Hot Wax

They say things have a way of sorting themselves out at the right time. Well, the powers that be must have been interested in my renewed blogging vows of yesterday. During a clean up of my inbox, I came accross this little story, which I knocked together for some random module at uni. I don't know whether I should be sharing this, but I figure if it turned up, it must want to be read. Don't read it if you're squeamish. And if you're my mother, kindly shut down your computer now. No, this does NOT confirm all your suspicions. Haha! It is purely fictional - the product of the mind of a bored, brain-addled, procrastinating student.

Well, here it is. Work with me here folks, I'm digging deep by sharing and all! As usual, feedback more than welcome - whether you loved or hated it, etc etc, you know the score. P. S. Sorry the formating is slightly off. Blogger.com isn't cooperating today...








Inessa looked disgusted. She peered suspiciously down at Chris’s bikini line as Chris tried to avert her gaze. Grey eyes challenged brown ones.
‘Why you leave it so long?’ she wanted to know. ‘Your poosy look like goddamn enchanted forest.’

Chris tried to look sheepish. The last time she’d managed to evoke such passion in her beauty therapist was when she’d walked into The Boudoir for her first ever wax. Inessa had sworn at her in Russian the whole time. First, because she had a few hairs, and second because she usually shaved.
‘Shaving is for heathen man,’ Inessa had preached. ‘Hair on poosy, also, is for heathen man.’ You can’t win with this woman, Chris had thought then.
‘You wax, that’s all,’ supplied Inessa. Chris had made a conscious effort to control her thoughts around her since then.
‘So why you leave it so long,’ Inessa asked again as Chris swung herself onto the table. The beautician arranged her jars and bottles with a disconcerting calm.
‘Been busy,’ Chris said with an apologetic grin.
‘Obviously not busy with man. Not by the look of such ugliness,’ Inessa replied, at which Chris found herself at a loss for what to say. ‘So,’ the beautician said, stirring her cauldron of hot wax, ‘you want everything bald like usual?’
‘Yeah might as well. I have to redeem myself in your eyes, don’t I?’
‘Yes, you do. Redeem and all clean. And the bottom as well?’ Only Inessa could make an arsehole sound like an hors d’oeuvre. She insisted on saying certain words in her language.
‘Yes, that too, thanks.’

Inessa smeared the wax with a professional hand. It felt warm and soothing on Chris’s skin. She was now a veteran and didn’t wince when the strips were yanked off.
Her sister, Remi, thought she was crazy. First for waxing at all, and then for allowing ‘a sturdy maiden from Eastern Europe’ close to her precious bits with hot liquid and a spatula. Remi was in her final year of medial school and had just completed a dissertation on medicine in communist Russia. Those days were over, yes she knew that, but as far as she was concerned, it would take centuries for the residues of butchery to be purged from their collective blood. Chris asked her how she ever hoped to be a doctor with such obvious prejudice, to which she’d said, ‘Oh I’m not prejudiced, sister me, just very well informed!’
‘Actually,’ Chris said, ‘can you do a palm tree as opposed to all off?’
‘My goodness!’ (In Russian). ‘You want me to shape poosy beard in shape of palm tree?’ Incredulous grey eyes grew very serious and Inessa’s hand moved slowly toward her cheek as though there were magnets in both parts of the body that had chosen that moment to call on each other.
‘Yeah,’ said Chris. ‘With three coconuts. That would be fun, wouldn’t it? Something different.’

Inessa followed the instructions silently, as though she pitied Chris for an inferior state of mind that made her suggest it. Chris wondered why everyone in her life had opinions about what she could and couldn’t do with her own bikini line.
‘Make sure I see you again,’ Inessa warned as Chris paid for her treatment. ‘Six weeks time, and no such dark forest. Please find man so that you will not keep such ugliness in Victoria’s Secret cotton. Swear to me.’
‘Thank you, Inessa, I’ll see you soon,’ Chris said.
‘Swear to me, I said.’
‘I swear, Inessa, that I’ll be back in six weeks for some more pubic redemption.’
Inessa handed her a small bag of mints and disappeared back into a treatment room.

