3.02.2004

Here's to the Gorilla Girl, Gobs and Gobs of Love

One downside of our Phoenix visit--besides being in Phoenix--was that I had to shave my legs if I wanted to go swimming in the warm, citrus tree-circled pool next door.

I don't particularly care to hear about how I really needn't have done this. I went balls-out furry for a while, pits and all, as I am all for anything that simplifies the toilette process. But it just didn't work for me.

I caved in on my pits first, mostly because one of the legacies of the D'Artagnan gene set is high-test primal stench. With fur, the only way to counter my natural odor is hardcore antiperspirants. Which I avoid. That cool crystal jobbie? It works. But not over hair as thick as mine. Bare, slightly stinky pits will have to do, as I prefer to hug my children and friends without having them recoil.

A second D'Artagnan hand-me-down is serious body hair. (My poor, poor brothers and their thatchy, thatchy backs.) This plays out for me not in a unibrow, coarse, or all-over way, but rather in a soft brown pelt from knees down. They've been that way since I was a kid, and how much fun do you think it was to be the skinniest, shortest, and furriest? Really fucking fun, oh yeah. Unless you were me.

My mom forbade me to shave my legs, but by fifth grade I couldn't take the teasing anymore, stole one of her little pink Daisy razors, and grimly hacked away until I ended up with a bathtub full of fur (which I then neglected to rinse out). My mom's first thought on seeing the tub was not that I'd disobeyed her but rather that I'd tried to shave the cat. She laughed when she found out it was my fur, and gave me permission to keep on shaving. Every day. Oh, wait. Fuck.

The shins are as gorilla-like as ever. I don't shave them during the winter as it's not cosmetically necessary and I cherish the extra layer of warmth, but they will always be smooth and bare before I don my springtime capris. I remain eternally in fifth grade on this particular issue. I still hate the shaving, and only do it when absolutely necessary. For instance, if it's winter, I'm vacationing in a place where the air and pool are both 90 degrees, and I want to go swimming.

I did remember to rinse out my friends' tub, though.

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