From: [email protected]
Subject: Nurse Jones goes pubic
Date: 20 Jan 93 02:19:54 GMT
From Nurse Jones,
Okay. Here I sit, back from Atlanta. Traveling and partying
continuously is hard on me. It was the wild celebrations of MLK day
that did it to me. I caught a cold. So I'm sucking on a Smith Brother
and reading over my unanswered mail and wondering about pubic hair.
Someone posted about this, and before I knew it I was lost in thought.
Lost mainly because it's unfamiliar territory. But I also have some
concrete advice to offer on the subject, so I guess I'd better speak;
I might save someone some trouble.
Here's my experience with depilatory.
And then I'll tell you why I'm obsessive about it. The big
unarticulated question about pubic hair.
First things first.
Jay found a depilatory for me by reading the blurbs in the boxes at
the drug store. This one claimed to be safe and gentle _and_ had no
warnings about staying away from Petticoat Junction.
I didn't think about it at the time, but the absence of a warning
might not have been the best of reasons for using that particular
brand. But I did and it worked.
I don't remember the brand, but it was pink, came in a tube like
toothpaste, and smelled like chemicals. Yucky. A bit like a home
permanent only stronger. It took a long shower after and a lot of skin
conditioner and some mental readjustment before I felt normal about
myself.
I bet there isn't a nickel's worth of difference between any of the
depilatorys. Regardless of what they say on the instructions.
I really lucked out the first time. Left it on the right amount of
time and it worked perfectly. My skin was a little sensitive after,
though. My skin looks as though it should be delicate and sensitive,
but I'm amazingly resistant to chemical irritants for some reason.
Tough as an old boot, in fact.
I *did* keep it off the actual naughtybits, though. Membranes are a
no-no, I think, here.
I just noticed the last 5 -- now 6 -- paragraphs started with the word
"I". I guess the world is a bit Maggie-O-Centric when it comes to
pubic hair....
One MAJOR point: On a later occasion I didn't leave it on long enough
-- or maybe I wasn't careful enough in spreaading it (I have variously
used a metal nailfile, a butter knife, and my fingers, although I hate
having my hands smell yucky. As it is, I come home smelling of latex
and clorox from work.) Anyway, a few stubborn hairs were left. I
plucked a couple and the follicles started to bleed. So I tried
shaving the few remaining ones off. I'm such a perfectionist. BIIIIIG
Mistake. Maybe I should say:
That was a little rash?
Anyway, I was better again in a week or so.
Normally, shaving doesn't have that effect on me. My skin was
especially vulnerable, I guess.
I recommend patience. Let your skin recover; then clean up the
stragglers.
Anyway, I kept at it with the depilatory, knocking it back whenever it
started to re-emerge.
And here comes Important Fact 2:
After a little over a month of regular use, my follicles fatigued
(whatever) and stopped trying to regrow hair. What *did* regrow became
fine and sparse and *very* easy to depilate in one application. It
took more than a few weeks for it to recover, and was sparse in
regrowing at first. For a while there, I wondered if I would ever be
able to face my gynecologist again. I don't know if permanent
suppression of regrowth is possible this way, but it is a concern. Or
a feature. I have heard of other people experiencing this problem,
too, but nothing permanent. And it wasn't the, um, bikini line that
was the target area in that case.
Ingrown hairs? I had one when Jay (my SO) was plucking me, but none
with depilatory. I guess a comment about mileage varying is
appropriate. Plucking is *way* too much work unless you have a very
patient SO. And a topical anesthetic to start you off.
Nowdays I clip it short and bleach it until it is invisible with Jolen
Creme Bleach for facial hair. Which has the Nurse Jones Seal of
Approval (tm). It's very gentle, and doesn't require frequent
touchups. Plus there's no stubble trubble.
Anyway, with bleach I have the visual impact that Jay is looking for,
but I (we) do miss the silky feeling of being -- well, you know.
Especially when we're, um... shutup Maggie. Lots of conditioner
softens the hair, but still it's not quite the same.... A good, low-
maintenance compromise, though.
