Hair Care

Mossy, furry, bushy, hirsute, pseudo-falliculitis Barbi, she called him every name in the book before she settled on ape. Ape had that brutish connotation, that biting, monosyllabic thrust she was looking for, like chump or dope or creep or any word where the meaning was all in the tone. She scowled at his hairy body sprawled out over the couch and snarled, “You look like a filthy ape.”

He nuzzled his head into the arm of the couch, and stroked the hair on his arm with his hand, comforting it. After all, as she would often point out, it wasn’t really him she was talking about. He wasn’t the problem at all. The problem was the foot-long ingrown hair that spiraled around his Adam’s apple, tucked under his chin millimeters below the surface of his skin, and popped out, just barely the tip of its tail, under his bottom lip. That smug little curl teased her.

For days he argued it was just a weird shadow; later, he was sure it was spider veins, and then ringworm. In the meantime, she nodded and waited eagerly for the skin around it to die so she could finally grab a piece long enough to pluck it out. It would take hours to wind it out from its secure home, wedged in Herculean follicles gripping at the root, guarding them for dear life against predators. Hours of her time devoted to his constant maintenance and never a ‘thanks’ in return. The thought infuriated her to the point where she couldn’t hold it in anymore, and it just came out as “How can you breathe!”

Under his breath he would swear her to hell, point out her every flaw, from her stubby toes to her bony cheeks. Mouthing his every vengeful thought over and over again to himself, squinting and gritting and clenching and making it obvious any way he could everything he did not say.

“You know it’s not you,” she’d say calmly, petting his back. “I wouldn’t be here if it were you. It’s the hair, it’s those disgusting little black piles of it you shed all over the house, even when it’s not the hair it’s because of the hair.”

Her frustration went beyond clogged drains, shampoo expenses and rope burns. She was always calm and understanding. She’d brush the back of her hand against his cheek and trace her initials in his chest with her finger. She didn’t get angry the time he was gone for almost a week and she hadn’t heard from him. No phone call, letter, nothing. She didn’t even get angry when she found him that Friday on the hat rack in the basement, hanging by a loop of an ingrown so fierce that when she pulled it from the back of his neck a chunk of his noodley insides came out with it. She only said “It looks like an artery!”

And he grumbled, “It is.”

And even when those same ingrowns started getting lost under fresh, massive growths, she grinned and told him “I love you, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let a little hair come between us.”

But what really flamed up inside her was his disinterested, frank discussion of it, of how he would calmly accept his malady, stroking her forehead, gently, annoying her.

“I’m okay with it,” he assured her, “let’s just let it grow out and see what happens.”

It was the fact that she hadn’t been to her job, if she still even had one, in over a month, because she knew they’d grow faster if she wasn’t around. She knew he would let them, and that she was the only one who cared enough to pluck them. Most of all it was small, seemingly petty details every second of the day, the grinding squeak he made rubbing against the green velour couch, like right now. Nails down a chalkboard.

Hair was everywhere; sticky and determined. It clung to his chest, and no amount of discussion or plucking, petting or potions was going to convince it otherwise. It matted his back; it was all over his hands, the joints of his toes and in-between them. It was all over his shitty apartment, and her professionally decorated condo. It got stuck in the splotches of dried soda on his kitchen tile, and got lost in her Bauhaus chairs.

Eventually, it covered his body so completely that they figured it had finally reached its end, and she happily announced “That’s has to be it, there’s no more skin!”

But follicles shot out second and third hairs and they corkscrewed around each other into braided rapiers. And then hairs grew out of hairs. They stood one on top of the other, climbed out of his skin only to weave back in inches later. She tried to direct them, she even put up blockades on all sides so they couldn’t grow anywhere but up, but they curled over everything she put in their way. She spent nights studying their patterns, considering all possible modes of attack.

She’d had dreams before this, she’d had hopes and ambitions, and none of them involved picking clumps of residual wax off her hairy lover’s chest with her fingernail. He always had hair, for as long as she’d known him, at first she called it manly or sexy or cute, later it was just there or present, and now it was simply “in need of removing.” Now she could dream only of smooth skin. Every dream was a different swatch of hairless skin, bald and moist. Hairless skin with no specific gender, skin with no sexuality attached to it.

She’d made a good living as a nurse practitioner. It was easy, especially early on, when most of the time all she did was call in the doctor for the actual diagnosis. Unless, of course, she was absolutely certain of what the problem was, and after a while she was almost always sure. Gradually, she mastered her special collection of treatable ailments, confident in her doctorless pointing and explaining of conditions, diseases and cures. During the first three months she worked at the practice, the doctor saw three men complaining of some white substance between their legs. By the fourth one she sat on his desk and lipsynched the entire discussion,

“Has it been flaking for over a week?” She mouthed, bobbing her head from side to side as she switched from doctor voice to patient voice, “Why yes doctor, how did you know? And would you describe it as more of a dry itch, or more of a moist itch? Oh, definitely dry, Doctor.”

