Trials and Tribulations

Joy of joys; I had my bikini line waxed today.

First things first- I hate the whole hair removal thing, but it certainly beats being hirsute and self-conscious. And I get more than suitably self conscious when wearing skimpy clothes/ in bikini-esque situations due to the key genetic betrayal which lead to my knees.
I am very definitely not a fan.

I walked down the stairs, head down and giving myself a continuous mental pep talk to avoid bolting and running for the hills. The nice lady stuffed a tissue back up her sleeve and came up to me; "Hello! How may I help you?"
English clearly wasn't her first language; grammatically correct it might be, but no native speaker uses the word 'may' in place of 'can'. Giving her my rabbit caught in the headlights look, I muttered something about bikini waxage and appointment, and 11am, and also Clarke. She gestured towards the back room and I went with a face probably not dissimilar to that of a small child at bedtime.

Cut to ten minutes later. "Lean back," she said, "relax it won't hurt. I have a cold, hasn't the weather been awful lately?"
It won't hurt?
Yeah, right, of course it bloody hurts. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and leaned back, following instructions like a good girl.

She bent over me, still chattering away inanely- reminding me awfully of the time when, aged six, the dentist rudely pulled out one of my overlapping teeth whilst distracting me with a photograph and talk about his daughter.
Just goes to show two things- one, that the whole skirt lifting thing is clearly a nature over nurture thing, and two, trust noone.
She ripped the wax away and a split second later I felt something cool drip onto my stomach.
I clenched my eyes even more tightly shut.
It was just wax, just wax, just wax, OK.
Just wax.

Fuck.

I opened my eyes and peeked out at her as she rubbed her nose ruefully on her sleeve.