On the count of three, hold your breath …
“WHERE ARE YOU GOING? Is it for tomorrow? Do you need help? I’ll come, and we can take my car, okay?” Brielle says while grabbing her coat.
“Uh, I—I don’t need any help with this errand. You should probably see if Logan needs any help with collating the papers he’s printing off.”
Her arm drops to her side, coat and all. “You’re asking me to go help our temp? I knew it. I’m out. This is why you have a temp. You’re trying to replace me. Why wouldn’t you just tell me the truth, and why would you want to replace me with yet another penis around here?”
I reach forward and grab her shoulder. “Will you relax? I’m not trying to replace you. On the contrary, I have recommended you for a promotion, which is why I’ve been weeding through temps.”
“Oh my God,” she says with a gasp. “Are you serious?” You’d think I just told her she won a million dollars. “What’s the position?”
“Marketing Manager 1. I think you have potential … to do a good job.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” She looks entirely too confused to make me think suggesting her for the job was a good decision.
“Did you finish the call list for the expo?” I ask her.
“Actually, yes. When you were out sick last week, I stayed late and finished it up.” Maybe I stand corrected.
“What about the website updates I sent you last week?”
“Done.”
“Well, then I guess I made the right choice,” I tell her as I try to sneak by, attempting to avoid her offer to tag along.
“Wait, I’m still going to come with you.” Did she miss the whole part where I told her to help Logan?
“I’m fine, really. I just need to get this done and come back.”
“Get what done?” she questions.
I close my eyes and scratch my forehead. “Could I please just sneak out for a few minutes?”
Brielle slips her coat on and follows me out the door. “I’m still your assistant, which means whatever you’re doing, I can somehow help, I’m sure.”
Once we’re outside of the office, and in the elevator, I look at her and shake my head. “I’m going to get a quick wax. I’m not sure I need assistance with that.”
“Hell yeah, you do,” she says.
“I’m pretty sure I can walk in and lie down on a table without help.”
“What kind of wax are you getting?”
“A regular one?” I raise a brow at her, wondering why she cares what kind of wax job I’m getting.
“No, I mean, are you getting an all-American bikini touch up, a full bikini, a French wax with a landing strip, a Brazilian wax with a triangle trim, a Brazilian with a deserted island, a love heart, or just a full-blown Hollywood glow?”
I’m staring straight ahead, watching the buttons light up one by one as my body becomes cold. She has to be kidding. There can’t be that many options. The last time I got waxed, I simply requested a bikini wax, but now there are evidently quite a few more options. How could so much have changed during the last ten years of not caring about my hairstyle down yonder? “Um, I hadn’t really thought of it.”
“Well, what do you think Batman likes?”
“Uh—”
“Wait, wait, wait.” She’s waving her hands in front of her face as the elevator doors open. “How did you know about his flat tire unless you guys … I thought you had already rounded those bases … if you know what I mean?” She makes this throaty sound in her voice as she talks about bases as if we’re in high school, or like it’s a secret she’s trying to be inconspicuous about.
“Brielle!” I snap.
“What? You’re the one who texted me about the flat tire. What was I supposed to assume?”
I decide not to say another word until we’re out the main doors, walking through a heavy, wet snow that has accumulated a half inch since I arrived at work this morning. “He started to … you know, but then I remembered I hadn’t gotten waxed, so I changed things up.”
“Oh, so you did bang him?” I love how she sounds relieved to think that was the case.
“Why are you so invested in me getting nailed by Logan?”
Her car lights flash in front of us as she unlocks the door. Failing to offer a reply to my question, she scurries through the snow in her heels, while trying to skip between the snowflakes so her hair doesn’t get wet. I make my way around her little red sports car and slip inside. I know how she feels about my mom-van, but it’s probably a hell of a lot safer in snow and ice. Thankfully, this place is just two blocks away.
“It’s not that I’m invested in you and Batman putting the p in the v, but let’s be honest with ourselves. It’s been well over a year since you’ve had your butter churned, and Logan looks like David Beckham with salt and pepper hair. He’s hot, Hannah. These opportunities don’t just come around all the time after you’re thirty. You know that.”
If I haven’t already gotten in trouble for molesting the temp, I wonder if I would get in trouble for slapping my assistant. “Thanks for your honesty …, and how the hell would you know what ‘opportunities’ women over thirty get?” I snap back.