When the fifth patient walked in she declared “Jock itch? Ben-gay!” flung her index finger into the air and told him to pull his pants back up. When the doctor came in ten minutes later, she told him it was all taken care of and if he’d like to take lunch she could probably finish off his afternoon appointments by the time he got back. She cut the examination Q & A time from the average forty minutes to as little as three. Dizziness and fatigue? Anemia, take iron supplements. Frequent hives? Hydrocortisone cream. Dry cough? Zinc tablet. And the sniffles? Well, it’s just that time of the year again.

But now she watched, puzzled, as hairs wove through his skin like hungry parasites, carving his body into segments until he looked like he’d been shattered into tiny pieces and carefully glued back together. Hungry, skillful parasites, searching desperately, for what? She had no idea.

Half-Italian, half-Russian, at first he figured ethnicity should be enough to explain it. Then for a while they came in waves, growing steadily, with flowing movement obvious even to his naked eye. Day after day, he’d trim them and wonder if everybody else secretly had the same problem but knew how to hide it better than he could. Then it ate his wristwatch. Hair poured out like rabid ivy, circled the band, and dove back into his skin, taking whatever was in its path along with it. “It was just a Fossil watch,” he told himself, “and not too high up on the Fossil line anyway.”

It didn’t matter much anyway. He bought another one, just like it, and kept it in his pocket. He was down forty-five dollars to the hair. He would trim it in the next few days anyway. He was willing to admit it was a problem, since the first time he measured its progress every fifteen minutes with a ruler. He chewed on his thumbnail and thought, “This could turn out to be a problem.”

He still went to work. He sat in the small cubicle at the back of the bank and tried to convince young children he wasn’t a werewolf while he opened their mother’s savings accounts. He’d been a solid worker, he never took all his personal days, he was never sick, they rarely went on vacation. He didn’t start missing work until she quit tweezing and started waxing.

Waxing began with little sections, trouble areas and tough-to-reach spots.

“It’ll be so much quicker; we’ll just dab a little wax on and yank it all off. So much better than tweezing, right?”

They couldn’t agree more, why tweeze when you can wax? But soon she got carried away with efficiency. She bought honey wax in pint-sized bottles and poured it over his shoulders, dousing him in a bubbling goo from head to toe. She wrapped his tarred body in bed sheets and laid his mummified body on the floor. She tugged the cloth from under him as hard as she could and he rolled along the floor and collapsed in the corner.

“Now that’s something I can work with!” she’d say proudly, stroking the porcupined sheets. He’d shudder away from her, fearful, and she’d spend half an hour trying to convince him that the pain was over for the night. After, she’d kneel by his side, glide her fingers over his smooth head, and tell him,

“You know I love you, I wouldn’t go through all this if I didn’t.”

But the rolling, the cowering, the wailing and trembling in pain- it was too much exercise for a work night. He figured he could take a few days off, this couldn’t go on forever.

But after a while, waxing simply wasn’t enough. She sat by his side nightly, with a satchel full of tweezing instruments with serrated edges and one, which turned into cones at the end. She had a Ginsu 2000 switchblade, a pair of scissors with a tungsten alloy insert, a saw that you plugged in, a t-square, a top-of-the-line, do-it-yourself home electrolyses kit, at least a half dozen waxes, three of them sugar based, two natural and one with a number for Poison Control on the label. She had a curling iron, a spray bottle of WD-40, some Crazy Glue and nail polish remover, a bag of sunflower seeds, and a full bottle of valium.

It consumed her and every hour of every day. She went out weekly to stock up on supplies. She asked the pharmacist if he had any new recommendations, and that was the extent of her socializing. Every day she would pick him into a respectable human being, clean as a cue ball, and sigh with victorious exhaust as she flopped into bed. Each morning she’d wake to find him in an apathetic slumber, devolved once again from man to ape,

and covered in hair from head to toe.

They didn’t talk anymore, just tweezed. Tweezing was a language they could both understand. Tweezing accomplished everything talking had before, and at first it seemed almost erotic, kind of like apes picking bugs off each other’s back. It was foreplay, a little S and M to get the heart racing, a little build-up, a little distraction from the act.

“That was when tweezing meant something,” he thought, doubled over with his chin pressed into his palm.

“Can I do you after?” He asked meekly.

“What?”

“Can I do you after, we used to take turns.”

“Do I look like an ape?” She asked, “No. I was trying to be nice with the whole you-do-me-I-do-you-thing, but really, honey…”

“It’s okay,” he said, acquiescent, “it was just a thought.”

Then he felt the heel of her shoe stab into his lower back

“What the hell are you doing?” He yelled.

“Trying to get some leverage!” She yelled back.

“Alright, that’s enough for tonight. Why don’t you just come here? We can hug a little…”

“Ha,” she cried, “I haven’t even gotten below your rib cage yet, and then we have to do all your front…”

“I’d really like to quit for tonight,” he cut her off, “I’m tired and I’d like to get some rest.”