Plus I had a little electrolysis around the edges this summer just to
neaten things up. The electrologist (they call themselves that -- like
it was a science or something) didn't even comment on my ring. (Phew.)
Anyway, that's my 2 cents.
-*-
Now about *why* I obsess over my pubic hair. I just realized that I
have seen several posts on *how* to get rid of it and not a peep about
motivations.
I still think about my pre-pubescent (near?) molestation by my cousin.
I keep picking at it. It won't heal. That was my first sexual
experience, and it was before I had pubic hair. For those that haven't
followed that ancient thread, I blocked out the memory for years
afterward -- until after I had gone through puberty.
It was not a wholly bad experience. In fact, at the time, insofar as
an eight-year-old is qualified to judge, it was wonderful. I now know
it was premature, but *then* it was pure wonderment.
As a consequence of this thread and all the comments I've heard, I've
taken fresh looks at my feelings about that experience, and I realize
that when the memory returned I attached a special significance to it.
I was still a child when the memory came back; I was frustrated with
myself for forgetting how to do this wonderful trick down in central
receiving, and I wanted to recapture that moment.
Of course, I never have.
But to my then-pubescent mind, the memory of the event had become more
marvelous than the actual event had been.
I don't attach near-mystical significance to the event anymore. I now
know, intellectually, that that is silly. But so many of my
fundamental unquestioned attitudes were programmed by that silly
unspoken belief -- before I understood it was silly -- that now it is
part of me.
Sort of like the Vietnam War. There *was* no logical reason for being
there. Just an explanation for how it got started.
But at the time... I believed I had touched the sky. Plumbed the
depths. Embraced the universe.
The orgasm seemed to go on for so long. Forever. It was cosmic and it
was eternal. And then I had forgotten -- just forgotten -- to do it
again. Went back to doing little girl things.
This seems so illogical now, but when puberty happened to me, and then
later the memory of that first sexual episode came back, I think I
blamed the symptoms of puberty for my inability to recapture this
transcendent experience..
It was as if puberty had intervened and cut me off from that perfect
moment.
I remember watching my breasts develop -- I was *not* patient in this
regard -- I remember standing in front of the full-length mirror on
the back of the bathroom door and examining my body for signs of
womanhood. From all angles. I was surprised when I realized a down of
pubic hair had crept on without my notice. And later, I was horrified
when my period started. I still feel somebody owes me a full
explanation. And an apology.
My midwestern mother did the minimum. She has probably never recovered
from her own menarche.
So somehow I have always seen the symptoms of puberty -- which
appeared during the time the memory was blocked out -- as an obstacle.
Something that happened during my memory lapse -- something that
intervened and prevented me from going back to recapture that
tantalizing moment.
On some level, I still think of my adult body as this dirty, bloody,
coarse, hairy thing that -- when I wasn't looking -- spoiled my
chances of ever going back. So I obsess over my pubic hair.
We have a full length mirror on our closet door now. I look and I see
myself twenty years ago looking back. Pubic hair trimmed short,
bleached to invisibility, almost abnormally neat and small from the
electrolysis treatments.
I would like to get rid of it so I could go back to a Very Important
Moment. Silly, but that's it.
I would like to go back and undo puberty.
Of course that's a motivation, not a literal truth.
I wouldn't *really* like to undo it. I enjoy puberty too much. But
there is, at my core, a missed opportunity and the path back was
somehow blocked by puberty.
And of course my naked prepubescent mons is the most obvious thing to
associate with that lost orgasm, and my pubic hair the most obvious
culprit that intervened to prevent it's recapture.
-*-
So. Is this a possibility? Depilating is a thread that won't die on
ASB. Is there a reason for this? Maybe, for any one of a thousand
reasons, we are trying to go back to an important moment. To
recapture. To confront. To exorcise.
Maybe it isn't just the silky sensations, the slithery showersex, the
aesthetic appeal. Maybe there's more.
In the meantime, I will continue my research.
Nurse Jones,
Working on,
um, that's *in*
the private sector.
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