Chris walked out of the salon feeling good. Her session had turned out really well. She enjoyed the feeling of smugness, as though she knew a secret no one else did. She felt like one of those arrogant Persian cats that rich old ladies seemed to like. Without resistance, she welcomed the strut that her walk seemed to have taken on, and the appreciative glances that the energy around her commanded. She was a woman with presence – not in the typical over ambitious way, but in a soft, earnest way. If people had words etched on their foreheads, hers would be contentment. Not arrogance, not humility, just a keen mellow contentment. The very same vulnerability that made one want to protect her clung to the air about her like a sheen that demanded respect of her and of her vulnerability. They were two separate entities. She was a temple of paradoxes, an odd conglomeration of human emotions and character. She was fortunate, not sly, spontaneous, not impulsive, charming but not over-familiar, not insincere. Complex. People inevitably felt drawn to her. In the dice game of favour, she had been lucky. Concessions were made for her where there was no leeway for manoeuvring – Mrs Smith liked her after all. That was proof enough.

*

Femi’s watch said seventeen ten. Chris should be on her way back by now. He wondered if he should call her. He decided not to. She’s said she’d call him when she got back to the office anyway, so he’d just wait, or try to. Waiting patiently was one of those things that somehow, in the allotment of strengths and virtues, he had missed completely. Instead, his pre-infant person had grabbed firmly onto the most feverish and rabid impatience there was. It was born with him, like Chris’s charm. Screw it, why try, he thought, and dialled her number.
‘Are you still undergoing that heinous torture?’ he asked her when she picked up. He never said hi. He had to hit the ground running; start the conversation with deep pulsating energy that prevented him from going through the usual polite conversation rituals. Cut to the chase was his motto.

She giggled. ‘No, I’m done now. And it’s not heinous torture, it’s therapy. What are you doing?’
‘Oh nothing,’ he said. ‘I’m just sitting at my desk gloating. Guess who’s been commissioned to write Jeremiah Rhamsinth’s biography?’
‘Oh, Femz that’s wonderful, you genius. I’m so happy for you.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘Which is why I’ve got a table at that Tapas place to celebrate. So if you go home and change, I’ll pick you up at eight.’
‘Femi that’s lovely, but I can’t. Not tonight.’
‘But it’s Thursday, of course you can.’
‘I know what day it is, but I can’t. Femi, I have a date.’
‘Wow,’ he said. ‘I guess I didn’t deserve to be told before now.’ He was slightly surprised by the fact that his voice sounded a little shaky and he felt the need to loosen his tie. ‘But it’s Thursday, Chris! We always hang out on Thursdays!’
‘I know. I’m so sorry Femz.’
‘Are you going to sleep with him, Chris, or is that none of my business?’
He could feel a dark temper making its way over to him, and his spine had taken on that distinct feeling, as though someone were slowly counting his discs like an abacus. ‘Well I hope you have fun. I hope he appreciates the beauty therapy you went through especially for him!’

Chris winced as the line went dead. She didn’t want to hurt him. Maybe she should have told Chuky D she was busy. Maybe she could still cancel. But she knew she wouldn’t, because she was twenty six, four years away from old age. She was the only woman in her family who had seen the other side of twenty one without being summarily married off and impregnated. Her cousins, Moji and Tayo were expecting. Remi too had joined the convivial heraldry; she was kept company by her text books and a glinting rock on her finger. Chris’s conversation with her aunts last week had driven her to set up yet another date – the thirteenth in two months. ‘How are you, my dear?’ they’d wanted to know. ‘Any news?’
It was an added nightmare that she had to keep these furtive jaunts from Femi. He would howl with laughter, that she of all people had signed up to Afrocentricdatingdirect. A lot of their days at university were spent laughing at losers who had to resort to online agencies to meet people.

