Another Day, Another Embarrassment

The way some people talk about New York, you’d think it was the New World with streets paved in gold. Apparently NYC boasts a number of conveniences that are hard to find in other cities, namely dirt cheap laundry, taxis, massages and manicures along with gyms open 24 hours a day. These somehow make up for the fact that a value meal at McDonalds costs $10 and rent prices are through the roof.

I conveyed my concern to Johanna about not having laundry facilities in my building and she responded with a child-like excitement: “Oh no, in New York you don’t DO your laundry, you send it out!” Meanwhile every time our coworker Mario Grande (yes that’s his real name and no he isn’t a porn star) heads up to NYC for business, he returns refreshed and rejuvenated from his $40, hour-long deep-tissue massage in which “a little Asian woman kicks the shit out of” him. He claims it feels amazing.

After a recent episode in a local salon, I’m looking forward to saying goodbye to Washington, DC’s idea of a bikini wax.

Don’t get priggish on me here. A bikini wax is a completely normal thing for a person who is (a) going to the beach and (b) has sensitive skin susceptible to razor burn. My understanding is that you can get a decent waxing at a clean salon for $15-$20 in New York. In D.C. I’ve wound up paying $40-$50 before tip; it’s absurd.

I found one place that I patronized a couple of times for the bargain price of $25, but the Eastern European waxing lady was more talkative than I would have preferred. Being on the modest side, I thought talking about the weather would be fine, but some of her topic choices were less than kosher.

So I decided to start calling around to places before heading out the door. I spoke to no less than 5 salons, where the receptionists conveyed a rate of $45. I even spoke to one person who went into great detail about the difference between a Brazilian, Caribbean and regular (American?) wax. This far exceeded any lines crossed by the Eastern European Waxing Lady, so even if their rate was $10, I wouldn’t have made an appointment.

On the brink of despair, I called “Janet’s Nail Palace.” There was a bit of a language barrier, but the rate was very clear: $20. Jackpot.

When I showed up at Janet’s, I recognized the place, and I can assure you, it was no palace. In fact, it was the salon that I referred to as “that place where they don’t wash out the foot tubs.” Nevertheless, I was won over by their cheap fee, so I talked to the receptionist who handed me off to the Vietnamese Waxing Lady. I followed her to the back of the store and she motioned me to follow her into a room. I took one step into the room and recoiled noticing that there was already a customer in there. She appeared to be getting a facial and her eyes were closed.

“Oh, ummm, should I just wait?” I asked VWL.

“Curtain!” VWL said as she pointed to a shower curtain that appeared to divide the already tiny room into 2 shoeboxes. I thought for a moment about just leaving, because I’ve experienced a lot of bizarre occurrences at waxing establishments, but never have I shared a room during the excruciating procedure. It was too late though. I warily leaned back onto the crinkly, paper-covered table and, lifted up my skirt. For a moment I remembered a story my mother likes to occasionally recount. When I was 3 years old, I was at the airport and went up to a strange man, lifted up my skirt and said something along the lines of “look at my pretty panties.” It was kind of a weird thing to do, but I was only 3. This time around I was old enough to know that I would probably regret this.

The process was endurable, despite a few yelps I let slip. That is, until the woman giving the facial needed something on my side of the curtain. She pushed the curtain back about halfway. I looked up at her shocked, as if caught red-handed. “Can’t she wait 30 more seconds?” I wondered to myself. And then I turned my head more to the left to get a look at the customer receiving the facial. It appeared that her facial was over and she had moved onto something like an eyebrow wax or a nose-hair clipping. She no longer had her eyes closed; rather, she was staring right back at me as my waxing lady asked, “Do you want me to take a little more off the top?” I could only see her disembodied head, so I pray that she had a similar view of me, but either way my face was the color of dismay: pomegranate red. A moment later the process was done and I was running for the door contemplating the virtues of Nair.

There are a lot of things D.C. does well: scandal, cocktail parties, sanitary public transportation. However cheap and non-humiliating seem to be mutually exclusive in the bikini waxing realm. Maybe this incident was just something I needed to toughen me up before enduring the many embarrassments awaiting me in NYC. If so, mission accomplished.