“Whoa, I’m just assuming. Geez …” she rebuts. Even though she doesn’t know how hard it really is to find a single, hot man in his thirties, it is, and it’s nice to have someone like Logan interested in me. I’m still not sure why he is, but I guess a lack of self-confidence can cause beer-goggles, or a willingness to settle for a downgrade.
“Plus, why do you think I’m about to go through the pain of having every hair torn off my lady bits? Just for fun? No.”
“Oh, so you have decided to go with the Hollywood glow?”
“What does that even mean?”
“Hair or bare, duh,” she says, playfully.
“Like, completely bare?” I question.
“Don’t you watch porn?”
I laugh because I think she’s kidding, but I’m quick to see she is not. “No, Brielle, I have a five-year-old, which doesn’t leave me a lot of time to watch porn.”
“So, you don’t … you know, make yourself happy?”
“This conversation is so not appropriate to be having with my assistant.”
“Which means you don’t,” she says, dryly, while pulling into the spa’s parking lot.
“Brielle, I make myself happy.”
“With a vibe, your hand, shower hose, or another kind of household object?”
“Please stop.” Another household object? I’d have to throw it away after. I’d rather not think about people using household products. You just never know what you’re touching in someone else’s house, I guess. I’m going to be thinking twice before I touch anyone else’s salt and pepper shakers from now on, though.
“Ah, you’re a handy girl. There’s nothing wrong with that. You do vibe though, right?”
I groan because I’m not answering these questions. “Do you order yours from Amazon because I’ve wondered where they came from and who has touched them before me, but I suppose I’d wonder that no matter where I buy it. I always give it a good rinse first. You do that too, right?”
“Stop.”
I continue pushing away the subject as she pulls into a parking spot. “Does yours have a name?”
“Please don’t go there,” I tell her. If she can’t hear the pleading in my voice, she’s either deaf or doesn’t care.
“Mine is Eggerman,” she says with a smile, like she’s in love with the thing.
“What the hell? Why Eggerman?”
“Well, it’s kind of in the shape of an egg, and I like eggplants, and men, so, it just fits, you know?”
“That’s insane, Brielle.”
“No, it’s not. It’s completely normal to name your vibe. One of my friends I went to college with had one named Shermanator. Honestly, that’s the best vibe name in the entire world.”
“Shermanator? Like, from American Pie?” I laugh because that’s creative. I’ll give her that. I can’t remember the quote exactly, but I remember Sherman calling himself some kind of sex god.
“Yes, like American Pie. So, you have one, right?”
I open the door. “Yes, Brielle, I have one, plus some others. I’m single and lonely as hell. Give me a break, will you?”
She steps out of the car too and meets me out front on the curb. “Okay, well you’ll feel a lot closer to whichever is your favorite if you give it a name. What color is the one you use the most?”
I open the door to the spa and walk in, trying to brush her off my shoulder. “Good afternoon,” an older woman at the front desk greets me. “How can I help you today?”
“She needs a Hollywood glow, stat,” Brielle speaks for me. The thought of going completely bare makes me cringe, but maybe that’s what Logan likes. He’s probably been with a lot of women. Well, before the incident. Hopefully, he didn’t catch a peek at my current situation. I think I stopped that in time.
“Follow me,” the woman says.
I unbutton my coat, slip it off, and hand it to Brielle. “Thanks.”
“Enjoy!” Screw you.
“Please take off everything from the waist down. Here is a sheet you can cover yourself with.”
“Thank you, I’ll just be a minute,” I tell her. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a spa where a seventy-year-old woman is a waxer. She must think I’m a whore, unless this is the treatment women commonly request.
“Oh, do you want your friend to come in and hold your hand?” the woman asks as if it’s a normal thing to do.
“Oh, no, no, no, thank you. I’m more of a modest type of gal.”
The woman’s eyebrows rise about a half inch. “Modest, huh? Well, you won’t want to be very modest when I’m through with you.” She winks. She just winked at me. Oh God, she winked, and she’s about to strip me clean. What the hell! “My name is Mary, in case you need anything.” She offers me a cute, wrinkly smile before leaving me alone in this quaint, relaxing room with soothing music before I’m massacred. The irony.
I take off my pants and panties and pile them up on the stool in the corner of the room. Oh, this is just lovely. It’s like I’m at the OB, but this is going to be way worse, I suspect.
I climb up on the table and wrap the thin sheet around my bottom half. “I’m ready, Mary,” I shout.
