‘the waxing strip snaking its warm way around my left tic-tac’

There are many proverbial truisms: don’t play with knives; don’t jog in Y-fronts during the summer and don’t attempt to order a takeaway after 9pm at night in WA. There is one other that should be added to that line up – don’t have editorial meetings at the pub after work. Or at least, don’t open a conversation with your sales and production team using the following sentence, “The thing I would least like to do...”

The thing I would least like to do is have one of those all-inclusive waxing things.” It was hot, the Stella Artois was flowing, it had been a long day and it was the worst I could think of at the time. “You mean a back, sack and crack?” There was a sinister sparkle in my advertising manager’s eyes as he said this. I didn’t notice the mercenary glint at the time. The next day it all made sense.

Foolishly, I stumbled into the office late after the excesses of the night before. After a strong coffee and my daily argument with Telstra (“Yes, you have got the wrong billing address again. No, you shouldn’t have cut me off.”), I was ready for whatever the day threw at me.

My phone rang and Tanya, the charming owner of the Wax Shak, was on the other end. She launched into a checklist of preparations that I should observe before we met. Was this a dinner date I had forgotten about? What had happened in the pub after I blacked out?

”Don’t apply perfumes or strong chemical based scents. Don’t go into the sun less than six hours before. Don’t exfoliate.”

“Exfoli what?”

“Exfoliate – your skin care regime. It’s a no-no before waxing.”

“Waxing, you say?”

“Yes, before your appointment that your mate organised for the magazine. Don’t over-moisturise or scrub your body. See you on Saturday.”

“Thank you,” I squeaked before gingerly replacing the handset.  I had been unwittingly snookered and was in fear of my cue ball being detached from its corner pocket. So, there it was. My nightmare had arrived. There was no backing out, with or without accompanying back hair. ‘Lead from the front’, the publisher’s handbook unequivocally states. It says nothing about the rear. I was about to navigate unchartered territory – as was Tanya at the Wax Shak.

For the rest of the week leading up to my date with destiny, the office all helpfully pitched in with their urban legends on the infamous Back, Sack and Crack (‘BCS’ as it is affectionately called). “You may haemorrhage.” “There will be a lot of blood.” “It is excruciating.” Excellent.  Can’t wait. Curiously, everyone suddenly became experts and were rather too forthcoming with a never-ending series of ‘tips’ to reduce the inevitable agony. The best advice was to make sure it was cold whilst Tanya was tackling my tackle. In this instance, certain parts of my anatomy would be less ‘elastic’ (and even more shrivelled) and less prone to breakage or less likely to be stretched past their breaking point like a used wad of old and brittle bubble gum. Ouch.

Excellent.

And then they started the countdown: the ignition sequence to lift off. Every day some bright spark would count down another day until the fateful appointment like some sadistic Advent calendar produced by the Spanish Inquisition. I was torn between a range of different anxieties. The most prominent one was that I would emerge afterwards without my man-globes, having left them stuck onto a waxing strip, like two tiny insect larvae caught on fly paper. My next concern was the general indignity of the entire operation. It was daunting enough imagining a stranger tinkering around with my undercarriage let alone having a photographer present throughout and in close proximity and the results splashed across a magazine. I knew I should have started back at the gym months ago.

The day arrived and I mooched down to the follicle executioner. The Wax Shak is a pristine and functional boutique with branches in Fremantle and Cannington and more to be opened soon. The staff are accommodating, utterly unsqueamish and, believe me, they have seen it all. Unfortunately, the Freo branch is also situated next to the Baker’s Dozen where I purchase my Sunday croissants, so I ducked into the Wax Shak boutique swiftly and surreptitiously. I didn’t want my baker to know that I was denuding my baps and have to stare him in the face over the wholemeal bread counter.

Tanya ushered me into the mid-sized cubicle. Once our photographer had also squeezed into the room, the set-up became rather intimate. This was it. The moment was upon me. My clothes were on the floor (along with my dignity), the photographer’s lens was near my crotch and nothing but a tiny flannel was clutched in front of my manhood. Embarrassingly, the postage stamp sized cloth was more than sufficient.

I started talking. Well gabbling. I thought if I launched into a monologue I could distract myself and everyone else in the cubicle from the imminent procedure. I was asking dozens of questions but not listening to the replies. Tanya carried on regardless – a consummate professional. Suddenly, one of her responses punctured the verbal waterfall I was spouting.

