Brazilian Bikini Wax: Where No Man Has Gone Before - For Good Reason

Men aren't cut out for hair removal. A guy can eat nails, drive a Harley, bench 700 pounds, and still snivel at the sight of tweezers (or as I like to call them, Devil's Chopsticks). It is baffling that women endure this pain -- repeatedly -- for any cause, including their own salvation.

In the waxing chamber, everything was fresh and folded and surgically white. I took off my jeans and assumed the position, which was like being at the chiropractor only with leg stirrups and on second thought nothing like the chiropractor at all.

A voice interrupted: "You muss be see lucky man."

Enter Blanca, an earthy Bolivian whom you liked immediately even though she was about to unsex you. Blanca's voice, straight from Evita, soothed like a lullaby, but you sensed that she could just as well soothe you with a half-nelson.

For some reason, it only now occurred to me that Blanca would see me naked. I felt like we should get to know each other, have a drink or something, but she went right to work like a mother changing a diaper. She had seen every size, shape, and color, and mine did not bear mention. So it goes.

Blanca pulled out her weapons of destruction -- liquid wax, cloth strips, a box of Kleenex (for my tears). Evidently, the "Brazilian" part has nothing to do with live samba dancers.

"Brazilian es when everysing goes, even where the sun no shine. The French es when you leave a leetle strip..." She diagrammed.

I asked if we could start with a cooler, more conservative country ... say, Poland.

Blanca laughed as she dipped a rag in hot -- extremely hot -- wax. She molded the goo onto my wattle, then rrrrrriped! I arched back like a Slinky and screamed so loud that nothing came out. Somewhere in the distance a dog barked.

"Es okay. Es beautiful. See." Blanca presented a strip of fur.

I looked to her with runny-red eyes the way you do a flight attendant in turbulence: Her smile was all I had.

"See, es almoss over." Rrrrrip!

With every pass, the wax got hotter. I asked Blanca if the heat would max out at some medically safe temperature.

"Hot wax es better," she said. "It grabs see hair from undernease."

Her thoroughness was killing me.