My bikini waxer said this

And now I'm rethinking my life post-divorce

My toxic trait is that I try to befriend my waxologist.

Ok, maybe not toxic. I actually am not a fan of that word as I think it’s become a label we use to distances ourselves from attempting to understand one another. Words like “narcissist” and “antisocial” have also lost their clinical meanings in the context of diagnosis for the same reason. We throw the word narcissist around, labeling ex-boyfriends or other people’s parents we’ve met once as a way to remove ourselves from the responsibility of thinking critically about someone’s behavior. But that’s for another article.

Let’s get back to my bizarre behavior at the salon. Ooh. She weird.

Despite it being the dead of winter in Seattle, I decided to get a bikini wax.

Shaving is a recipe for ingrown hairs for me (which, let’s be real, I love to pop), and despite having done laser hair removal years ago, I still have to go in for occasional torture sessions.

JK. I kind of love getting waxed. Not in a fetish-y way, just in a this-is-satisfying-as-fuck kind of way. And no judgment if wax fetishes ARE your thing—do you boo.

I have no idea what compels me to befriend the women who remove hair from my labia, but every time I go in for a wax I’m chatty Kathy prepped and ready with a bucket full of ice breakers.

“So are you from here?”

“Married?”

“What kind of dogs do you like?”

Before she’s even done with one side of my vag I know her name, age, college major, and where her sister lives. She knows I’m divorced, depressed, and just got a dog. We’re officially friends, but only one of us is lying exposed on a parchment paper dressed bed. But friends don’t keep score, or atleast that’s what Doc on Virgin River says.

My waxologist then said something that stuck (oh Rachel, did you just make a wax pun? I warned you, she weird.)

“You know when I turned 34 I realized that for the first time in my life I didn’t know what to work towards. Like I’ve always had goals or projects, whether it was school or getting a job or an apartment.”

She paused to rip a waxing strip from my skin. Ouch.

“But now I’m like, ok I’m single, no pets or kids, and don’t necessarily want those things. I’m realizing there’s no blueprint for us—the ones who’ve reached our mid thirties and have done life differently. We’re paving the way.”

She ripped another one, and I had to catch my breath.

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“Wow, I have never thought of it like that, but you’re so right,” I said. She poured more wax on me and I braced for the rip.