The (Accidental) Brazilian

**
We leave Thursday for our vacation, so I scheduled a bikini wax today.

I rarely get bikini waxes; they require me to show in broad daylight parts of my body I otherwise save only for gynecological exams. Also, I had a particularly unfortunate experience with a bikini wax in 2009, a few days before the birth of my third child. The waxing lady's wax was too hot, but I didn't realize it at the time because she spritzed me with a numbing spray. It wasn't until I got home and started experiencing excruciating pain, requiring me to take to my bed with my hooch covered in ice packs, that I realized something had gone terribly wrong. It was another day or two, when the peeling started, before I realized it wasn't an allergic reaction to the wax but rather an honest-to-God second-degree burn featuring blistering and peeling. All over my lady parts. While I was 10 months pregnant. Which, I can't lie, added a certain unpleasantness to my C-section.

But I'm 38 now, so I'm trying to branch out and act like a pragmatic grownup who knows that waxing is the way to go for a beach vacation. Since I was going to be at the spa already, I also scheduled a facial.

There was a (minor, I thought at the time) language barrier, wherein the aesthetician was from Eastern Europe and speaks English as a second language. I thought nothing of it. She asked what kind of wax I wanted and I said, "Definitely not a Brazilian. Just regular." And then the facial commenced, with lotions and potions and lovely facial massage and a long and borderline excruciating extraction process. Finally, she put a thick masque on my skin, leaving small openings for my nostrils and lips but otherwise slathering it on nice and thick.

Then, while the masque was setting, she moved to do the bikini wax. I was laying on the table, legs akimbo, face immobilized by expensive goop. The aesthetician lady moved quickly and before I realized what was happening, I felt the heat of the wax and heard the whirrrring of electric clippers followed by several hair-raising rrrrrips that resulted in so much pain I shrieked, "YIKES."

"Don't worry, we're done," she said briskly. "With that side."

Then it started all over again, on the other side. And I was powerless, blinded by the masque goop, totally exposed from the waist down, menaced by the electric trimmers and starting to twitch from the entire experience.

At the end, I was presented with a $254 bill. Numbed and dazed, I paid and stumbled to my car.

Tomorrow I go back to my surgeon for a fill. I can't imagine it will be even remotely as traumatic as the wax.

** This is actually what I look like.