India Rigg

CH>Chapter 1</CH>

<H2>5 January 2019</H2>

<f.o.>‘Come here often?’ the man next to me turns and asks. With his jet-black hair and the immaculately manicured edge to his stubble, he looks like he works as a budget Craig David in Norfolk look-a-like contests. I could flatter him by pointing out that the contrast of his dark hair pigment and pale skin tone is perfect for laser hair removal, but I feel like he may not appreciate it as much as a twenty-eight-year-old woman who’s been waiting all her life to have skin like an amoeba.

My eyes sting as I look up from my glaring phone. Infuriating, as I turned the brightness down for exactly that reason.

I hesitate – it’s kind of an odd question to ask. If I answer yes, then obviously that implies that I am super hairy somewhere on my body, which is a gross mental image to give someone, and if I answer no, he may wonder why I suddenly care about personal hygiene. Not that it really matters; I’m not trying to feign attractiveness.

‘Not really,’ I respond. I mean, how often can you physically come to a laser clinic? Your body only has so much surface area. Not wanting to sound rude, I decide to offer him a question next. ‘So . . . what are you getting removed?’ It spurts out of my mouth with the jarring awkwardness of letting out a silent fart at your work desk. (I haven’t been in company for a long time – forgive me.)

There’s a time and place for icebreakers with strangers and laser-hair-removal clinics come under the same bracket as the doctor’s surgery – not a social affair. My chances of making love to Mr David by Wednesday are well and truly scuppered, as he appears to be having heart palpitations.

Clearly, it’s inappropriate to ask someone what treatment they’re getting in a hair-removal place. People go all twitchy and mutter under their breath, just like when you ask for the morning-after pill at the chemist.

Before I’d been interrupted, I was engrossed in @JemimaIsADuck’s latest holiday in Greece. Bronzed, candidly smiling girls with tassels on their skirts and tousles in their hair. I shut my eyes and imagine what it would be like there: the warm rays on my face, the beats from Greece’s latest restaurateur-turned-DJ, waking up to the Sahara Desert in my mouth and a gorilla hacking away at my brain with a pickaxe. Horrible. That’s why I didn’t go, I tell myself, not because I wasn’t invited. Can I send these photos to Florry? Or would pretending I’ve been on holiday for a week be a bit much?

I click off Instagram and put my phone in my pocket as the platinum-blonde, blue-eyed beautician sings my name.

I bash away the tendrils of thought that I could have been on holiday with a group of girls with whom I no longer have synced periods with and walk towards a Harley Quinn impersonator, who’s going to blast my pubes off instead.

‘Hello,’ she says. ‘Have you been here before?’

‘No, I haven’t.’ I dart my eyes round the room, the lights burning my pupils. The tiny box we’ve just walked into is painted white; it’s clinical but without the stark cleanliness of a hospital. That eery smell of sanitisation – it should feel like home to me.

‘No problem. Take off your skirt and underwear and put this towel over you, I will be back in a second.’ I lack dating experience, but I assume this kind of request is only acceptable in a hair-removal haven.

I chase away the memories of endless corridors, bleach and beeping machines and get to the practical task of undressing myself in front of a stranger.

As if she is trying to tease me, the girl comes back in, lifts the towel and looks a little surprised. Peekaboo. It’s not doing anything for my anxiety. Is there something wrong with my vagina? Adam never seemed to have a problem with it.

‘Oh, erm. Did you not shave before?’

‘What?’ Now, I’m really confused. ‘I called up the front desk last week and asked if it was like waxing, and she said yes, so I assumed that meant that I needed to keep the hair.’ That was the entire point of my call. The whole reason for having a receptionist is to book appointments and accurately respond to enquiries about pubic hair length.

‘Hmm, no, you need to be fully shaved and then I run the laser gun over it to kill the hair follicle.’ She says it as if I had asked some inane question like, What will happen if I try to hold my breath for more than ten minutes? ‘Maybe she thought you meant would the hair grow back in the same time as waxing?’

If I had wanted to know that I would have specified, I want to say, but I can’t be sarcastic. I’m lying on a bed, with my pants down, six weeks’ worth of pubic hair growth and a lady holding a gun. Vulnerable doesn’t even cut it.

‘Oh my God, I’m so sorry. This is embarrassing. What should I do?’ I look like I’m auditioning for a seventies porno. I haven’t shaved for weeks; I’ve had no reason to until now. I’ve enjoyed role playing Indiana Jones in the bedroom, allowing my victims to traipse through the untamed jungle, beating away nature’s creatures before they arrive at the jewel in the ancient tomb. That’s a joke, obviously. There have been no serpents in that jungle for fucking months. There’s about as much life in there as a morgue.

I already know that I won’t sleep with Kevin tonight, but my vagina has been known to have a mind of its own. Lasered back to its birthday suit, it might suddenly be desperate to party.

