Waxing Pathetic
13 Jan 2012 4 Comments
So much of life can be summed up with the phrase, “It seemed like a good idea at the time.” My legs, after the long month of November, which not only hosts NaNoWriMo, but also No-Shave November, were dang hairy. I poked around online a bit, trying to find a recommendation for leg and bikini waxing in Shenzhen. The recommendation seemed to be to go to Hong Kong or get your own kit. I put the idea out of my head until one night, when Athena and I were walking back from Book City, and some synapse crucial to rational thought misfired in my brain. There we were, walking into a spa. I asked the woman if they did leg waxing, lifting my pant leg up to reveal the accumulated growth and making ripping gestures. She made a couple of trips up the stairs, presumably to ask if anyone was willing to take on the hairy white woman in the vestibule. Then she made a couple of phone calls, which turned out to be calls for back up. After further clarification about what I wanted, a woman in pink scrubs and a little pink cap ushered Athena and I up the stairs to the treatment rooms. She gave me the key to a locker, and a towel with elastic in the top of it to serve as a cover up, and mimed which articles of clothing to remove.
Athena and I were ushered into a treatment room where another client was having some sort of relaxation treatment performed. I felt bad that she was now sharing the room with us, because I couldn’t imagine that it would be all that relaxing anymore, even with both of us on our best and most quiet behavior. Athena was very excited by the idea of watching someone rip the hair off of my legs and perched herself on a stool by my head to observe the proceedings.
I laid down on the massage table and the technician wheeled a heat lamp over and plugged it in. “Well, that’s nice, I thought, I’ll be nice and warm.” Then she brought in a glass pot of wax. I looked about for the usual apparatus to heat the wax, the two little metal pots in what looks like some kind of nuclear reactor found in all the other waxing places I’ve been to. No such apparatus was to be found. The technician uncovered my right leg and angled the heat lamp over it. I should have gotten up right then, gotten up and made a break for it. But some kind of morbid curiosity kept me flat on my back casting looks of mild concern at my leg and the heat lamp and the pot of thick wax.
As it turned out, the method of waxing used in this mostly hairless country is to heat the leg up, and not the wax. This is highly ineffective, and I don’t recommend it. The woman worked away, first smearing large quantities of the thick, distressingly cold wax across my leg, which wasn’t actually all that warm (despite the heat lamp), certainly not warm enough to melt the wax, then pressing huge sheets of paper into the wax, which she vigorously rubbed and pounded and finally, after bracing herself, ripping the thing off. Half of the paper would stay behind, and the half that came off would take maybe five or six hairs with it. She continued to rip off the paper in smaller, equally ineffective strips. Athena watched with rapt attention. “She’s going to do that ripping thing again,” she’d happily announce, as the technician pounded the paper into the wax. “Does it hurt?” She’d ask after every strip. “Yes,” I’d say between gritted teeth. Athena would lean over my face and grin, while patting my chest comfortingly.
After a quarter of my right leg was done, reinforcements arrived, and things went along a little faster, as there were now two women globbing wax onto my legs, and exclaiming over the herculean task that lay before them (at least, that’s what I imagine they were exclaiming about). They tweezed the bits that were left, which meant that the majority of the hair was actually tweezed off rather than waxed off. It felt like a myriad of pinpricks running up and down my legs. When they switched to the backs of my legs, Athena crawled under the massage table to poke her stinky feet into my face and giggle. Athena’s attention was held for an incredibly long time, but the process spanned longer than her attention did. Fortunately, we seemed to be closing the place down and there were a bunch of technicians wandering around with no one left to work on. They turned their attention to Athena. I could hear her laughing riotously while thundering about in the hallway and tramping up and down the stairs. The spa workers fed her grapes while chasing after her and taking her picture, giggling all the while.
My legs were painfully red, but still attached and mostly hairless after the two women were done. The pot of wax, which had entered the room quite full, was nearly empty. The concept of a bikini wax was completely foreign and repulsive to them, which was just as well. I can’t imagine that the heat lamp method would be any more effective there than it is on one’s legs.
Athena asked if she could have her nails done, and the technicians graciously complied. She picked out red for her fingernails and purple for her toenails. The bottle of purple polish defied all attempts at opening it, and the technician presented Athena with two different colors to choose from, in bottles that would open. Athena was so pleased with herself for getting her nails done by somebody other than her mother, that she put up no fuss about it. They gave us little cups of tea and took lots of pictures of Athena.
We stopped at 7-Eleven on our way back to the apartment, and Athena got a mango Slurpy with a red twisty straw. She slurped happily away, occasionally holding her nails up for inspection, and despite the raw feeling of my butchered legs, I felt that the evening had been a rip roaring success.
Jan 14, 2012 @ 00:38:27
Your stories are so delightful that I end up reading them aloud to the whole office staff! One of my students said that the Chinese are so fond of children that you probably get special treatment anywhere you go with Athena along. I told her of Athena coming home from school with new hair dos every day and she understood completely.
It is wonderful how well everyone communicates and you get so much done, even when it is as funny as this story was. Keep ‘em coming.
Jan 15, 2012 @ 03:47:53
“RIP” roaring success………..funny girl!!!
Jan 15, 2012 @ 17:41:55
i happened upon your blog and then realized why the name “athena” seemed so familiar…. you may not remember me at all, but we met one sunny spring day a few years ago by the cherry blossoms at UW. (think asian guy wearing standard issue blue scrubs.) i was reading and taking an extended lunch break from working as a physician at the UW ophthalmology clinic, and you were reading either herodotus or theucydides. we started chatting, and to this day i haven’t been able to forget your story. or athena’s story.
if you recall, my wife and i have a boy a little younger than athena, and we’ve since added a daughter to our family. she is about three weeks old. and coincidentally, i’ve been making my way through robin lane fox’s “the classical world,” and am about to start the chapter on julius caesar.
anyway, you and athena are treasures to behold. here’s to wishing you many blessings, a happy 2012, and a happy chinese new year. it will be a joy to follow your blog.
Jan 20, 2012 @ 20:41:07
I do remember you. Thank you so much for your comment! And congratulations on adding a daughter to your family. Happy Chinese New Year!