*

Femi took his feet very deliberately off his desk and concentrated on being thirsty. He knocked back the bottle of Red Bull on his desk. The one person he could call when he was upset was the one that had just upset him, so he called his mother instead.
‘You’re the reason my phone bill is always so crazy,’ he said when she picked up.
‘Hi darling,’ said Mrs Smith. ‘I miss you too. How now?’
‘I’m just finishing at work. I’ll grab a Chinese after.’
‘I wish you’d bother to cook. All our foods are available in London now, aren’t they?’
‘Yeah but Mum, it takes forever. I eat that kind of stuff when I go to the Adebayo’s for the weekend, or if I happen to be near Mama Cass. I’d have Mama Cass everyday actually, but our people don’t do delivery yet.’
‘Hmm,’ said Mrs Smith. ‘Just don’t eat too much of that oyibo food o. It’s the reason they all die of funny old age illnesses that turn the brain to oats and short circuit the whole body.’
‘Mum, you sound like a closet racist.’
‘Just promise me you’ll eat properly.’
‘I promise, Mum,’ he said, thankful that no one had overheard the conversation. Femi couldn’t figure out why from the other side of the Atlantic, she still hounded him about food. He was twenty eight years old for crying out loud, but sometimes, like now, it felt like nothing had changed.

‘Nothing’s changed,’ she said. ‘Your father is still campaigning for a motorbike. I keep telling him that I’ll never forgive him if one day, I get a call to say he’s been impaled upside down on a road side tree with the handle bars sticking out of his ears. He drives that Benz at breakneck speed. Why isn’t that exciting enough for him, eh? Anyway my dear, how is Chris? Send her my love.’
The name made him jump. ‘Oh Chris. Yes, she’s fine.’ They both went silent. Femi could just imagine the smirk on his mother’s face right now. Their families had been friends for years and the two kids had grown up like siblings. They were referred to as ‘you guys’ by everyone. All the people they’d ever dated had been gently made to understand that they were a package deal. Two for one. Buy one get one free. A compulsory third wheel. That’s why he was so upset that she hadn’t mentioned this Chuky D fellow. What the hell kind of person was called Chuky D anyway? None the less, they had a friendship that existed chiefly because it didn’t have to, no one owed the other anything.

Mrs Smith did not buy any of that ‘just friends’ nonsense. Never had. Did everyone think people grew that close for nothing? What type of God did they think she served? She wondered everyday when everyone would quit the platonic hypocrisy and let her throw a real party.
Femi felt a pro Chris rally forming in her lips. He could see the words tumbling over each other in her throat, fighting for the opportunity to jump out and annoy him. He hated the bandwagon and all its propaganda, it made him feel awkward. His mother reminded him of the campaigners for the local government election when he was a child growing up in Lagos. He remembered the minivans stuffed with sweaty, indoctrinated people, wailing into the loudspeakers and urging people on the streets to vote for their party. She was the party. And the minivan. And the screaming people. And the driver.

‘Mum, don’t even start this, now.’ He considered telling her that the said Chris, as they spoke, was getting dolled up to be romanced by some desperado from an ethnic website. Maybe that would shut her up and stop her from calling him Baba-Chris. But he couldn’t, not yet. He had to be sure there was something there before he broke the news to his mother. Briefly, he wondered whose little fantasy he was worried about puncturing by saying it out loud – his or his mothers – but he shoved the thought authoritatively from his mind and told it it didn’t exist. Thought, you don’t exist. Aha!
‘Don’t even what?’ she asked with all the subtlety of the nineteen foot Yucca plant she had growing beside the piano in the living room. She was grateful he couldn’t see her face, even though she knew that he knew exactly what she looked like right now. She could hear the knowledge in his voice. Her carefully plucked eyebrow was smeared precariously on the top right side of her forehead and a shameless smile spread across her face like mayo on a carefully made sandwich – all the way to the edge.

‘Nothing,’ he said smiling and shaking his head. ‘Why do I bother with you?’
‘Because I’m your mother and I’m always right,’ she said, eyeing the clock. ‘Anyway darling, I must go. Your father and I had a little something-something planned for tonight and I have to do my hair.’
Over dinner, Mrs Smith hinted to her husband that the living room could do with some new paint for what she was certain was an approaching wedding. Femi’s voice had given him away; something had upset him and she fervently hoped it was Chris. ‘The only people that can hurt us are the ones we care about,’ she said to Jide, who responded, ‘Lola, leave the children alone and eat your chicken.’

