How do you prepare for a special weekend of romance? The answer is simple: man waxing.
Hot sex can be tough when there’s a Strawberry Shortcake doll on your bedside table. There are things that turn me on, and then there’s my son’s Lego Starfighter, which does the opposite—just like the zillions of other toys that are scattered around my house. So when my girlfriend told me she’d booked a night at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel as a kind of romantic midwinter staycation, I got excited. I wanted to show her how much I appreciated the gesture, so I Googled the following words: Toronto man waxing.
Fuzz Wax Bar, near Queen and Bathurst, had a spot open the following morning. “It’s my first time—should I do anything before?” I asked the receptionist. “Sure,” she said. “You might want to take some Advil.”
This would be the first time I’d waxed any part of myself. And here I was, going whole hog, waxing my, uh, private parts at the age of 39. Why? I guess my fantasy would go something like this: We’d get into our hotel suite. I’d disrobe. Spotlights would illuminate my newly exposed bits. Angels would provide a flourish of trumpets. Bowled over with wonder, my girlfriend would leap into the king-size, and then…PASSION.
Walking to Fuzz, I felt like everyone I passed knew where I was headed. The girl at the front desk asked me why I was there. I didn’t want to say the term they used, but I couldn’t think of anything else, so finally I just said it: “A Manzilian.”
The aesthetician, Tasha, was an attractive black woman with an infectious sense of humour. “The torture chamber,” she quipped as she showed me to the room. It looked like a doctor’s office. “First time?” Tasha asked after I’d taken off my pants. I nodded.
She inquired whether I had a new girlfriend. “New-ish,” I said. “How did you know?” Tasha explained that new girlfriends were what brought most guys in to see her, and that 90 per cent of her male clients were straight. Tasha’s manner was so relaxed and congenial that I barely registered her spreading a gooey, warm substance on my upper groin. Rip.
I grunted. “That wasn’t too bad,” I said.
“It gets worse as you go,” Tasha said. At that point, I realized the walls in the “torture chamber” didn’t go all the way up to the ceiling. Everyone in the place could hear my grunts and groans.
Uprooting my hirsute hindquarters required a remarkable amount of user participation. It was like a yoga class, there were so many strange positions. Midway through, I craned my head to see what was happening. Tasha shook her head. “It’s better if you don’t look,” she said. I’d worried about unavoidable biological responses—the sort of thing that happens when a woman gets close to a guy’s groin. But the pain was so intense that the only unavoidable biological response happened in my thighs. They were shaking uncontrollably. Then, after about 20 minutes, a remarkably short amount of time, considering, the ordeal was over.
I’d expected to feel…what? More manly. My penis had been hidden since puberty by a mantle of unruly curls—which, with purpose, with macho wherewithal, I’d dispatched in a single act of bravery. I expected a burst of virility, an elevation in my overall masculinity. But I’d forgotten something.
A penis is frickin’ weird-looking, dude. Now that I really could see the thing, it was like, Whoa, that’s what’s down there? CAN SOMEONE GET A BLANKET OR SOMETHING? Cover that sucker up! Plus, the bumps! After this kind of abuse, my pubic real estate resembled the least attractive parts of an uncooked Christmas turkey.
It looked a little less angry by the time Chantel and I checked into our room at the Ritz—a luxurious chamber equipped with the chain’s trademarked cocoon-comfortable bed. Next came the big reveal. Chantel burst out laughing. It was pretty much the response I expected. It was hilarious, yes. But also remarkably sensitive. Just the thing, in other words, to add an extra ingredient to our vacation from the land of Lego Starfighters and Strawberry Shortcake.
