PUBES: A Love Letter to My Mom

I was home for the holiday this past week and whenever I’m home I can’t help but think about… pubes. Because my mom has a lot of them. She’s got a big ol’ bush I’ve seen a lot throughout my life. And while her bush seemed oh so natural and normal when I was little and didn’t know any better, now that I’m older and out in the world, I’m constantly shocked by the surface area and sheer depth of Mom’s bush compared with most of what I’ve seen since I left home. I’ve been a little obsessed with pubes lately, because it occurs to me that I don’t necessarily know what my girlfriends are rocking in their nether regions. And I want to know. Call me crazy but I want to know what everyone’s got going on down there.

I guess I’m the only person who was surprised to find that Jennifer Lawrence is totally shaved in her nethers. I finally caved and looked at the leaked photos (who has the self-control not to look, I mean really).

“Are we surprised that J.Law is totally bald down there?” I ask my friend Heidi.

“No. Everyone is.”

Heidi isn’t. I know that for a fact. I was at the birth of her son.

I share with her my recent experience with the little Jewish Man who criticized my landing strip.

“You have a landing strip and he complained?!” Heidi looks shocked and appalled. I think this is a reasonable reaction. I too was shocked and appalled, thinking at the time that I probably had a lot less pubes than a lot of chicks out there, and he should be lucky. I, for one, thought that Gaby Hoffmann was single-handedly bringing back pubic hair with the flashing of her admirable bush in both Girls and Transparent. Apparently, I was wrong.

This realization makes me want to interview every single one of my girlfriends and find out, once and for all, what kind of bush (or not) they’re growing.

I text a nude photo of myself to my best friend Sadie because I recently sent the same pic to Bartender and had not received any response (validation) in return.

“Wow. This photo makes me feel like I have a lot of pubic hair,” she laughs on the other end of the phone.

“Really? What kind of bush are you rocking?” I ask, eager as always to talk about pubes.

“Oh I don’t really do anything to it anymore. I just let it do its thing.”

She explains to me that she used to wax and groom and all that shit, and then she read Caitlin Moran’s How to Be a Woman, and there was that whole section about how women should just leave their bushes alone. How women are meant to have bush and we should stop trying to look like little girls:

“In fact, in recent years I have become more and more didactic about pubic hair—to the point where I now believe that there are only four things a grown, modern woman should have: a pair of yellow shoes (they unexpectedly go with everything), a friend who will come and post bail at 4 a.m., a fail-safe pie recipe, and a proper muff. A big, hairy minge. A lovely furry moof that looks—when she sits, naked—as if she has a marmoset sitting in her lap.” (Caitlin Moran, How to Be a Woman)

“That was a turning point for me. I was like fuck it. And now I basically act sort of like a dude. Keep it clean but expend as little energy as possible,” Sadie tells me.

Wow. I’m impressed. Especially since my friend is a single, on the market woman in her 20s. Actively going on OKCupid dates and having sex with relative strangers. In a similar situation myself, I can’t imagine not grooming. It’s one thing if you’ve already got a boyfriend and you get lazy about the upkeep. She does live in Brooklyn, however, and I feel the New York aesthetic might be a little less porn-y than in LA.
I ask if a guy has ever said anything about it.
"I've never gotten any complaints," she says. We agree that good guys don't care.
"Do they go down on you?" I pry further.
"Well, I don't really like that."
I laugh. "Oh, so it's a defense mechanism to keep them from going down there."

Then she asks, “Dude. Is that laser hair removal reversible? You should fucking grow a bush and just see what it feels like.”

I deflect this suggestion by explaining that I feel sexier when I’m groomed.

“You should just try it,” she encourages me.

A couple days later, Sadie admits that, “After we talked last time I did lots of shame grooming.” This upsets me—I tell her I love that she has a loud and proud bush and don’t want her to change the way she feels about it because of me. It sometimes feels like our womanly pride is too precarious and easily toppled. Maybe I should grow a Bush.

Truth be told, with the laser hair removal I’ve gotten on my bikini line, I’m not sure how substantial of a bush I could actually grow at this point. I remember reading an article about merkins in Hollywood and how Kate Winslet had to wear one in The Reader because she couldn’t grow a full period-appropriate bush due to years of waxing in her youth. (The Reader is set in the 1930s, when getting a Brazilian simply wasn't an option.)