‘Well, you’re here now, and I have another appointment in thirty minutes, so I will have to shave you.’ She says it so bluntly I’m almost unaware of the harrowing activity she’s about to pursue.

‘Err, OK then. I guess you’ll have to,’ I reply nonchalantly, as if she’s offered to make me a cup of tea.

I didn’t really think about it, but having someone shave your vagina is incredibly embarrassing. I don’t think anyone has ever shaved me before. I feel like I’m having a very intense sexual experience without the sexual part. I can’t even look at my vagina in the mirror. Now I’ve got a lady carefully shaving every minutiae of it. Every clump of black pubes, disgustingly shaken off with a cheap Bic razor into the bin.

I’m given a pair of oversized sunglasses, which I’m pretty sure are part of Kanye’s latest Yeezy collection, and the laser starts. This is what it must feel like if you are a freshly plucked chicken, ready to be made into a KFC bargain bucket, having an elastic band repeatedly pinged all over your tender skin.

I can’t even make the standard, polite ‘Going anywhere nice this year?’ conversation during the treatment, as I’m mortified by the whole experience. Whichever receptionist took my phone call was a sneaky little bitch. I bet this poor girl didn’t think she was going to spend ten minutes shaving a girl’s vagina when she woke up this morning. I’m sure it’s a fetish somewhere, ready to be made into a documentary. Louis Theroux, thank me later.

Finally, fucking finally, she puts the gun down, and inspects my vagina again, running her cold hand over my raw skin. Note to self: next time I’m going through a dry spell, come to a laser appointment; there’s so much action here, I think Noah’s ark might set sail again.

‘OK, don’t do any exercise or have a hot shower for at least twenty-four hours. But it looks like you have taken well to the laser.’

Hmm, is that a compliment? I guess so.

‘Great, thanks.’ I step into my pants, covering my red and traumatised vagina, pull my skirt back on, say the customary ‘See you again soon’ and get the fuck out of what I can only describe as one of the most embarrassing experiences of my life.

I walk to the nearest café, I need a coffee and a sit-down. That was very traumatic and something which, in isolation, I never want to experience again. Though I will, of course, relive it a few dozen times more for my friends and followers – this is content gold. Vagina shaving can go on the list of the worst jobs in the world.

Sipping my oat-milk flat white, I relay the whole ordeal on the WhatsApp group to my home girls, appropriately named ‘Homies & Hoes’. They are dying with laughter at my embarrassment.

<digital display>

Julia: OMFG, Milly, what were you thinking? You are so cringe sometimes.

Nicky: I find it quite hot when a guy shaves me.

</digital display>

Maybe if things go well with Kevin, I’ll shave his balls and let him touch my new dolphin-skin vagina.

Their amusement helps ease my mortification until I’m smiling too. It’s nice to be the funny one again. It used to be my role: I’m the social one. The one organised enough to plan the nights out, but still fun enough to be the one making everyone laugh. I am the girl always at the end of the phone, the person people confide in. Julia brings trainers on a night out to walk home in; Nicky walks home the next day with stilettos in one hand and a McDonald’s in the other; while I throw up in the toilets and am first on the phone the next day to hear Nicky’s tales of sexual proclivity and to find out from Julia how I got home. Or I used to be. That was when I went out. When I had someone to come home to.

I hesitate, wondering if the smoothness of my genitals is too much information for an Instagram story. I mean, is there even such a thing as TMI in 2019? It does make a pleasant change to share something while smiling rather than broadcasting out happy photos of my face or commenting with laughing emojis as I sit at home in my pants sobbing or scoffing crisps.

<digital display>

<f.o>@FashHun1991 OMG hilarious Mills!

@JemimaIsADuck Would only happen to you!

@ItsMiaBabes I would literally DIE!

</digital display>

People like to engage with me through the barrier of the screen but not in person, for fear they will catch whatever it is that I have – a deep-rooted sadness? The black cloak of darkness only a widow can wear? It’s OK, I’ve heard happiness is contagious, so I can understand them thinking sadness might be too.

I respond with the classic, no thought required and extremely inappropriate, ‘*get the defibrillator* literally dead!’ and go back to scrolling. It’s a pastime that I hate to love. I genuinely feel like I’ve been at Ava’s birthday brunch #27YearsYoung, I can imagine the sweat pouring off me after a forty-five-minute morning session at Psycle and I mentally salivate over Arabella’s perfect poachies on rye, all without moving a muscle – well, apart from my extremely toned right thumb. Sometimes, I contemplate deleting the app to improve my mental state, get my hippocampus back in gear, as opposed to glassily staring at a screen, not taking anything in. But then I really would be alone. No pretend friends and no real ones either.