What he really wanted to do was push her down and make love to her all over the bed. He realized that wasn’t exactly an option, especially as his penis was still buried under an overgrowth of brush, and she liked to do that part last. He watched her jam a sewing needle she had sterilized with her lighter into his back. She didn’t really seem to be in the mood. He estimated the routine would last another two and half hours or so. Maybe she’d get all worked up by then and he could give it a try.

She pulled out a hair from his shoulder, which turned out to be connected to another hair on his head through some complex subcutaneous hair network, and so the whole thing came out at once in a massive, spirally weave.

“Jesus Christ” he screamed.

“Fine! Here,” she yelled as she walked towards the bathroom, tossing him the tweezers, “do it yourself. It’s not my body.”

“Lay off, alright. I don’t feel like doing this tonight.”

As soon as she turned around she realized she wasn’t nearly as close to being finished as she’d thought. The process took so long now, that by the time she got to his back, the hair on his chest had all grown back. She’d tried everything, every wax, every formula, every tweezer to stop him from looking like he did now; like a Christmas tree with eyes. She was always hopeful, insisting that there had to be an end to all of it, a mother hair, one key filament, some shimmering strand waving around somewhere, somewhere she’d never thought of, below a nail, inside a wrinkle, underneath a mole. She was sure someday she’d find it and pull it out and he’d unwind into one long strand of hair coiled on the floor.

Now, when she looked at him, she saw only a pair of eyes, some teeth, and holes where his nose should be. Other than that he was all hair; hair with no apparent end, and then she realized that she wasn’t even sure if there was anything under it. For all she knew, she was talking to a six-foot tall, well-organized collection of fuzz. It made it much easier to tell him things she’d been meaning to tell him, things that had been too tough to say to lips or faces, or anything pink or flesh-toned.

“Don’t worry,” She told him, “I’m not doing it anymore. Grow, grow for all I care, just see how little I give a shit! Grow your fucking hair and don’t do a damn thing about it! Do you realize I can’t even find your skin under that mess? We can’t make love until the end of the day when I’m exhausted. I can’t live like this anymore.”

She grabbed a few essentials; a bottle of water, her contact case, her cell phone and the car keys, and headed for the door.

“I’ll be back to get my stuff. In the meantime, why don’t you try taking care of yourself?” She spoke softly, pouting as if the very thought of leaving were so tragic that she couldn’t stay angry. She didn’t slam the door. In fact, she left quietly.

Once he heard the garage door hit the cement he put his shirt back on and headed into the bathroom. He sat on the toilet and massaged his temples for half an hour, going back and forth between justifying himself and trying not to think about it.

He couldn’t get a moments peace. He was constantly inundated with the sight of shelves of hair doodads and hair thingamabobs. A few minutes later, he got so fed up that he took a tweezer in both hands and snapped it in half. He didn’t stop there either. He cracked his electric razor against the tile and shoved every piece— gears, guards, batteries and all— into the toilet, cackled, and flushed. He demolished every plucker, picker, shaver and cutter, to whatever extent he could conceive of, without the aid of a blowtorch.

He opened the box where she kept all her favorite creams, sprays, gels and pastes and poured them into the tub by the liter. Epil-Stop Spray, Epilady, Shave No More, Ultra Hair Away and Veet, even the prescription stuff with the skull and crossbones on the label. One by one, he emptied them out until the tub was so full you could take a bath in it, and then he did. He put the little black plastic stopper in the drain, sat down in the sea of coffee-colored slime, laid back and dipped his head under, hair first.

He lined the tub with the empty containers and laughed as he read the warnings on the back of the bottles

CAUTION: Do not leave in contact with skin for a period exceeding fifteen minutes.

Lying back in the tub submerged up to his neck, he mocked the trivial burn and watched, eagerly waiting to see some effects. He stared at his outline through the glistening muck and didn’t see a thing for over two hours until his hair started to float to the surface. For a while, that seemed to be the best it could do. Then, eight hours later, his skin began to turn white, tan, and finally green, and it stayed green until it seemed like days went by, and he found he could actually pull out his follicles whole. His body kept getting mushier until, twenty minutes before she returned to his apartment, his skin was so soft he could peel it away with a fingernail.

When the door creaked open he rose from the tub, toxins clung to his body and yellow guck dripped to the floor.

“I figure I have an hour, perhaps an hour and a half.”

“Then we shouldn’t waste any time.”

She laid him down on the sofa, and she made passionate love to his melting body, and when she touched him parts of his body rubbed off onto her hands, and when she kissed him his lips stuck to hers. Her pelvis swiveled back and forth harder and harder as his body gelled into the couch, and before the hour was up, most of his skin had been stripped away and developed into a waxy layer over the velour.

“I love you,” she whispered, gripping his exposed muscle in a despairing hug. Afterwards, she collapsed, exhausted, onto a puddle of his marmaladey remains, her head where his chest should be, her tears mixing with his white liquefied skin and tumbling down into bare, quivering residue.