Adventures in laser hair removal

It started exactly a year after 9/11. I had to travel from Boston to Toronto on business that day and was a little nervous. On my return flight out of Toronto the security guy pulled me and my carry on over and started digging in my make up bag.

"There's something in here," he says, giving me a suspicious look.

He digs and finally pulls out a pair of tweezers. He glares at me as if I were planning to singlehandedly shank my way into the cockpit using only a pair of eyebrow tweezers and my cat-like reflexes.

"Oh yeah," I say, "Those are my tweezers. In my makeup bag. Cuz I sometimes tweeze my eyesbrows around the same time that I put on my makeup. Which is also in the bag. Hence me calling it a 'makeup bag.'"

Sometimes I ramble when I'm nervous.

He didn't find me funny. "There's something else," he says, continuing to dig. He fumbles his paws all over my Viva Glam to my chagrin and finally pulls out another set of tweezers.

"Oh. Yeah, those are the ones that I keep in my bathroom at home. I must have thrown them in when I was packing."

He gives me a gimlet eye as if to ask whyever would a girl need two sets of tweezers.

I just look him in the eye, shrug and say, "I'm Greek."

He lets me and my tweezers go.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Now, I'm really not a particularly hairy person, but I have dark hair so I am vigilant. My friend Jen is blonde and says things like, "My hair is so light that I don't even shave my thighs."

Jen is a bitch.

So now here I find myself in Florida where hair removal is practially offered as a college-level course. I decide to investigate, not wanting another grubby security guy mauling my M.A.C.

I make an appointment for a 'consultation' for laser hair removal. The place looks like a dentist's office staffed by girls from the Clinique counter - squeaky clean women with glossy pulled back hair in white lab coats. They give me more papers to fill out than my doctor.

The last form has line drawings of a female body and a male body. "Indicate the areas you are interested in" it says. Hmmm...interested in? I'm tempted to draw circles around the male body, but I decide to behave myself and focus on the female drawing. Part of me wants to just put a big circle around everything but the head, but I just do the right thing and place my circles in the correct areas. Everywhere.

This young lady takes me into an office and talks me off the ledge. "You don't even have hair there, the laser is never going to get that!" etc.

We decide on two major areas: underarms and bikini.

This is the point where all illusions of a doctor's office go right out the window.

"OK," she says, "Do you want the bikini or the full brazilian?"

"Uh...well...uh...I mean, if I'm going to have the procedure, let's have the procedure, you know? But I don't want to be like bald or anything, if that's what you mean."

"OK then!," she says, and whips out a piece of paper with several more line drawings on it.

I blink. No. It can't...what? What am I looking at?

"Do you want the landing strip? The heart? The circle? The natural vee? The smaller vee? The diamond? Or the square?"

"Are you actually showing me hairstyles?"

"Yeah. So what'll it be?"

"Do people actually get the heart?"

"Oh yeah. All the time."

"This is permanent, right?"

"Uh huh."

"So, like there are women out there..right now..who will be like 90 year old women...with a heart shaped box?"

"Well, I never thought of it that way," she giggles, "but yeah."

I am fascinated.

"Do people ask for custom shapes?"

"Oh yeah! Not so much here, but in South Beach the lightning bolt and the chili pepper are both very popular. Especially with the gay men"

This information alone is worth the price of the procedure.

"So, what are you going to get?"

"Um..."

"Well, it doesn't really matter, because you just shave in the shape you want and the technician will go around that area."

"Then why are you sexually harassing me with these line drawings?"


Is it bad that through the entire conversation I wanted to use finger quotes like Doctor Evil every time I said the word "laser"?

Female's translation of M4W photos

You say to-may-to, I say to-mah-to. What you think your photo says and what we ladies think it says can be two totally different things. Who's to say who is correct? Probably a little of both. I wrote this quite a while ago, but was just reminded of it, so here it is.

1) Photo of you with no shirt on, flexing your muscles


Translation: Will cheat on me with some whore from Gold’s Gym.

2) Photo of you in military uniform with references to you having been a civilian for 4 years now.


