First posted June 2010.
‘You’d be surprised how many of the customers have it all waxed off like this. I bet they don’t tell anyone.’
Blimey, I think, where’s the benefit in that? At least I can get good blog copy out of a Hollywood.
I was looking for a place that offered vajazzling (the American practice of having a good ol’ wax and then decorating your bald pubic area with jewels), but it appears that the salons of genteel Kent don’t currently sense a demand for such a service. Instead, I had to settle for the Hollywood (everything off), and then some quality time later, applying the vajazzles myself.
Arriving at the salon, I am handed what the technician optimistically terms ‘a pair of paper knickers’, but which is actually a thin strip of black tissue with elastic loops. One size fits all apparently, which means that I have no hope of hiding much behind them. It turns out that this matters very little: the knickers are merely a symbolic gesture towards my dignity. The technician’s first act is to push them to one side so that she can wax around my labia.
We will not speak of the pain. However, I will say this: even in the course of the seductions, I have never yet found myself laying face down on a table, holding apart my own buttock cheeks, while a young girl waxes my anus. That is all.
It is unseemly to admire one’s own hairless fanny whilst still at the salon, so I follow convention and have a good look when I get home. It’s a bit red and angry-looking, but – and I’m pained to admit this, because it commits me to years of expensive brutality at the hands of the beautician – it’s quite resplendently lovely. It feels smooth and new, but there’s nothing ‘little girl’ about it at all; in fact, it’s distinctly adult, distinctly knowing.
It is also quite fascinatingly sensitive. I keep compulsively reaching down into my knickers to check it’s still there, and it’s oddly like touching someone else’s vagina. Not only does it feel completely unfamiliar to the fingers, but the sensations are different on the receiving end, too. I am like a child with a new toy.
When Herbert gets home, I refuse to let him see it (I want the redness to go down first; I don’t want his first response to be, ‘Ooh ouch!’), but at bedtime, I do let him put his hand down my pyjamas to touch it. He seems a bit tentative, and quickly withdraws his hand. I’m not sure it could take too much stroking anyway.
The next day it’s looking a lot calmer, and I remain enchanted by this new body part I’ve uncovered. At about six, I prop myself up on some pillows and then set about vajazzling myself. After a great deal of fruitless web-searching (and a brief flirtation with Coco de Mer’s exquisite butterfly merkin, before I realised it cost £100), I had finally found some children’s crystal tattoos and some violet body crystals for £1.99 a piece on eBay. I had no idea that either of these fashion items existed before last week, but, as I have often commented in the course of this blog, every day’s a school day.
The art of the vajazzle, according to my reading online, is to keep the decoration high up, lest one accidentally gets a crystal wedged in a delicate area. I am more than happy to follow this rule. Now, it has been said before that I have an advanced sense of kitsch, but tonight it really comes into its own. Across my bald pudenda, I create what I like to think of as a deco-inspired display, with touches of Vegas thrown in. Oh, and I also manage to write ‘B 4 H’ in purple crystals, just so you can picture it in your mind.
At seven, H texts to say he’s leaving work. I hastily take a picture of my vajazzled fanny, with the demure addition of a fig-leaf from the garden, and text it straight back. ‘Clitter-tastic*,’ comes the reply, and then, a few seconds later, ‘Now.’
‘I should bloody hope so after all that effort!’ I reply.
I’ll admit to some concerns that H wouldn’t be keen on the vajazzles. He’s quite invested in his self-image as a hippy boy, and even as I was applying the jewels, I was wondering whether a Hollywood wax doesn’t really need any embellishment.
Judging from his response, I had nothing to worry about. And besides, he’s a pragmatic man. He tried it once with the jewels, and then, the next day, once without.
*In case you haven’t seen the hilarious ‘Clitter’ spoof on YouTube, you can watch it here.
The 52 Seductions 