Here, Hold This: My First Brazilian Adventure

This guest blog by Emmie, a long-time member of the More Cowbell posse, made me die laughing. Plus, the post addressed a most important question: What is the tie-in between a bikini wax and the quest for personal responsibility?

Read on my friends, read on…

Here, Hold This: My First Brazilian Adventure
by Emmie Mears

I’m no stranger to earthy humor. I grew up in a home with two moms, an older step-sister who could belch in your face with enough force to make your cheeks wave in the wind, and an older step-brother who may or may not have collected his own boogers. As I grew older, I was unfazed by fart jokes and tampons, first gyno visits and outhouses alike.

At twenty-nine with my first book coming out, a separation in progress, and the world opening up in front of me again, I realized there was one thing (okay, lots of things) I hadn’t done yet that I’d always been curious about. In this case: getting a Brazilian wax.

Having just gotten my IUD the month before and having been told by my doctor that I didn’t even flinch – I may have strutted out of his office with my puffed up chest all the way up in my face from pride, as he’d tried to dissuade me from getting it because the process was painful – I figured getting the hair on my nether regions yanked out by the root would be nothing.

Yeah, nothing…

I scoured Yelp for a good place in my area and found one woman who operated out of her home and had a wealth of five and four star reviews. “That’s the one,” I said to myself. I made an appointment and sat back to wait for the time to pass.

I’d tried waxing my legs once as an adolescent, with my neighbor and comrade-in-arms who was a couple years younger than I. We neither of us waited till the hair was long enough, so we ended up essentially with the equivalent of a mass leg hair pulling session that speckled our legs with little blood blisters and left us bemused, stinging, and disappointed.

When I arrived for my waxing appointment, that was the only memory of wax I had. My aesthetician led me down to her basement, where she had a nice little table set up. “Bottoms off,” she said.

At least she didn’t say up, I thought.

I obeyed and stripped off my bottoms. After three visits to my OB in the past six months, shyness had left me with a curt “Ta” and the thought of baring my hoo-ha to a total and complete stranger oddly didn’t even make me blink.

“This is my first time getting waxed,” I told my aesthetician.

“It will hurt,” she said.

[Aestheticians: more honest than dentists.]

I’d heard they used baby powder to keep the wax from adhering to the skin. She didn’t. On went the wax, over it went a strip of fabric.

It wouldn’t be too bad. Just a quick —

Rrrruuuuup.

OH HOLY SHINY BEJEEBUS.

That first strip felt like she’d flayed me instead of just taken off some hair. My upper lip became suspiciously damp. I took a deep breath. Surely that strip had been like, half the hair. I peeked down as she smeared more wax.

It’d been about an inch wide.

Rrrruuuuup.

I thought back to the IUD in that moment. That was supposed to be akin to the early stages of labor, right? Dilating a body part that is built to push out a baby? WHY DID THIS HURT WORSE?

Rrrruuuuup.

Smear, smear, smush.

Rrrruuuuup.

A few strips and now-dripping beads of sweat later, the aesthetician looked at me. “Hold this,” she said.

By this, she meant a certain part of my anatomy. So she wouldn’t get wax on it.

Agreeing wholeheartedly that I did not want hot wax on that particular girly bit, I obliged, wondering in that moment why I hadn’t skipped this idea and gone straight to having carnitas with my friend Lindsey. Or tequila. LOTS of tequila.

Sometimes it takes being half-naked on a table holding a sensitive bit of your body out of the destructive path of a stranger wielding hot wax to realize that you can take an awful lot from life.

It was on that table that I understood a few things about the coming months of my life, book launch and divorce included.

First, if getting your pubic hair ripped out by the root does not prepare you for literary criticism, I don’t know what does. Second, I could blame no one for my current predicament but myself. It certainly wasn’t anyone else’s idea for me to undergo this Brazilian torture session. The same went for the rest of my life. My life. My job to make it what I wanted it to be.

At that odd juncture of hot wax, personal responsibility and laissez-faire stoicism, I felt hope for my future.

And really, for $35 plus tip, I think I got a bargain.

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I’m still up in the air on whether the epiphany is equal to the torture, but I loved  this post! (Although Emmie, next time go to Pretty Kitty. I’m just sayin…) Have you had an epiphany like this (including hot wax, or not)? What was your biggest aha moment? Enquiring minds always want to know these things here at More Cowbell!

I hope y’all ring that cowbell loud and hard for Emmie, IYKWIM.

~ Jenny

What else is this gorgeous writer up to? Well today happens to be her Launch Day for her new book, set in Scotland, The Masked Songbird.

Mildly hapless Edinburgh accountant Gwenllian Maule is surviving. She’s got a boyfriend, a rescued pet bird and a flatmate to share rent. Gwen’s biggest challenges: stretching her last twenty quid until payday and not antagonizing her terrifying boss.

Then Gwen mistakenly drinks a mysterious beverage that gives her heightened senses, accelerated healing powers and astonishing strength. All of which come in handy the night she rescues her activist neighbour from a beat-down by political thugs.

Now Gwen must figure out what else the serum has done to her body, who else is interested and how her boss is involved. Finally—and most mysteriously—she must uncover how this whole debacle is connected to the looming referendum on Scottish independence.

Gwen’s hunt for answers will test her superpowers and endanger her family, her friends—even her country.

To pre-order The Masked Songbird, click here. Released in a box set, you get four great paranormal and urban fantasy books for less than $4!

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About Emmie

Emmie Mears was born in Austin, Texas, where the Lone Star state promptly spat her out at the tender age of three months. After a childhood spent mostly in Alaska, Oregon, and Montana, she became a proper vagabond and spent most of her time at university devising ways to leave the country.

Except for an ill-fated space opera she attempted at age nine, most of Emmie’s childhood was spent reading books instead of writing them. Growing up she yearned to see girls in books doing awesome things, and struggled to find stories in her beloved fantasy genre that showed female heroes saving people and hunting things. Mid-way through high school, she decided the best way to see those stories was to write them herself. She now scribbles her way through the fantasy genre, most loving to pen stories about flawed characters and gritty situations lightened with the occasional quirky humor.

Emmie now lives in her eighth US state, still yearning for a return to Scotland. She inhabits a cozy domicile outside DC with two felines who think they’re lions and tigers.

Follow Emmie on Twitter @EmmieMears and join her on Facebook. You can also find her at EmmieMears.com or Searching for SuperWomen: Geek Girls Getting Loud.