Translation: Has gained 50 lbs since this photo

3) Photo of you in any type of uniform, especially your National Guard, part-time volunteer EMT, volunteer firefighter, security guard, or StarTrek uniform

Translation: Is insecure and has a deep need for affiliation

4) Photo of you leaning on a car

Translation: Probably lives in parent's basement and has latent homosexual feelings toward David Hasslehoff.

5) Photo of you in over-the-top sports apparel (more than one item, painted face, etc.)

Translation: I will be a Sunday/Monday-night widow, and be competing with [insert team] for attention.

6) Photo of you sitting at your computer

Translation: Get used to this vision of me because I hardly ever leave this chair. ‘I can’t shut down now because there’s a raid tonight and if I leave everyone will die because I’m like only one of 3 healers in my guild.’

7) Photo of you in your bedroom


Translation: Lives with Mommy

8) Photo(s) of you past age 21 where beer has a predominant role


Translation: Alcoholic

9) Photo of you in poor lighting

Translation: He doesn’t want a date. He wants my kidney.

10) Photo of a wide landscape with you somewhere in it

Translation: Oh, that third dot to the left? Hot. Let me email him immediately.

11) Photo of you with a bunch of drunken friends


Translation: I’m going to have to hang around with these bozos?

12) Photo of you with someone else cut out of it


Translation: Very tacky. Who is the blonde anyway? But from the small patch of forehead that I can see, she looks like a skank with premature wrinkles.

13) No photo


Translation: The three M’s: Married, Mongoloid, or Moron

Peanuts, anyone?

OK, I'm seriously already over hurricane season. Rebecca is not good when it comes to hurricanes. In most situations, I am cool as a cucumber. I handle things. But when I hear the term "evacuate low-lying areas" I get all sorts of freaked out.

Being from New England, I'll take blizzards any day. You don't have to evacuate for a blizzard, unless you're like 105 years old or something. You stay put in a blizzard, put your nose up against the freezing window and gauge how fast the snow is coming down by watching it in the triangular patch of light coming from the street lamp. Then, maybe you groan, thinking about all the shoveling you'll have to do. But you stay put, you get out the candles, you play a game of Trivial Pursuit, you keep the TV tuned to Dick Albert the weatherman, and you chill. It's fun and a little special. Mother Nature is blanketing you with a gorgeous, glittery, swathe of snow, not kicking your ass with wind gusts and throwing trees at you like it were the caber toss at the Highland Games.

My version of freaked out is not like girly, shirvel up and cry freaked out. I don't shudder at every thunder clap. I say to myself, "OK, Rebecca, let's prepare. Let's get some shit done." Then I do things that in hindsight make absolutely no sense. Paranoia also sents in.

For example, last year, when I was told to evacuate and had about an hour to do so before they closed the bridge, I ran home to get some stuff together and realized that the spare room which my now ex was using as the shrine to Evercrack (seriously, I am one dark elf away from having no faith in the male species) and the downstairs bathroom that he used were complete pig sties. I had a vision of those newscasts where the wall to a house is ripped off but everything else is intact and everyone watching the five o'clock news can see all your stuff like they were looking in a doll house.

I freaked.

So I cleaned. I scrubbed the bathroom, picked up all the shit in the spare room. Folded clothes. Dusted (?) This is what my brain focused on while awaiting Hurricane Charley: possible public embarassment due to a messy house.

Then I packed a bag and high-tailed it by myself (long story) to my safe little hotel room in.....Orlando. Um, yeah. You guys remember the hurricane took a sharp right and guess what? Went RIGHT OVER my hotel room.

But before that I packed. And when I got to the hotel and unpacked, this is what I found in the suitcase:

My most expensive pair of four-inch heels
Two Corona t-shirts from my "beer girl" days
A bottle of Shiraz
A brand new roll of Bounty paper towels
A giant bottle of rubbing alcohol
My important documents
A flashlight
A 12-snack pack box of planters peantus

So this season, if you see me walking around in four inch heels and a beer girl t-shirt, gripping a bottle of shiraz by the neck, just know that I'm not a drunk hooker. Drunk hookers don't have peanuts and rubbing alcohol. I'm just a freaked out northerner who doesn't yet know how to properly prepare.