“Maybe the reason I feel sexier shaved is because I associate big bushes with my mom,” I wonder aloud.

Then we start musing about whether we think pubes are still political. And whether choosing not to shave is still a meaningful act, or if it’s just a personal choice thing at this point. I’m not sure. I mean, I’m a feminist and I have a pretty groomed situation. I don’t know if it would make me more of a feminist if I let that shit grow. Just like I don’t believe that hair color defines who you are. I choose to be a blond and don’t think that makes me any less smart.

In the town where I grew up, and where I spent Thanksgiving with my parents, the women not only no doubt rock formidable bushes under their homemade hemp skirts, many of them also enjoy some pretty serious armpit hair. And that is something I NEVER SEE in LA.

My friend Heidi tells me she kinda wants to let her pits grow but that she always lets it get to a certain point and then shaves.

“People treat you differently when you have hairy armpits,” she shares with me.

“Really? Are you sure that’s not just your own self-consciousness?”

“No! I swear to God, they treat me differently. They’re not as friendly. They look at you a certain way.”

This surprises me because Heidi runs in a pretty Earth Mother crowd. She slings meat at the farmers market amongst a flock of sustainable, organic, Los Angeles hippies. Even these people judge armpit hair?

I remember seeing an Us Weekly with Julia Roberts on the cover. She was wearing a sleeveless shirt and had her arm raised, ostensibly waving to fans. Under her arm, there was a little flurry of reddish armpit hair. Obviously this was the reason she was on the cover of this magazine, and the public was going ballistic. America's Sweetheart has body hair?! I remember feeling a little inner sigh of relief. Ahh Julia Roberts is a human woman who grows hair under her arms. Furthermore, in my young eyes, this immediately made my mom seem instantly cooler. For she too had hairy armpits all throughout my childhood. Now she shaves.

When I’m home for Thanksgiving, Mom tells me a story I’ve heard before but I always enjoy hearing again. When she lived in NYC in her youth, one Valentine’s Day, she shaved her pubes into a heart and bleached one half of it blond and dyed the other half black. She presented this “gift” to her boyfriend at the time, who was a designer and told her that her little romantic effort “lacked definition.” I tell her if you did that to a guy in his 20s now, he would run out of the room screaming.

I know at least a couple of my girlfriends have a fully shaved/lasered situation going on down there. No hair at all to speak of. One of my girlfriends who usually goes totally bare is doing a full nude scene in a low-budget sci-fi film and wants to know my opinion on what kind of pubic look she should rock. I suggest she leave a little triangle of hair because we’ve got a responsibility to not publicly propagate this notion that women should be totally hairless down there. I suggest it as a political statement.

Best Guy Friend chimes in.

“You should leave a little hair on top because it’s more aesthetically pleasing.”

This surprises me coming from him, who is usually so verbally opposed to hairy pussy because he doesn’t want to get hair in his mouth when he’s going down there. He explains that he doesn’t mind hair on top, he just doesn’t want it inside the pussy. And to be fair, he too is very groomed. He and I then get online and start looking for examples of good and bad pubic hair. I show him Bianca Stone, who is a porn star known for having an incredibly hairy pussy. Best Guy Friend can’t even stand to look at the photo of her spread-eagle. He can’t deal with the hair between her vagina and asshole. He just can’t.

When I go to the Korean Spa, I always enjoy looking at the different pubic variations. It is Los Angeles after all, so many women are pretty well groomed. But I don’t see many totally hairless pussies. Most women have something comparable to what I have going on. I love seeing the different sizes, shapes, and colors of women walking around totally unselfconscious. Strolling from one hot pool to the next. It’s also amazing to see all the different varieties of breasts. No breast is alike. I always feel an incredible sense of calm at the Korean Spa—like this is what the world would be like with no men. Not that I want a world without men (that would be boring), but there is something so peaceful about a room full of just women. Also because everyone is just letting their bushes and business hang out for the world to see, and no one gives a fuck. I once glanced across the room and saw a woman lying on her back on the heated floor. Her blanket had slipped and I found myself staring right up her vagina. I thought, how great is it that this is acceptable behavior at the Korean spa? Can you imagine if you were at a restaurant and you saw up a woman’s skirt and into her vagina, how appalled you would be? Not here in this Paradise without men, known as the Korean Spa.