*

The doorbell rang in such a way that he knew it was Chris; she was the only one who could make ringing a doorbell seem like the devil’s work. He buzzed her in by stretching his hand over the back of the sofa he was lying in. His eyes never left the screen, and the rest of his body never moved. It was an accomplished art, necessitated by the riveting nature of television.
‘For someone who’s all slick at work, it’s a pity you morph into a stomach scratching lout when you get home. I thought writers despised TV?’
Femi’s eyes swung round to watch her barge in, poised to re-enter idiot box mode. ‘It’s relaxing,’ he said. ‘Shut up.’

She flung her coat, as of habit, on the black leather armchair by the door. Her shoes were deposited beside the coffee table which was a sheet of oval glass cantilevered from beneath the breasts of a naked metal woman. All the flinging was done while she marched through the living room, in the general direction of the kitchen. By the time she reached Femi, the hat and the gloves had been taken off and thrown just a split second before in a trajectory that ended right in his face. She stopped in the kitchen for a drink and peered inside the cupboards. Orange squash or Ribena? Anyone looking at his cupboards would think they both lived there. He hated ‘kiddie drinks’ but always had a variety in stock because that was all Chris drank. When all their friends had grown out of CapriSonne and High Juice into soft drinks and liquor, Chris had remained devoted to her squashes. The only concessions she made were for sparkling water and white wine. Everything else was categorised as poison. She mixed up her drink and hoisted herself onto the kitchen counter.
Then something happened that in all their lives, had never happened before. Femi had perfected the art of lying peacefully side by side on the sofa with his remote control. Even when he did change the channels, he never made mistakes with the buttons, so this had to have been deliberate. She had just jumped off the counter to find out what the novel sound of the TV going off in the middle of a match was about, when he appeared in the kitchen doorway.

They had made up their differenced after the Chuky D incident last week. Chuky D had turned out to be a short, provincial man with a nasal accent and an inordinate amount of vowels in his surname. All night he had lectured her on his views on ‘a woman’s place’ (pronounced by him as airwoomanzplerze) while downing pints of lager and wagging his leg. Try as she might, she couldn’t imagine sacrificing her future a villager just because she was ageing.
‘I have an idea,’ Femi was saying as she tuned back into the now. She also wondered why he was looking like that. It wasn’t his proximity to her that felt weird, after all, it was a small kitchen, but today he looked shy almost, and it was not a look she was accustomed to seeing on his face.
‘Quit the weird face and confess your sins,’ she said, and then discovered that apart from all else he was fidgeting with the hem of his t-shirt. ‘What trouble are you in now?’
‘I know about the dating agency that you signed up to on the sly – ’ he held up his hand to stop her from interrupting, ‘and my Mum is always singing your praises, so what about it?’

She touched a hand to his forehead. Perhaps he had residual malaria parasites in his blood from his last trip home that were just waking up. ‘What about what?’
He pinched her nose. ‘Don’t be dense, Chris. What about us. You and Me?’
Well it’s about time, she risked thinking, and immediately regretted it. What if he happened to pick it up? Out loud, she said, ‘Where’s this coming from?’
‘Here,’ he said, pulling a soppy face and placing a hand on his chest.
‘No,’ she said, laughing. ‘You’re such a weirdo!’ But the declaration sounded feeble because he was now standing in front of her and it was the most awkward moment of their entire lives. She picked up her glass and led the way to the living room. It was all getting a bit too hot and heavy. She wanted to turn the TV on again, to add some noise, and to be in a larger space where she could lie to herself better.
‘Did I shock you?’ he asked, from inches behind her. ‘But you know me, Mr Direct.’
‘We don’t have to, you know, do kissey kissey just yet, do we?’ she asked, suddenly nervous. Then she stubbed her toe on the metal woman’s bottom and sent Ribena flying all over the light grey carpet.
‘No, Chris,’ he said, laughing hysterically. ‘We can just be us for now, while we try and rescue my flat from your blackcurrant destruction.’ He pulled her into a bear hug. ‘Just think about it, hmm?’
‘Promise you won’t say anything to your Mum yet, Femi, and don’t let her sniff it out of you.’
‘What’s with you women and making people promise?’
‘Femi this is so strange.’
‘Is that a yes?’ he asked
She hissed. ‘Who’s being dense now?’
He smiled. ‘So. Here we are.’
They both stared blankly at the carpet stain and for the first time, Chris wondered what on earth she would say next.