that sticks to everything. It took me a full 5 minutes to detach the stirring stick from the mug, and then I carried a violin-like bevy of strings across the table to Howard’s back. The strings dutifully followed gravity, settling in Howard’s beard, hair and neck. I tried to whack them away, and now one of the cats has a honey-colored beauty mark on his ear. I worried for a moment he’d try to clean it off and then his paw would affix to his head, rendering him 3-legged. Luckily it landed on the fat cat who has decided he likes it.

I ladled the wax down on Howard, careful not to overload the area. I pressed the muslin in, rubbed it exactly the way Line #2 instructed me, and then I paused. How long to leave the wax on? If it’s too quick, it won’t pull up the hair. If I wait too long, the whole thing will fuse to Howard’s back and he’ll have a 3-D tattoo flapping up from beneath his shirt collar. I waited about a minute and then decided to take the plunge. I grabbed the end of the muslin and yanked.

Ok, oops! Probably should have told Howard I was going to do that.

Howard flinched, tensed, went into cardiac arrest, and then said in his characteristic calm. “Wow. That hurts.” He paused, gulped for air and then turned back toward me. “How does it look?”

I eyed the spot. “It looks great,” I admitted. “Really nice.”

I could tell Howard was wishing for another answer. “How many more strips do you think you’ll need to do my whole back?”

I did a quick geometry problem and added a few to cover myself. “Maybe 12,” I said. “At the most.”

“Okay, keep going.”

Raging Morons Take Two

I never got a clean strip after that. Plus, I ignored Line 3 of the directions, which told me most firmly NOT to wax over an area that had been previously waxed. In trying for a smooth finish, I wound up layering wax upon wax upon matted back hair until Howard’s midsection was covered in praline-like blobs. I did 2 or 3 more strips before Howard remembered that we’d forgotten to get a skin numbing salve. It was too late to go out now, so Howard opted to self-medicate and brought out his 18-year old scotch.

Good call. If Howard had a little, he’d mind the pain less. If he had a little more, I’d get a contact high and I could relax a bit. And if things got really out of hand, we could pour it on to his now bleeding back in hopes of staving off an infection.

We worked about 8 strips and half his back before we gave up. I couldn’t find a clean spot to land a strip, Howard was in a perpetual state of goose bump and he was tipsy enough that he wouldn’t hold still. I had switched to latex gloves after 2 pairs of my fingers fused together and no amount of scrubbing would undo them.

Glue on my gloves, glue on the table, and now I’m not sure that Howard can get up off the chair. I closed everything up and sent him to the shower. “Put the water on as hot as you can stand it. Try to melt the wax off.”

Howard pelted himself with too-hot water until his legs blistered, but the pralines remained. We wound up scrubbing his back with a pumice stone. We got a bunch off, but he still stuck to his t-shirt, and I’m pretty sure he got a second-degree burn from the water.

I took a look this morning, and it’s just awful. He looks like one of those stray dogs in mid-season, whose part-shedding, part-dogfight-torn coat is just hanging off of him. I looked up the spas again and found a few ‘instructional videos’ on how to wax properly. They were all women ‘models’, and there wasn’t anything more complicated than a leg wax, but everyone appeared calm. I kept my eyes on the lady getting leg waxed and she didn’t even blink when the muslin came off.

Howard and I talked it through, as intellectuals will do, and decided to try it again. I would attempt my newly honed skills, we would return to Sally for numbing solution, and a wax remover, and we would prevail.

Seriously Stupid III: The Rip Tide

Once again, the first strip yielded perfect results. I numbed the skin, slid the wax over the area and pulled (with warning!), revealing a clean, clear space. But then the pralines came back, and then DS came home, and every time I would pull a strip, DS would turn away from his game to ask me, “Mommy, is Rosen all right?” After the third post-DS strip, when he asked me, “Mommy, what are you doing to Rosen?” I gave up. Wax off, no coda, el fin.

Oh, and of course we forgot to get the wax remover, so Howard took a bath this time, careful not to overfill the tub, so in case he got stuck to the bottom, he wouldn’t drown.

Howard insists he’s glad of the experience, and suggested that professional equipment is better than the at-home variety. Likely, and of course they’re all licensed, but still, my god! It’s not surgery (though I’m sure it felt like it to Howard). It’s wax and hair. It’s simple physics. An object at rest remains at rest unless disturbed by some external sticky stuff. Seriously, how could this have gone so wrong?

Coulda been the whisky….Maybe, but where’s my excuse? Howard behaved like a girl in this, and I mean that in the very best sense. He could have shrieked and yelled and cursed (as I was), and rolled around in the pain. But he didn’t. He barely lauded more than the occasional, “mother of god!” and I’m pretty sure there was only one four-letter expletive all night, and that was during the pumice-me-the-moon phase. He stood up to the pain and then he sat down and let me do it to him again today. I applaud his patience, his resolve, and his Zen.

I also made him an appointment with the BoysTown Wax Capades. After all, the little bits I see are sexy, and I want to see him when it’s all done right. When it comes to doing something like this, Howard needs a pro, at least the first time. He has strict instructions to watch how the Muslin Fairy layers, ladles and rips his chest, so I can do the same, Heterosexual Style, after he gets home.

A the W(axing and Wailing)