I took my Mom to the spa when she was visiting me in LA. As we moved from the incredibly hot mugwort tea pool into the cold dip, I was suddenly overcome with love and emotion and I almost started to cry as I looked over at this woman who birthed me and who has been with me since the beginning. As I opened my mouth to express myself in some cheesy and heartfelt way, trying to keep the potential tears at bay, Mom eyed the parade of women walking past us, their crotches at eye level.

“Women in LA don’t have much pubic hair do they?” She said. I smiled and followed her gaze. No, Mom, no they don’t.

The Pussy Knows

He shows up to Urth Cafe an hour late wearing a shirt that says THE PUSSY KNOWS. I can smell his breath from across the table—hot and musty—and his shirt is damp when we hug.

“I’ve got so much energy flowing through me right now.”

He has just come from a seminar on the female orgasm. On his OKCupid profile, he is a self-proclaimed “female orgasm expert.” Obviously, this is why I’m here.

We talk about Law of Attraction (which he doesn’t believe in), and about how people are much more intuitive than they realize (which we agree on). To demonstrate this principle, when the food runner comes to our table carrying a slice of coconut custard pie and a turkey burger, my date insists he guess which belongs to whom.

“Come on, man, you know the answer.”

The food runner looks flustered and continues to repeat the names of the items, as if we haven’t heard.

Eventually, Orgasm Man gives up and sighs, “the pie is for her.”

I eat my pie with gusto, and he smiles at me, "You have a healthy sense of your own appetite."
"I love food!" I exclaim.
"Not just with eating," he says with a suggestive wink.

Later, he puts his hand on the table between us and I know I’m supposed to put my hand on his. I do, feeling the sweat gather in my palm. He stares into my eyes and we don’t say anything for awhile. Then, he smiles.

“I felt that. That wave you just sent through my body. I can feel it at the base of my cock.”

My mouth twitches into a snicker, but I choose to stay in the game. Also, I’m intrigued. In his very first message to me on OKCupid, he had said, “I find myself standing amongst a ton of people stroking pussy and for some reason in this moment I want to say hi.” I wondered if this was a metaphor—turns out it wasn’t, he actually teaches workshops in which men and women couple off and the man spends fifteen minutes stroking the woman's pussy. So, I knew what I was getting into with this guy, and it doesn’t particularly surprise me when he starts talking about the sensations he's feeling in his cock. However, I do get a hell of a kick out of the fact that this is happening over coffee at Urth Café.

I have to say, I don’t feel much sexual chemistry with this guy. It’s not that he’s not attractive, it’s just that by talking a lot about sex and what’s going on with his cock, the whole sexy game is demystified in an unsexy way. However, I am convinced that this Female Orgasm Expert has to be dynamite in bed. I don’t think that’s an unfair assumption.

At some point, after another long bout of staring into each other’s eyes, he asks, “Do you want to make out?”

I say, “Sure. In the Coffee Shop?”

“No,” he smiles.

And so we leave.

He walks me to my car and then we stand facing each other and, in slow motion, move closer and closer until our noses are touching. Then we slowly bring our mouths and tongues together, and he starts moaning, apparently very into it. I have to say, I am still more amused than turned on.

“Do you want to have sex?” he asks, matter-of-fact.

“Sure,” I say. Despite my incredible lack of horniness, I feel like turning down sex with the orgasm expert is not a smart move.

Then we start to work out logistics. I live East Side, he lives West Side, we met in the middle. I also have an important meeting the next day, and do not want to stay up all night fucking.

“Couple things. I have my period--“

“Don’t care.”

“And I have a big meeting tomorrow so I need to go to sleep soon.”

“I come custom,” he says. “Whatever you want, we’ll do it. I can come over, fuck you for 20 minutes and leave. You can come over and spend the night, or not. Whatever you want. What do you want?”

