another trip to the beauty salon

last night it was once again high time for me to subject myself to a facial waxing treatment - time had gone by since the last time and 'it' had grown and since payday was last week there were sufficient funds available to take the trip.

on the way to a friend's house I stopped at the hotel that has waxing facilities and enquired about a free appointment - they attended to me straight away. the girl was cute and although they sometimes lack intuition and creative spirit the waxing of facial hair does not require much of either - or so I thought.

so I lie down on the bed and start relaxing into the treatment. the first part is straight forward but painful. we come to the second part - the eyebrows. those of you who know me know that my brows grow to a fairly impressive size when left to their own devices; runs in the family... so I said (as I have learnt to on previous occasions) 'thin style' - this usually works just fine for what I need. I close my eyes and let her do the job.
as usual without seeing what's going on it feels like she's removing my entire eyebrow - from experience, however, I know that upon opening my eyes I find that they'd done a good job. so I try not to get too stressed out about the fact that she keeps applying layers of wax followed by frantic plucking, followed by more wax. eventually I am invited to open my eyes and check in the mirror whether this was what I wanted.

I open my eyes - lift the mirror to my face - and my expression goes into 'terror' followed by the exlamation 'OH. MY. GOD.' - the poor girl is petrified. but she should be: she managed to remove the half of the eyebrow nearer the ear completely bar about 3 hairs whilst the part nearer my nose is pretty much identical to what it was 10 minutes before... not quite the 'thin style' I'd had in mind. I looked at my reflection in disbelief - and then said - ok, this is not what I wanted, but can you at least thin out the part nearer my nose (just in case she was going to remove the three remaining hairs also), kind of indicating with my finger that I meant to make them narrower by waxing off the top of the bushy bit horizontally. I recline, close my eyes and rack my brain for a mantra I could sing whilst she dollops more wax onto my eyebrow and: oh yes - removes half of what remains - vertically. when I open my eyes again I can see that my eyebrow is way too short for the size of my eye.
I exclaim again - and the poor woman is by that point so distressed she's not quite sure how to handle it. I tell her to stop working on my right brow - I have a feeling it would only get worse from hereon forth. the only explanation she offers is: 'I don't have much experience with eyebrows' - no kidding!

so I recline again and she gets to work on my second brow. whilst I lie there I think to myself should I have mentioned that faces are more pretty when there's a certain symmetry? but I don't, assuming that it's common sense that a face should be as symmetrical as possible for it to be considered a beautiful face.
the procedure takes much less time on the left hand side. guess why? well - she doesn't remove half the amount of hair on that brow and actually leaves it exactly the way I would have wanted both of them to look. so - not only do I now dispose of a mutilated and burnt right eyebrow, but the left one is totally asymmetrical in comparison. I tell her that THIS is what I had wanted things to look like from the outset. she just repeats over and over how sorry she is. and then goes - ok, come on, now I wax your armpits so you forgive me. [how could you forgive someone in exchange for waxing your armpits? IT HURTS LIKE HELL] luckily I had recently shaved the pits - so I tell her - no, no it's ok - the hair is too short anyway. she does not let it be and goes: 'what about down there?' (with an arm movement indicating roughly in the direction of my crotch) - I shake my head and go: 'too short too I'm afraid' - just as well I shave regularly; who knows what damage I would have suffered otherwise...

now I have an 80s face - i.e. asymmetrical - and who knows what good that will do for my chance to meet a nice guy... my friend reckons I should bank on the compassion factor - I like the idea.

and tomorrow I have a hairdressing appointment...