Ingrown Hairs
by Abigail Mathews
I counted nine black dots on his jaw and neck, where the hair had trapped itself under the skin. He let me take tweezers to them: poking holes deep into the dark spots, pulling the long hairs through and out. And he didn’t even flinch. Not even once.
There was an intimacy in the act of grooming each other. And as I dug far into his pores, weaving between pieces of overgrown stubble, I could feel his chest rise up and down- bouncing my own chest up and down as I lay across him- and our bodies moved together. My tongue contorted with concentration inside my mouth, twisting around itself and moving across the sides of my cheeks as I scrape the skin off the top of one of his bumps. This one is shallow, and so it pops out easily.
My body relaxes into him as every hair reveals itself: twisting, dark, and wet. My stomach rolls on the sides from my hunched spine, and I allow my skin to wedge itself between his. And I allow my body to linger there for an uncomfortably long time. But he doesn’t tell me to move- even as the tweezer metal begins to warm against his cheek. Even as my eyes begin to burn- searching for another spot where a hair is shy. I would allow my eyes to dry completely, and my back to always stay locked into a roll, for you- in this day.
He needs to shave.
I was twelve when I shaved my legs for the first time. I wore a bathing suit, one that was a size too small and cut into my legs- carving red lines into the creases above my thighs- and I made my mom help me with the razor blade cap. I liked the way the shaving cream felt, and when I was younger my dad put shaving cream on my head while he was breaking in my brother’s baseball glove, and we flung the shaving cream onto each other for a long time, and he told me that the shaving cream was supposed to help soften the leather.
I accidentally cut myself the first time I shaved my legs, and I cried. I had a wart on the front of my ankle, and I drug the blade over the bump at an angle which shredded the skin. It bled much more than I expected, and my mom told me that shaving cuts always do.
I shaved my legs the day I met him, and thankfully so, because he touched them, and he admired their smooth finish. He took me to his house that night and in his room, in the corner, on a navy folding chair, was a big, brown, leather baseball glove, and I wondered if he also had shaving cream fights with his dad. I met his dad two months later, and he had a bushy beard, and I shaved my legs that day too.
It was in his car that I first told him I loved him: trapped between the padded walls of the summer before college and pulling ingrown hairs. And he said it back. And we kissed. And it was slow. And it felt like my heart grew roots, and the green, wettened vines climbed up the sides of my tongue, blooming into his lips. Pollinated.
We were bees then.
My aunt bought me Burt’s Bees chapstick from a convenience store off highway 74 one day. It sat between the travel-sized shampoos and the shaving cream, and I was delighted in the way it tingled my lips. She took me to the zoo that day, and I looked at the polar bears longer than I should have, and I wore a sweatshirt that was two sizes too big, and I wondered if the bears were as hot as I was.
I did a presentation on polar bears in grade five, and I cried at the end, and on my birthday last year he bought me a stuffed, white bear, and it was the color of shaving cream. He kissed me, and he was starting to grow stubble, and it tingled my lips like the chapstick did.
When I moved in with him, he let me paint the bedroom. I chose a color called Chantilly Lace, and it took us two days to finish. We bought new bedsheets, the silky kind, and we got a new chair for the corner. He moved his baseball glove to a shelf in the closet, and I remembered that I had forgotten to shave my legs the night before.
There is an intimacy in the way his memories blend into mine. The way his first pop fly reminds me of a bathing suit that is too tight around the seams. And there is safety in the way he lets me linger uncomfortably, looking at him for a moment longer than I should. The same way the polar bears did. And in grade five I told the class that a polar bear has black skin beneath its fur, and as I am curled here, between silk sheets and lace walls, I see that you also have black skin beneath your fur. Only in some places.
Nine black dots and my tweezers on the bedside table.