<line#>

<f.o.>My vagina might appear party ready, but as usual, my mind is still wearing a dressing gown and slippers. Small talk and Kevin are at the very bottom of my to-do list. I can’t even feign interest in the fact that he used to play in the rugby union. He’s fit but looks aren’t personality. He’s trying to be funny, but I don’t find jokes about fat people amusing and I hate How I Met Your Mother. Luckily for me, Adam didn’t subject me to his TV rubbish, but he did have a soft spot for the odd trashy romance. Although maybe he was just humouring me – I’ll never know. What can I even say to Kevin to make the time pass quicker and go home? If only I was into mindfulness, then I could transport myself to pastures lush and green like a Buddhist monk. I can feel my eyes glazing over and I’ve already hit the ice in my gin and tonic, my straw slurping and rattling around as I try for the last drops of the delicious on-the-spot anaesthetic which is imperative for a conversation with Kevin.

‘Excuse me, I need to use the bathroom.’

Stacey’s a dirty slag!

Whoever decided to pen that on the cubicle door must have been clutching at straws – did they not know being called a slag is a compliment in the twenty-first century?

I pull down my knickers and sit on the cold, hard seat where a thousand dirty bums have sat before. I would have worn a thong, but my vagina is smarting from my earlier ordeal and I couldn’t deal with chafing; these are my Marks and Spencer period pants – calling them knickers is a compliment.

Flirting with my own underwear, now that’s a new low.

I have a small scroll. It’s a force of habit now. When I wake up, when I pull down my pants, when I get into bed. I pause at Julia’s latest photo, a candid one taken by someone else – jealous – of her holding hands with James on the beach. I wish I was her. It was always Julia and I, in our long-term relationships, and dear old Nicky, who we lived through vicariously. I DM her:

<digital display>

<f.o.>Stop being so greedy with your two Instahusbands.

</digital display>

I click to add that overused emoji, a round yellow circle, with two black dots for eyes and a flaccid penis for a tongue to show I’m not being serious. Even though I am.

Finally, a little tinkle. I find urinating relaxing; an emotional release of sorts. I should probably go back; Kevin will be wondering where I’ve got to. I fumble in my pocket as I flush the chain. Oh well, another one bites the dust.

‘I was starting to worry that you had done a runner!’ he says as I return to the table.

‘Ha. No. Erm, shall we get another drink?’ The words fall clumsily out of my mouth. I put my hand up to my head, brushing the hair behind my ear. I hope I don’t regret this.

‘What is that?’ Kevin points to my hand, where the diamonds caught the light. I pretend that I hadn’t intentionally planted an obvious marital status on my left hand. ‘Are you fucking married?’ He spits the words, angry and baffled. ‘Why would your sister set me up with someone who is married? Are you fucking pranking me? I knew I shouldn’t have ghosted her friend that time. You girls are fucking nuts.’ He’s gone balls-to-the-walls crazy, as expected.

‘I’m sorry. Sometimes my fiancé and I like to go on dates to liven things up a bit. Being strictly monogamous is so, I don’t know. . .’ I reach in the air for the word before landing on it. ‘2008.’

‘What the fuck? Do you think it’s funny?’

‘Not really, but I do find if you tell your date that you’re already engaged, it ruins the whole experience. I would never have heard you repeat jokes from Marshall in How I Met Your Mother season one, and then where would we be?’

‘You’re nuts. Don’t think I’m getting the bill and don’t tell anyone that I rejected a threesome or whatever it is you were offering; the lads will think I’m a right prude.’

Good inference of the situation, Kevin. I’m not sure I mentioned stepping out of my pants and into bed with you and my imaginary fiancé, but boys will be boys.

He gets up to leave, then puts twenty pounds on the table. His mother taught him well.

I feel bad. Sort of. It’s a small price to pay. Kevin would much prefer that I pulled the old fiancé card out, or rather – the very literal engagement ring – than go on multiple dates with me, only to find out that I’m an emotional train wreck. You can’t fuck with crazy.

I call Florry.

‘We need to talk about Kevin.’

‘What the fuck have you done now, Milly? Tell me you didn’t pull that heinous wedding ring prank again.’

‘It was like watching paint dry and he’s obnoxious. Have you ever met an obnoxious can of paint? Why did you even bother introducing us? Did you really think he was good for me?’ I fire questions at her like a machine gun.

‘Milly, right now, you’re not one to judge. Beggars can’t be choosers.’

‘Beggars?! I’m not a beggar. I’m not begging for someone to love me.’ My voice quavers.

‘I didn’t mean what I said. But. . . he wasn’t exactly my first choice more. . . my last hope. I’ve run out of options.’

That’s it. Me, done. I’m like a pack of 5-per-cent-meat ham on the reduced shelf in Lidl, destined for the bin. Thank you, wheel of Fortune, for spinning me this sublime turn of events.

<H2>20 April 2010</H2>

<f.o.>The smell of summer. You can taste the heat in the air, sun cream on skin, grass that’s just been mowed. Everyone’s happy. They can’t help it – the sun releases endorphins. Fact. Unless you have hay fever, then you may as well live in a cave.

Exam season is here, and we’ve all been inside for days, revising. It doesn’t matter, as it’s been raining – early May showers.