Ms. Brazilian Wax
The Con
“I just got a Brazilian wax,” Christy lustily whispered in my ear next to the crackling fire at my local. This lithe, sandy haired beauty left me somewhat speechless, not an easy feet. I looked at her, sat up straight, slouched, scratched my head, sat up straight again and finally managed to say “really?” Hopefully, the sawdust on the floor would soak up the drool coming from the corners of my mouth.
Although this looked like as easy a pickup as I would ever have, I was working a bar on the Upper East Side and had a double the next day. I looked over at the digital clock on the cable box for the time, 2:30am, with my call time being 9:30. In an effort to be responsible, I explained my dilemma and gallantly asked for her phone number, which Christy scribbled in purple ink on the back of my left palm. “I want you to take me ice skating,” she said as I paid my bill and left. Honestly, I felt like I wouldn’t hate myself the next morning. I wanted out of the free and easy bar life and into adulthood. To that end, I was trying to settle down, although my relationship with Julia was dying. So as I met perspective new partners, I promised to get their phone numbers and take them out to dinner; date not just hookup.
The conventional male wisdom states that a woman who gives you her phone number should have to wait at least two days to hear from you. I have never been one for the conventional so I waited until my break at 2:00pm to call Christy, only to find she had given me the cell number for a SUV mechanic.
I shrugged it off as yet another person under the influence succumbing to a hormonal desire. It’s happened to me many times. Besides, according to my voicemail, the break-up between my latest girlfriend and I had become just become official. My home was now free of Julia plus her clothes, Monet prints, two gifts she gave me for Christmas and three bottles of very good Pinot Noir. At least she left my Zen Arcade poster on the wall over my black futon couch. Maybe now, I would actually get around to fixing the medicine cabinet. Any relationship between a control freak and a passive aggressive is bound to fail.
Over the course of the next four weeks, as I drank and commiserated with friends over the demise of my relationship, I would run into Christy drinking her snifters of Remy in my local Irish bar and she would ignore me. No problem as I wasn’t in the mood to talk to any female about being intimate. Being wretchedly depressed, not a charming, silver-tongued seducer of sexy women with no pubic hair was my lot that month.
In late January, as I made my way to fire after my shift and Christy was there, drinking her Remy. This time, she stopped me before I could get to the other side of the bar.
“Zola, what kind of last name is that?”
“Romanian, Irish, and Jewish.”
“Jewish. Really,” she seemed shocked.
I smiled and offered to unbutton of my jeans and show her that I was, in fact, brought into the covenant of Abraham by the blade of a moil. “Stop that and sit down. They’ll be time for that later,” She grabbed my forearm and gently glided me down into a captain’s chair.
Somehow, I made Christy’s Chateaux Bow Wow; maybe I should have taken her home that night a few months back and braved being late and hangover. On the other hand, perhaps this was the night I would get the chance to see Christy’s Brazilian wax. We chatted over the next hour or so about nothing, much like a Seinfeld episode. She asked why I didn’t call her and I asked why she gave me the digits of a grease monkey on Ave. C. Her brown eyes were large and sincere; at least I took them that way in my nearly drunken and horny state.
“I never would have guessed that you were Jewish,” she broke me out of my reverie.
“Really. Is it the name?” I asked.
“A little bit. I thought you were French. That and you don’t look Jewish,” she said.
“What do I look like?”
“Irish,” she said. “Actually, the only reason you’re here is because I thought you were French, well that and I like you.” I’m glad that she liked me, although she spent the last few weeks ignoring me and gave me the wrong cell number. But, I was in a live and let live mood except I’d hate to be indebted to the French for anything, including getting laid.
“That’s because they removed the horns,” I said.
“What horns? Jews have horns?” she asked. She was playing along with the joke, or so I thought.
“Did you go to Sunday school at all?”
“I went to a private Catholic school for girls in Maryland. What does that have to do with this?”
My eyes got wide again. “Did you have to wear the little skirt, white socks and black shoes?”
“Yes but hold on for a second, you’re pulling my leg. Jews don’t have horns.” She squeezed my arm.
“The nuns didn’t teach you that Jews have horns?” I asked in the most sincere voice I could fake.
“No. No they didn’t,” she said.
“They’re removed at the bris,” I said.
“What’s a bris?”
“That’s the, you know, cutting. The circumcision.”
“When does that happen?”
“For boys, on the eighth day.”
“And how about girls.” She said, thinking to trap me.
“Well, girls are named in the synagogue. So right before the ceremony, out come the horns”
She seemed seriously confused.
“Didn’t you know any Jews when you were growing up?” I wondered.
“No, not really, no one that admitted to it, anyway. It’s like, I never really knew any Jews until I came to New York.”
“So you never saw a Jew before.”
“No. Never.”
“Of course it’s the truth,” I said, “why do you think Michelangelo painted his Moses with horns?” I found two ridges in my forehead. “The only problem that we have is that they leave these indentations.”
“I don’t believe you. Let me feel that,” She demanded. “Oh my G-d. OH MY GAWD. I CAN FEEL IT. I CAN FEEL IT!” Her eyes were wide and there was a smile on her face. Half the patrons left at the bar area turned to see what was going on.
Christy’s hand was still in my hair when the barman came over to give last call.
“Walk me home,” Christy said, taking me by the hand.
I wondered if she actually believed that Jews had horns or if the three Remy’s had anything to do with her gullibility. “Jesus,” I thought. “How am I going to respect myself in the morning?”
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