How much do you think babies can remember when they grow up? My nephew was six weeks old when he tagged along with me and my sister to a tattoo parlor. We found it hilarious at the time, in a white trash sort of way. He slept peacefully in his carrier while I lowered my jeans and had a dolphin inked on my right lower back just above my hip. I joked at the time with my sister about how we needed to get a little heart tattooed on his baby arm, the word Mother in script across it. It’s not like we planned to take a baby to a tattoo parlor; it just sort of happened spontaneously, which is of course the way most tattoos happen, except we weren’t drunk. We had gone to the dim sum restaurant next door and feasted, then walked over to dip our toes in the pool of body modification. I found a design I liked, they had the time, and how could they not, since it’s the smallest little tat you’ve ever seen. The next thing you know, bingo! A baby at the tattoo parlor.
So, does he remember it? I sure hope not, because I would hate to have scarred MJ’s baby for life based on where we took him last week.
MJ and I recently had a Brazilian bikini wax dare that I made good on but she left me hanging. Since that time, I decided that there were some definite advantages to my new, um, look, and have since gone back for a touch-up, which you chickenshits should know did not hurt nearly as bad as the first time. MJ came in town for a visit and decided that she would go through with it after all. She asked me to make an appointment for her, and we negotiated the terms. Yes, I was permitted to come in the room. No, I could not record it. Yes, I could provide running commentary. No, I can’t rip off the first patch of wax. Yes, the baby would come with us. Wait, what?
Yes, that’s right, I convinced MJ to get all her pubes ripped out. That’s what friends are for. We arrived at the spa fashionably late for her appointment, after spilling half of the baby’s bottle all over the car and the diaper bag. I was on baby duty, and MJ was hyperventilating as we walked back to the room. Gertie, her waxing technician, did her best to put MJ at ease as she instructed her to disrobe from the waist down and position herself on the table. I stood behind MJ, holding the baby, who did not care for the small room and began fussing. I had convinced MJ to wear a skirt, and she took that off along with her boots and panties, then arranged her gangly legs on the table. She was so nervous she had flop sweat coming from every pour, and asked Gertie if that would affect the results.
Gertie was a professional. A little damp hair was not going to deter her. She slathered MJ’s nether regions with hot wax, talking her through the entire process. MJ asked a lot of questions, which probably had more to do with her nerves than her keen interest in the ABC’s of bikini waxing. Luckily, Gertie had a good sense of humor. She had to; she prunes people’s bushes all day. She told us about what a perfectionist she was, and how some technicians shy away from manscaping, but that she just grabs hold of the member with a towel and yanks it out of the way.
My job was to keep the baby calm, which wasn’t working. He fussed and whined as if he knew his first view of this big wide world was being redecorated, and he was not pleased. Gertie assured us that no one was in the spa room next door, so we didn’t have to worry about his crying affecting anyone else’s spa experience. I paced the dimensions of that cell, pausing now and again to sit him down on the edge of the table near MJ’s head, where she could try to soothe him while ignoring the fact that her short hairs were getting ripped out. She was a champion. She practiced some deep breathing. She might have even shed a tear or two.
Gertie finished the hard part and went into obsessive compulsive detail mode, which meant close inspection with tweezers. MJ asked if it disturbed her to get her face right in her girl. Gertie assured her it did not, that she had seen much worse. She said all this while tweezing stray hairs off of MJ’s now bald mound. There was a spot or two of blood. The baby cried some more. MJ asked me to give him a bottle, but the bottle was in the cup holder of the car, where we had left it when we discovered it had been leaking everywhere. MJ sweat through the paper liner on the table. I had sweat dripping down my back. I took the baby’s legs out of his outfit, thinking he too must be hot. Gertie said it was hot because normally the room holds only two people, not a family of four.
I decided to tell a joke, to lighten the mood. I didn’t make it up, in case you were wondering. A man was going down on his girlfriend, just eating her out, when he found, to his surprise, a corn niblet. Thinking it odd, he paused, but decided to continue eating her puss. He worked his tongue around her some more before he found something else that didn’t belong there, a little piece of ham. He stopped, sat up, and asked his girlfriend, “Honey, is something wrong?” “No, why?” she replied. “Are you sick or something?” he tried again. “No, but the guy last night was,” she said. Everyone laughed except the baby.
Gertie instructed MJ to hold her knees to her chest. MJ got all freaked out again. I assured her that this meant it was almost over; the asshole part was the end of the procedure because it’s more sanitary to work from front to back. By this point the baby was really pissed off and bypassed fussing, heading straight for angry wailing. Gertie tidied up MJ’s asshole and told her to get dressed. I grabbed the baby, whose legs were still dangling out of his outfit, and made a beeline for the lobby. He immediately stopped crying. MJ stumbled out carrying the car seat and her diaper bag. I am pretty sure she was just as traumatized as her infant. She left a big fat tip for Gertie and walked to the car bowlegged like she had been bull riding instead of bikini waxing.
A day or two later, after she had returned home to her baby daddy, she too was pleased with the results and declared, “Why didn’t all my friends tell me how wonderful this hair free lifestyle was?”
I answered with “Amen.”
She followed up with “I am never going to have another pube again as long as I live.”She evened up the score on dares. Because that’s what friends are for.
“Next time,” I said to her, “get a babysitter.”
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