“The shaft.”

That was all I heard. I had totally displaced myself and ‘the shaft’ sounded like a reference from the Matrix or a movie that Samuel Jackson would star in. As in, “we must reach the shaft before the nucleus reacts” or, “the crystal is found within the shaft and should be approached with caution.’” The what?

“Some men have hairy penises,” said Tanya. Oooooh that wasn’t a phrase I’d heard bandied about in polite conversation before and it snapped me back to reality.

What had been the question that had prompted these two phrases? I vaguely remember asking what was the most painful part (‘the shaft’), then enquiring why that needed to be waxed at all (‘some men have hairy penises’). Oh God. I was trying to go to the special place in my head but couldn’t remain there for long.

Tanya ploughed on regardless and, well, the most astonishing part was the lack of pain. I’ve had my chest done before a couple of times when it was the thing to do in certain parts of London but Tanya’s technique didn’t hurt at all. Well, with one of my legs resting on Tanya’s shoulder and the other hanging off the end of the table, my pride was hurt a little (as this is all par for the course for the Wax Shak, the embarrassment soon wears off). Whether she was using some advanced Jedi waxing technique or whether it was the special wax she had imported, it didn’t matter to me. I wasn’t in agony and didn’t have blood gushing from my loins.

More confident now, I decided to get all investigative on Tanya’s ass and peppered her with tough journalist questions. However, she still had the upper hand (placed god knows where down below) as I was now more embarrassed by her answers than my physical position, legs akimbo with all and sundry flapping in the wind. Tanya kept using medical and clinical terms like ‘scrotum’ and ‘testicles’ and ‘penis’. My mum used to deliberately do this and it always used to make me and my three brothers squirm in our seats. In fact, any one of us can now go up to the other and use a long sibilant ‘s’ sound on any word (ssssssssugar, ssssausages etc) right in their ear and the other brother ‘s arms will be instantaneously covered in goosebumps and he will crumble to the floor and adopt a foetus position.

Is it normal for a mother to constantly enquire of her progeny, “are your ‘tessssssticles’ alright?” I know she secretly enjoyed it, cackling like a witch in the kitchen after dropping the bombshell and taking another slug of gin whilst the ‘boys’ in the sitting room had not flinched a muscle and were sitting upright as if in suspended animation. She could silence an entire room in an instant with comments like that.

So, Tanya wouldn’t be drawn into giggling over rude words – she’s seen and heard it all before. I tried a different tack as she prepared to finish my tackle and move onto my chest. I started fishing for compliments or at least wondered how I stood in the ‘BCS’ stakes in relation to Tanya’s regular clientele.

“So, Tan, is everything alright down there?”

“Yep. You have nice fine hair, nice lips [I hope she meant the ones on my mouth] and...your bottom pimples aren’t too bad.”

My what? Oh God. And ‘not too bad’. She’d condemned with faint praise. Bottom pimples? Never knew I had them and is there a scale for bottom pimples in the waxer’s text books? Like the teeth whitening scale. Was I an A minus or just a B plus? Was there a chart Tanya was mentally comparing my bot spots to? Or was this mild insult a cunning distraction to temporarily take my mind off the waxing strip snaking its warm way around my left tic-tac? God, now I have to go to the bottom dermatologist. Where does it end? And where does beauty begin?

And then it was all over. Admittedly, my hysterical screams, caused more by ‘pre-rip’ anticipation than actual suffering, should have attracted the attention of the local police: I would, indeed, then have been ‘caught by the fuzz’. Ironically, the ‘worst’ bits weren’t the worst. Removing my arm hair was actually the most painful, followed by the chest. Everything else was absolutely tolerable. Nothing eye-watering at all. And it was all done, dusted and polished within the hour.

The office was convinced that I would return looking like Yul Bryner assuming, just like a plastic surgery freak, I wouldn’t know when to stop.  I was terrified that Tanya would suddenly go into a waxing frenzy and remove my eyebrows and nostril hair right up to my brain with a couple of lightning quick flicks of the wrist. She didn’t: she loves her job and the results are superb. She had a few horror stories which remain off the record but insists that the Wax Shak welcomes all comers (well not literally ‘comers’ as they do sometimes get some rather odd calls and requests: leave what belongs in Kalgoorlie IN Kalgoorlie people). Piercings can be a particular problem during the full body wax but they are negotiated tactfully and tactically. Her most embarrassing moment was when one client unveiled an appendage she likened to a ‘pepper grinder’.  I hastily hid my salt shaker under the flannel as she recounted this anecdote.