To be honest, if I listen to my instinct, I want to go home. Alone. I want to crawl into bed and get lots of sleep. But I feel like I have already agreed to the sex and I should probably follow through on that.

“Let’s fuck in the car,” I say.

“I knew you were going to say that,” says the Psychic Orgasm Expert.

We walk to his car, actually his roommate’s SUV he has borrowed for the night. He’s parked on a residential street that’s very well-lit and there are several people milling about. He clears out the trunk, puts down the back seats, makes a pretty functional bed. At this point, logistics are overwhelming passion and I try to think of how I’m going to get myself more in the mood. I pull out my tampon and, with no trash in sight, deposit it in a Recycling bin.

“Sorry, Recycling,” I say.

We then decide to move the car so we get back inside and drive around, looking for a darker, less inhabited spot. We park and crawl into the back.

He pulls off all his clothes, saying, “No time for the sexy undressing of each other.”

I’m wearing a dress so I leave it on. He doesn’t have a condom, but fortunately I do. He puts it on, gets on top of me, and pulls a boob out of my dress.

“You’ve got great tits.”

He plays with them a little, but then immediately starts to push his erection into me. I shift slightly, trying to accommodate him.

“Relax,” he says. So I just lay there while he sticks it in dry, feeling a little sore from the lack of a warm up act.

Then he fucks me for like fifteen minutes. At some point, he says, “This is the point where I would usually ask if you want to get on top.”

We just keep on doing what we’re doing. Every time I try to adjust myself to get into a position where I might possibly come, he tells me to “just relax.”

After a little while, he says, “I’m going to come inside you.” And then he does.

He lies on top of me for a bit, then rolls over, and starts getting dressed.

“That was awesome,” he exclaims.

I just lie there in the dark, thinking ‘that was it?’

He massages my legs for a couple minutes, and then it’s time to go.

For all those pussy-stroking workshops, he doesn’t stroke my pussy at all. Not even for a second.

He drives me back to my car and invites me to a workshop he’s teaching on Monday near where I live.

“I think I have something on my calendar for that day.”

I drive home, feeling a little grossed out. I don’t usually fuck strangers in cars, but the goddamn Female Orgasm Expert? I feel like I’ve been scammed. I look him up online and he is who he says he is—he’s a partner in an organization that specializes in female orgasm. He has youtube videos talking about it, he’s legit. People pay him to teach them how to give a woman pleasure—what? Then I get a little sad for the state of affairs between men and women—if this guy has no fucking idea about female orgasms, it doesn’t leave much hope for the rest of them.

That was Thursday. This is Friday.

I feel I can’t write too much about my second OKCupid date because, in my drunkenness, I accidentally told him about my blog, and I make it a rule not to write about anybody that might potentially read this. 

HOWEVER, there are some details that simply cannot be left unwritten.

My second OKCupid date is with a short Jewish man. I’ve been messaging with this person on and off for like six months. Early on, in reaction to something he said, I jokingly responded, “I don’t think this is going to work.” He countered with, “Well, it was worth a shot. I guess we should part with as much dignity as possible. So, uh… Nice rack.” Not gonna lie, his bluntness/ rudeness had kind of turned me on, and I decided to objectify him back: “And you look like the porn star James Deen, so I’ll enjoy that later…” Which was actually true, he did remind me of James Deen, which was 90% of the appeal. Then he said, “Yeah, I get that… a lot. Though more in person. Take that how you will. Or take that how you’d prefer. But, you know, take it.” This had my triangle throbbing a little, and again I was intrigued. Then I asked, “So you look like James Deen, but do you fuck like James Deen?” To which, he essentially said yes. As with Orgasm Man, this seemed an opportunity too good to pass up.

Turns out, he looks less like James Deen in person. We meet at what he calls a “dive bar” and to me looks like a nicely-lit Chinese restaurant. He’s nicer in person than his snarky online personality. And he’s clearly nervous, laughing a lot and too loudly. As the drinks flow, the snarkiness reemerges and he starts giving me sideways glances and kind of talking down to me. His condescension is annoying but also annoyingly sexy. We move closer and closer as the night progresses, and eventually we start making out in the bar.

