it belongs in your candles and your ears

Once upon a time--okay, last summer--I bought a hot towel cabi from purespadirect.com. The hilarious thing about this (aside from the the instructions for the actual cabi, which were so badly translated from the Chinese as to be a work of art all on their own self) was that they required one to produce a massage therapy or aesthetician license number in order to make a purchase. The idea being, I guess, to protect themselves from liability should an amateur scald, or otherwise injure, someone with one of their products. If you only knew how much trial and error was involved in my learning to get the towels just right this would be even more funny. (The last time Mr Barma protested the temperature of a towel I was putting on him, I told him I thought he was a manly man, and that he should just suck it up. Geez.) But, anyway, now that I am on their customer list, purespadirect of course sends me email trying to sell me stuff. This morning's email was pimping something I am definitely not qualified to operate. That would be a "wax trial kit" with four different types of wax and spatulas and gauze, the whole shebang.

Ah, this is definitely the kind of thing one should, if one is not stoopid, leave to the professional aestheticians in the house. Lemme tell you my experience with at home waxing. But first I should preface it by saying that several years ago, at a time when I had, apparently, more money than brains, I got a few consecutive bikini waxes from a nice Eastern European woman at a swanky salon. She had her own theories, which she was happy to expound on. She told me that some of her clients would ask her to do small areas at a time, but she would dissuade them. She preferred to do the largest strips feasibly possible. This, she felt, did not draw out the agony. I deferred to her professional judgment and found that, yes, she would get everything done quickly, efficiently, and with as little discomfort as one could reasonably expect. Because, y'know, ripping the hair out of your groin by the roots is not going to ever be pain-free. You do the math. But she certainly made it as pleasant as it might be.

Nevertheless, I eventually realized I was spending a whole lot of money for something the vast, vast majority of the world was never going to see, and that that money could be better spent elsewhere. And having watched a consummate professional and her technique a number of times, I got the "bright" idea I could do it myself. So I took myself off to Sephora where I purchased a Poetic Wax kit from Bliss. The wax itself was an alarming bright blue color, all the better to see against your skin, no matter what race or nationality you might be. Other than, I guess, "smurf." The idea was to warm up this wax, apply it with the spatula thingy and then pull off in the direction of the hair growth. Having watched how the nice European lady, held *here* and pulled *there*, I thought I had it all under control.

Until I pulled off the first strip. I could reproduce for you the string of obscenities I yelled whilst sitting on my bathroom floor, but I'm sure you get the idea. I took some hair off, all right. Also the top layer of skin. And now I had, oh my goodness, a whole bunch of hardened blue wax clumped on delicate areas of my flesh that wasn't going *anywhere* unless I ripped. And I couldn't bring myself to rip even a second time, nevermind a third, fourth, and fifth, etc etc amen.

I think the PTSD I experienced from this incident has kept me from remembering exactly how I got all that wax out, but I believe it involved futile attempts at cutting and eventually tearful removal of more skin. I was in that bathroom for hours, and I did not emerge a happy woman.

And that is the very last time any kind of wax has been applied to any of my body hair, professionally or otherwise, boys and girls.

So if purespadirect think they are going to entice me to buy "four different types of lukewarm waxes and two different types of hard waxes" they are very much mistaken and they should concentrate on, I dunno, giving me a good price on lotion or maybe some hot stones. Just sayin.

xoxo