As a reward for my ‘bravery’, Tanya ushered me into another cubicle for a wonderfully soothing facial, having applied a ‘secret’ ingredient to my chest which, for the first time ever, didn’t burst into a series of welts after waxing. I was now brave enough to have a sneak preview of Tanya’s work. I finally peeked beneath my towel and got a bit of a shock. I was staring down at an assortment of wares that resembled the last turkey in the shop. And the severe shaping of my former, erm how to put this, hair triangle had resulted in a small strip leading down to the not-so-main event. It looked like Adolf Hitler poking his tongue out. Ah, so that’s what she meant at the start of the operation when she asked, “do you want it all off or a goatee?” I was still in my special place when she had asked that and my stunned mullet brain assumed she was talking about a different ‘area’. Hey ho. Who am I to protest against fashion?

And so, the acid test, or, as Jeremy Clarkson would say, time for the road test. What did other people think of my new ‘hair style’. I gave the kit a test drive. The first victim was someone who had been behind the wheel many times before, one who could truly judge the before and after effect. Her first comment was that my little pubic goatee made me look like Charlie Chaplin. Nice. And she revealed that she prefers hairy chest (why had she never said that before and is that why she watches so many wildlife documentaries?). However, all in, she found the finishing precise and the upholstery charming in its new simplicity. We didn’t really discuss the boot but she was full of praise for the smooth hatchback and suggested I should regularly get my back done (again, it was hardly Grizzly Adams before I started. Or was it? Oh God).

So, a mixed response there. I received a far more favourable reaction from the next passenger who had never been in the car before. She loved the whole thing, admired the livery and marvelled at the sleek and smooth curves. Overall, it was a thumbs up from the punters and, as the whole process is reversible given time, I am truly convertible so can mix it up just for the laaadies...

Four days later, I had to make an emergency phone call to the Wax Shak. I had hit the ‘hair regrowth’ wall and was itching like crazy: this is always the infuriating thing about body hair. You seem to only reach the time of perfect equilibrium, smooth skin and itch-free skin, for a couple of days after your appointment. Then you look and feel like sandpaper for weeks. Tanya talked me out of my epileptic itching frenzy and suggested I exfoliate. Now, short of rubbing against a brick wall and a cornice to reach those hard to tackle places, this wasn’t going to help. She demanded I dash down to the Wax Shak. Ten minutes later I was clutching a super-special exfoliating and buffing towel which was mine to keep. Apparently everyone knows you have to exfoliate afterwards. I didn’t and when I did...doh! It worked a treat. No itching, no rash, no problem.

Finally, my thanks to the wonderful Tanya. Her boutiques offer cheap prices, a caring philosophy and her staff have a real passion for the job. Ultimately, my profuse gratitude goes out for the remarkable lack of pain during the whole process. It was a doddle for my twoddle.  Of course, lasering is the other option for hair removal but would you really want to get a medical procedure done by a teenage beauty school technician? Like getting injected with Botox by the girl who changes the lightbulbs on the sunbeds. With lasering I always imagine that scene with 007 from Goldeneye where the laser creeps along the conveyer belt towards his Bond bits. I really don’t want that type of procedure performed outside a hospital to be honest. Tanya agrees. Enough said. 

Once you’re deforested, it’s a great incentive to get fit if you’ve gained a few pounds: without hair, you will be able to see the two large, newly born earthworms snaking themselves round your midriff. Rolls of fat I think is the technical term. However, do be careful when you visit the showers at the gym. You may get funny looks and that’s ‘funny’ in all senses of the word.

Would I go again? Yes definitely. The old back is certainly good for a gander and a few more laps round the chest should I ever rekindle my pectoral muscles again would be a nice bonus. It’s probably a wise time, if you’ve never had it done before, to go for the waxing induction during the winter. Find out what works for you and what works for others who will see you before the summer beach parade. I will give the Charlie Chaplin a miss though next time but may just give the love spuds another outing. Who knows, a whole new lifestyle may open up for me. I might not have to buy drinks at the bar ever again...

Next Issue: The Editor’s Revenge – colonic irrigation for the employee with most sick leave this year.

The Wax Shak, Shop1c/ 219 Hampton Rd
South Fremantle WA 6162 
Tel: (08) 9336 7425