His place is walking distance, so we head out at 2am, stopping at a 7 Eleven on the way so he can buy a cheap bottle of red wine. I comment that this particular 7 Eleven is the “crackiest” one I’ve ever been too. Which is true, and I’ve been to lots of 7 Elevens in my day. He then comments that I’m the “whitest” person he’s ever met. I notice that he has a bit of a thing about whiteness, because he was born in the Ukraine and grew up in a very white suburban town on the East Coast, where he was the “most ethnic” kid in school. He still looks pretty white to me.

He tells me that there are two Korean guys living in his apartment—his landlord apparently rented to them without asking him, and they don’t speak English or talk to him at all.

“I’m going to make friends with them,” I exclaim, drunkenly.

“You’re like the biggest seven year old in the world,” he tells me, not for the first or last time that night. I find it hilarious every time he says it.

We don’t see any Koreans when we arrive at his place, but there’s a curtain in the corner of the apartment, and I guess they’re living behind it. We beeline for his bedroom, where we make out on the couch and he pulls off my clothes.

“You look good naked,” he says.

He moves us to the bed, and we have sex. It’s actually pretty hot—he’s aggressive and passionate. At one point, he sucks too hard on my tongue and I groan and push him away. “Aw,” he teases, condescendingly.

After we have sex, I’m sprawled out naked on his bed. He points at my crotch.

“This is unusual,” he says. I look down. Everything looks in order to me.

“This landing strip. I haven’t seen a girl with pubic hair in years.”

Truth be told, I have very little pubic hair, and I’m surprised he’s pointing it out.

“I guess it depends on the kind of girls you’re fucking,” I say.

“Not necessarily. A girl could be a saint and she still would have shaved pubes.”

What?

“It has nothing to do with sainthood, it’s cultural,” I respond. “Does it bother you?”

“No, I don’t mind. I’m just not big on hair.”

I wish I could show you a photo of this guy naked and how completely COVERED IN HAIR he is. I’m surprised that someone this hairy has the audacity to point out the like square inch of hair on my entire body.

“I don’t usually date white girls,” he says. Here we go again with the ethnic profiling. “At least not ones as All-American looking as you.”

“Really? I don’t think of myself as All-American looking.”

There’s that sideways glance again. “You look like a cheerleader. Were you a cheerleader in high school?”

If I had liquid in my mouth, I would do a spit take.

“I was a theatre nerd!” But thanks for not listening to a goddamn word I've said all night. 

He suddenly seems annoyed with me, as if now that he’s come, he realizes he’s fucked an “All-American white cheerleader girl” and feels bad about it, or something. I don’t know. I get up to leave.

“Where are you going?”

“You seem annoyed or something. I think I’m gonna go home.”

“Come here,” he extends his arms. I pull on my pants.

He grabs me and pulls me down on the bed. Takes off my pants. And fucks me again.

I don’t come, he doesn’t seem to care. I head for the bathroom, naked, and I can hear someone in there running the faucet. I guess the Koreans are home.

At 4am, I walk the five blocks or so back to my car, and I wonder if I should have stood up for myself more. If I owe it to the next woman who sleeps with this guy to tell him he has no right to judge anything on my body—I have a banging body and he’s a short hairy little man. I wonder, like I always do after an orgasm-free One Night Stand, if I’m supposed to point out to these dudes that I didn’t come, and that they might try harder next time. Or at all. Or if I should wait to be asked. Orgasm Man didn’t ask me if the sex was great, he thought it was "awesome". I like to think if he had asked, I would have told him. I want to think I’m a good communicator in the bedroom, but I think I’m learning that guys really have no fucking idea and they need to be hit over the head with the cold hard facts. Even the ones who claim to be Orgasm Experts or say they fuck like James Deen. Perhaps they set the bar too high for themselves, and then pussy out and decide not to even try, because they know they can’t live up to the expectations they’ve built. Why would they do this? And why do I continue to fall for it?

The little Jewish Man’s follow up later that night: “You know, all in all, that wasn’t a bad date. Or maybe it’s just been a while for me.” I’m not sure how to respond to this.
“I’ll choose to take that as a compliment,” I say.