This year, I think my hurricane shopping will consist of purchasing a plane ticket to Boston.

Maury Povitch has three shows

OK, in all fairness, Maury has 5 shows, but there are three main ones:

1) Lie Detector Tests
2) Paternity Tests
3) Fat Babies

If Maury ever has an episode that is “My fat baby may not be yours, you lying sonofabitch” I will orgasm before the theme song is over.

No kernel left behind

There is something very disturbing about the first floor ladies bathroom: every afternoon there is one kernel of popcorn in the right hand sink. Just one. Never two. One. It is not the same kernel. It's not there in the morning. It's a brand new kernel every day. What does this mean? I can tell you that I've pondered this much longer than I would like to admit.

Logic tells me that there is someone – hopefully female - on the first floor who has a snack of microwave popcorn every afternoon and that after she is done, she washes out the bowl in the right hand ladies sink, leaving one kernel to sit on top of the drain after which, she exits with her bowl from the right hand door.

But, what is freaking me out is why one? Why not two or three kernels? Or, even better, why not ZERO? Why every day? Is there no variety in this woman's snacking habits? Why is she washing out a bowl in a shallow bathroom sink when the kitchen is only a few steps away? Why have I never seen this person? In summary, what the dilly, yo?

At first glance, one would assume this is a clean person, someone who takes the time to get up from her desk and go wash out the bowl before putting it away in a drawer or on a shelf or some other designated popcorn bowl spot. You might think, Rebecca, give the girl a break. I mean, we've all seen some nasty office habits, not to mention nasty silverware and nasty coffee mugs, so a washing out of anything should be a relief, right? Wrong! Don't let the water fool you: this mysterious female is a dirty, dirty girl!

First of all, when given a choice of bathroom or kitchen in which to wash out dishware, I will take the kitchen. It has things like dishwashing liquid and sponges for example that can be of use during the popcorn bowl washing out process. Now, I've worked in offices that did not have the luxury of a kitchen, so washing things out in the bathroom sink is not new to me nor is it totally unacceptable. I am not a germ-phobe. OK, sometimes I am, like when the Clorox people decide to use a marketing ploy that can only be labeled as "skeeve the audience into purchasing our products." But when one has the option of a well-lit kitchen right next door with proper kitchen-type cleaning stuff in it or a shallow ladies bathroom sink that has been used for the past six hours, however clean looking, that boasts no dishwashing accoutrements, one would think that the logical choice would be clear: go toward the stainless steel. But this mysterious woman has eschewed logic and chosen wrong. Dirty, dirty girl.

Secondly, if you feel I am being too kosher in my belief that bathroom sink equals hands and kitchen sink equals dishes, you must agree with me that a single wet popcorn kernel sitting in the middle of a bathroom sink drain is a nasty thing. You know if you had to, you would use a paper towel or some other barrier to pick it up and throw it away. You're not going to pick up some random person's kernel with your bare fingers, are you? Especially after its been marinating in bathroom sink water. More specifically, if it were your kernel – if you felt ownership of the kernel – would you leave it in the sink in the first place? Wouldn't you wipe your bowl with the rough paper towel from the dispenser on the wall and then pick up the stray kernel with it before you tossed the lot? Wouldn't you? Don't most of us have a 'no kernel left behind' policy? I know I do. "The DG" doesn't though; she doesn't give a flying fuck, and that's just unamerican, leaving a kernel behind to drown.

So now, what to do? I feel I must find this person, see what she looks like. Do I know her? Is she in my department? But how, you ask? Ohhh, don't you worry. No, no, no, don't you worry. I am a Master Sleuth – ok, stalker. I didn't read every Nancy Drew book for nothing. I was pressing "redial" before *69 even existed. I know how to find my white whale, believe me. Some of you might think: well, of course, stake out the first floor ladies bathroom. Amateurs! I will not waste additional time lurking around in a bathroom. What is this, the second floor men's room at Macy's? Oh no. I will not need to put additional time into this. I will take my trips to the bathroom as needed. The kernel will be there. Believe me. BUT! I feel I will find my nemesis only with the absence of the kernel. When the kernel is no more, then I will strike!

If I had a mustache, I would twirl it right now.