On man-fur, memories and unqualified brazilian waxes. OR: How I nearly melted my nipples. 



There was a guy I dated, a little while ago. He was lots of fun, really charming, cheeky and just generally a lot of fun to be with. One thing that surprised me though, was the sheer amount of hair on him as I started getting him naked. The more clothes he took off, the more of it there was.

It was impressive, to be honest. Long, and a little glossy, it was a bit more like fur than anything else, which, coupled with him being quite short, and certainly curvy, made it quite a lot like shagging an ewok at times. I’m not complaining, though - the sex was great, and actually all that back hair gave me something to hold on to during the more energetic moments.

It got me thinking a little bit, about my relationship with my own hair. I mean, I know the hair on my head is a little different to most people - my faux mohawk or fauxhawk, if you will. In fact, screw whether you will or won’t, you’re listening to me and that’s what I’m calling it now so yeah. Anyway. I’ve had several people say “You’re really cute, but I couldn’t date someone with your haircut, sorry”, as if a haircut were a deal-breaker, like eating with your mouth open, or owning a cat. The mouth open eating thing, by the way, is justifiable grounds for murder. Nothing improves the table manners of everyone else in the room like a swift fork to the jugular of one noisy eater.

The voice are getting louder again, what was I talking about? Oh, yeah, hair. Not so much head hair, though. Rest of hair. Body hair is less of an issue. I mean, I keep things trim all over, but that’s more for me than for anyone else. I suppose it counts as manscaping, but it’s literally just me with some clippers, rather than a team of professionals with special equipment.

I got my chest waxed once, for a fancy dress outfit I was wearing to promote the beauty salon I used to work at (which is a whole other story. Anyway) but my chest just went really red and blotchy and awful, so there’s no way I would cover anything more tender than my chest in hot goo and then rip it off. Even if I don’t lose a testicle or a slice of foreskin, the sheer pain of it would have me screaming.

I have so many stories about that place. The one that sticks in my head the most was a new girl who started at the salon while I was there. Brazilian waxes were our main treatment, and she said she was pretty good at them, so we hired her and off she went to rip some hair out of ladies’ undercarriages. After about a week, we started getting complaints. A lot of complaints. Burns, sore skin, bleeding… It was horrific enough for me to have to hear about them, I don’t want to think about how bad it must have been to have that kind of thing happen on a tender area. We thought it might be a problem with the wax being too hot, or something like that, but we couldn’t find a problem. The complaints kept coming. Eventually, it turned out that this girl had no idea how to do a brazilian wax, but really wanted the job, so she’d said she could. As if “It’ll be fine, I’ll try my best” is the way through something like that. Needless to say, I fired her and spent the rest of the month handing out refunds and aloe vera gel.

I’m not that bothered about body hair, to be honest, as long as it’s hygienic and easy to navigate. No-one likes having to rummage around in there for whatever might be lurking. Especially if there’s not all that much to find in the first place. It’s not so much needle in a haystack, thankfully, more party sausage in a bird’s nest.

I remember being at university though, and really keeping everything short and neat, to the point where my shiny white skin had nothing but a bit of light stubble across it. And if you never have to experience the itchy torture that is bum hair growing back, then I have nothing but envy for you and your perfect life.

Also, as I’ve grown a little older and more confident about my body, and finding myself caring less about what other people think, I just kind of let it grow a little more. I find it kind of sweet to encounter a completely smooth, hairless body nowadays.  I always find myself wondering, midway through proceedings, whether I’m about to find myself on some sort of register. It’s kind of acceptable for the twinky kind of early twenties sort of boys to have nearly no hair, but once you hit thirty, artificially removing it all is a bit bizarre. It’s a bit like shagging a ken doll, and I usually find myself looking for the first signs of regrowth, then trying to work out how long ago they get it all removed… A bit like counting the rings of a tree to see how old it is, or a tracker looking at the grass and working out which way their quarry went. Things like this are why I’m such a sexual tyrannosaurus, obviously.

Since waxing my chest didn’t go well, I did try veeting it. The chemical hair remover stuff. I learnt from my earlier trauma not to have it waxed, but wanted to have a clear, hairless chest for my first attempt at drag. So I bought a bottle of veet and had a go. Except that stuff isn’t fun either. I rather foolishly sprayed it on before reading the bottle properly, and then the fumes got in my eyes a bit so the writing was a little blurry and I read “Leave on for no more than 3 minutes” as “5 minutes”. At around the 4-minute mark, things started tingling, so I jumped in the shower and washed it off. It’s a good job I did. Even at that amount of time, my nipples felt weird. When I got out again and tried to towel myself down, my big fluffy towel was like sandpaper across my nips. I’d managed to chemically burn my nipples, to the point where even a gust of air across them had me gritting my teeth, let alone trying to put a top on over them.I had to wear massive plasters over them for about a week until they healed. Surpirisingly enough, that was enough to put me off.

So yeah, I usually just trim with my clippers. Although, even with those, the risk of injury is pretty high. Once, I was trimming away around my nethers, reducing the jungle to more of a hedge and somehow a bit of scrotum got caught in the blades. I swear I made an entirely new noise, unknown to man or beast. My mouth had never made that noise before, and it’s not even one I think I could describe. I hope never to make it again. There were tears streaming down my face as I removed my mangled soft bits from the jaws of my clippers, like getting a plastic bag out of a lawnmower.

You’d think, after disasters like that, I’d just leave things alone to grow wild.  I know Nick Offerman, a hero of mine, recommends letting everything grow wild and free and embracing the animal in you in that way, but I’m not comfortable with everything getting overgrown. Not least because whenever I do that, and things get all long and shaggy, in the heat of the moment, some overenthusiastic tart will grab at the good stuff and manage to get a few long, flowing pubes in their hand as well, and then their motions end up pretty much ripping the hairs from my skin. And there’s nothing that’s more of a boner-killed than having several of your man-hairs plucked with each flick of their wrist. So, I keep things neat, but not super short.

I think a lot of it is a confidence thing. You have to work with what you’ve got. If you’re hairy, be hairy, and proud. If you’re not, be smooth and proud. And if like me, you’re somewhere in the middle, be that and proud, too. As with most things, confidence is key. That’s where the sexy is, not in the number of hairs on your body.

Just remember to keep it clean. When I was about 14, and very proud of the thatch that was coming in, I used to shampoo and condition them at the same time as my head hair. I had the glossiest, most well-tended penis garden that ever was.