Shave

The word for today is SHAVE. Many men SHAVE every day; some women do too. Right now, lots of people have to shave their spending. Ten years ago, when I turned forty I went to see a gynecologist. The physician's assistant told me I could expect to grow facial hair as my hormones changed with age. Thank god this has not happened--or else my eyes are just so bad I can't see if it has.

If it had, if I had developed facial hair, I would know better than to SHAVE it. Long ago, my mother taught me that if you SHAVE something it comes back stronger, thicker, tougher to resist, better, she advised, to completely pluck it out. She brought me and my sister along when she got her legs waxed. As teenagers, way back in the 1970s, we were old enough to have our legs waxed too. Ouch, it hurt. The price of vanity. Sometimes, when my mother didn't go to get her legs waxed she used the hair removal product Nair. My sister and I did too. Nair smelled vile, it was one of those products you believed in partly because it smelled so bad. It looked like calamine lotion, but it smelled like nail polish remover and ammonia and unflavored cough syrup all in one. It worked. I remember the small black hairs falling away as I rinsed the thick pink goop off my legs.

Crazy people don't SHAVE. There are street people (men) in my town who have long white beards. I stay away from them. Recently, the LA TIMES printed a photo of a 70-year-old Charles Manson. He is bald and his beard is close shaven. He doesn't look as scary as he used to--is it his age or the fact that so much of his hair, his power is gone. Part of the enigmatic power of Osama Bin Laden is in his beard. Sadaam Hussein looked crazier and scarier when he was taken out of his hiding cave, unkempt, unshaved, than when he had used chemical weapons to kill Kurds. When he killed the Kurds he shaved and wore a suit. I think the Iraqi government had Sadaam shaved before he was hanged, but I don't know what he was wearing. I don't understand the logic in these things.

Sometimes people who have given up don't SHAVE. Maybe they haven't given up, maybe they just don't see the need to bother, maybe they don't see the need to conform. No matter how much I may personally resist it, spring is coming, spring for the earth, spring for me. You see I am one of those curmudgeons who likes the cold challenge, the stark severity of winter, its subtle whites and grays and blues. But I will conform or at least admit that I can't hold back spring's energy. Already, people are out and about in the 50 plus weather, college kids playing frisbee, regular folks running, riding their bicycles, some of them even wearing shorts and t-shirts.

The other morning in the shower I looked at my legs--lots of little black hairs made me feel old and ugly. They reminded me of my grandmother's legs. When my grandmother was still alive, I would look at the twists and turns of the hairs under her stockings. Her hair was not thick, but it was there, stating with much certainty that she was "off the market." My grandfather had died when she was in her late 50s, she lived almost 40 more years without finding another partner.

Unlike my grandmother, I am not completely "off the market." I know I will SHAVE my legs. I SHAVE my legs whenever there is a potential him. Spring is all about potential. (Notice the potent in potential.) I will probably get a pedicure where a woman from somewhere in Asia will shave the dead skin off my feet. I will remember to apply moisturizer to my legs and use a pumice stone on my feet. I will remember to groom my body and my mind. I will pluck my eyebrows. I may even whiten my teeth. I don't want to be crazy, I don't want to be left out, I don't want to go 20 more years without a partner. I don't want the OUCH of waxing or the horrible smell of Nair in my house. I think I'll just go and SHAVE my legs.