I hear Brielle laughing hysterically in the hall, and it stresses me out. I just want to get this over with, and she’s out there chatting this woman up. This is why I wanted to come alone.
Mary re-enters the room and takes a pair of knitting-circle-like eyeglasses off the prepping counter and slides them on. “My eyes aren’t what they used to be, and I need to see what I’m doing. Don’t want to wax the wrong part off!” she says with a hoarse laugh.
She finds that funny? “Wait.” I push up on my elbows. “Is that possible? Can fragile parts be torn off?” Like Logan’s ball. I guess it wasn’t torn off, but things are delicate down there. “Is there any danger to this?”
“Oh, no, dear. That’s just a little esthetician humor.” Fabulous. How nice to be in the company of an old, funny pube-snatcher.
I lay back down and hear her gloves snap into place. “I’ll be quick, honey. Don’t worry.”
“Thank you.” But I am worried.
The hot wax is spread in a thick coat down one side of my lady bits, and I close my eyes in preparation for the next steps. The cloth adheres with the assistance of the lady’s palm, which is so weird. There’s an old lady’s hand on my crotch. I’m going to be traumatized when I leave here. “Your friend told me to remind you about figuring out a name for your vibrator. I think it will be a great distraction,” she says.
I’m going to kill Brielle.
The first rip comes, and I feel the need to scream a line of obscenities at old lady Mary, but I bite my lip instead.
The next layer is applied, and I do what she suggested and begin the consideration of vibrator names. The cloth is on, and I’m trying to think. Think, Hannah. Think. Muffin-beater? Ow, mothertrucking ow. Ow. Camel-pole? No, that’s weird. Ummm, oh, Mr. Wiggles! No, no no, no. Oh, there’s wax all the way in there. “Oh my, I might need two rounds on this section, so I’m sorry in advance,” Mary says, interrupting my train of thought.
Am I abnormal or something? Why act surprised? It’s a vagina, lady. Come on. It’s perfectly normal. That’s what you’re supposed to tell me. Maybe I should name the vibrator Norm? Norm is good. No, Norm isn’t good. Why am I even thinking about this? Why am I doing this? Holy mother of—no, that feels like it was a part of my body that should still be there.
I’m doing this because of Logan, the Beefcake Batman. All this pain for a man. Well, if that’s the case, I might as well name my vibrator after him. Batman, it is. I’ve made a decision.
Shittttttt.
“This is the worst part, so just think about whatever name you’ve come up with. Ready?”
There? She’s putting wax there? Why the hell would she be putting wax— “Mothertrucking, Batman, nooooo!”
“I’m sorry, dear, but we’re all done now.”
“No, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to scream at you.” I am humiliated. I can’t believe I just screamed that out loud, and I’m sure Brielle heard.
“Oh, trust me, I’ve heard far worse.”
“Let me just clean you up really quick. You might be a little puffy for a few hours, but you should be ready to get on that saddle by night time.” I hate myself. I hate everything about this hour of my life. Why did I think this was a good idea? I feel like my vagina is on fire, and her little dabs from a wet wipe are doing nothing to soothe the burning sensation, nor did she hit every forsaken area. Whatever, I need to get the hell out of here, now.
“You know, we do have a laser option available. It may be something you want to consider in the future.” I would probably laugh if I wasn’t trying so hard not to cry, but I don’t think I could ever lie on a bed like this again and ask for a repeat of what just happened I feel somehow violated, like the last of my remaining innocence was just stolen by Mary.
“Thank you, I’ll take that into consideration.”
“Take your time getting dressed, and I’ll meet you out front.”
I sit up, and it burns. Shit, does it burn! I swing my legs off the side of the table, and it burns. I stand up, and it burns. I’m burning inside and out, my asshole too. I’m on fire. I need to sit on ice. I need to kill Brielle. If slapping doesn’t get me fired, killing her sure as hell will. Why would someone intentionally get this done more than once? Every bottle of body wax I’ve ever purchased explicitly says it should be used on the outside of the body only. Wax should not be anywhere near the inside of my body, yet there it was, all the way up there, and back there, and up and back there. I have been mutilated. When that hair grows back, I’m going to feel like I’m being stabbed by a thousand tiny needles all at one time, and God knows how many days in a row that will last.
It hurts to lift my legs. Everything hurts so badly. I now have a name for my vibrator, but I don’t think I can get near myself with Batman, never mind Logan’s Batman. I’m going to need to tell him I have a sunken ship inside of chapped lips.