Harley Riding Chin Hair

It's not something you'd notice from spitting distance, but if you look at me up close, you'd discover I have hair on my face. Not blond wisps. Not peach fuzz. I don't have anything that sounds like a chick drink sprouting from my chin. I wish I did. The species I have is a few shades darker, more sinister and not the kind you can bleach with hair cream. It's black and curly like pubic hair, only it's not the soft Chia-pet like puff commonly found below; it's much coarser and much tougher -- which leads me to believe it spends its spare time in leather chaps bandying about on a Harley.

It alarmed me, this alterna-meta-strain of hair, in a way that I haven't been since my first UTI flared its ugly head. If you know what a UTI is consider yourself unlucky. For the uninitiated, a UTI is a Urinary Tract Infection wherein the linings of one's vagina feel like it's been baked with poison ivy and glazed with mosquito bites.

At 14 I'd never heard of a UTI but I was aware of another acronym: VD. Though I'd never actually been in a position to contract one, my vagina was telling me otherwise, so my teenage mind (often prone to flights of fancy) went to work and I convinced myself that I'd turned into a human clap trap. I was so ashamed that I kept it to myself for weeks until, one day, after countless hours of scratching my crotch on the corners of chairs and nearby lampposts, I'd had enough. I went and got tested and finally learned the beautiful truth.

Here I am again, years later, and my female body -- an enigma that has never ceased to amaze and humble me -- has fused the stick-to-itivness of the pubic hair with the coarseness of the mustache hair in order to create this whole new strain of lady chin hair. If the medical community wants my two cents, which I'm sure they do, I would have them name it the Mandibular Marauder, for whenever these unruly hairs appear, they wreak pain and insecurity on every girl that comes cross their path.

So one morning, I decided to wage a war on these rough beasts. I seized hold of my tweezers and went and pulled and plucked the unholy invaders into an early death. But in my eagerness, I didn't heed the age-old adage (which has been attributed to Athena), "You pluck one hair and six more will come to its funeral." Now more marauders have taken the recently departed's place, and they are currently winning the crusade for domination over my chin.

The most humiliating part of this process is not the actual plucking, but the place in which I do it. The light in my bathroom is dull and that emits almost no natural light, so the best place for extraction is in my car, actually the mirror on the back of the sun visor at about 10am. My reflection at that hour is so clear and detailed it's like my own personal HDTV screen. But this channel isn't showcasing the individual blades of grass on a freshly mown football field, it's illuminating the imperfections on my face and chin. My pores are suddenly the size of manhole covers and my facial hair is as thick as telephone wire and extraction becomes masterful and precise, not clumsy and futile; just a flick of the wrist and they're gone. I try to do the plucking while I'm parked, but if I'm late or on the way to a meeting, I have to do it on the fly because who in their right mind would hire a woman with pubic hair coming out of her chin? I wouldn't, would you?

It's an idiosyncratic relationship between us, me and my chopper-riding Harley hairs. Like a barnacle on a whale, they struggle for parasitic survival -- while I struggle for femininity and beauty against the long-odds hope that I won't end up walking the stages of a circus with the sign "Bearded Lady" dangling from my neck.

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Comments

[aurora50]

My step-mom always had a tweezers in the ashtray; finally one day I saw her...at a stop light...

now, I have a $10 battery operated minishaver that does the job and I can use it in the bathroom. It's also great for cleaning up around the eyebrows..­.but still carry tweezers in the car for that last minute mirror check!

[Reiziger]

Electrolysis: the best money a woman can spend on herself. Zap them things, honey.