Like slathering your crotch in sriracha sauce

Aesthetician Claudia Lopez is reading a book in the waiting area when I walk into the salon.

“Are you ready for this?” she chirps.

“No, not really,” I mumble.

The waxing room is bigger than a closet but smaller than any apartment bedroom. Claudia turns down the bright overhead lights. There’s some kind of relaxing music playing.

It doesn’t help: I’m here to get my first Brazilian wax.

What looks like a doctor-examination table takes up most of the room. Lopez stands between the table and a wax warmer sitting on one of the cupboards. She fiddles with a magnifying lamp standing next to the table.

This started back in January when my then-roommate and I were headed home from a beer run. She drove while I thumbed through an SN&R and spotted a Valentine’s Day ad from a waxing salon.

I held the ad up to my roommate. “Nothing says love like getting your crotch hair ripped out,” I quipped.

“That’s what you should do a story on, getting your junk waxed,” she said. “Because that shit hurts.”

Now, I’m a longtime member of the “manscaping” movement. Years ago I started using clippers to trim my armpit hair because I hated yanking out clumps of clingy deodorant at the end of the day. I’ve shaved my chest hair a few times, but the hairless look never did complement my doughy physique.

With clippers or razors I’ve dabbled in various pube styles over the years. Mostly, it was a courtesy thing for my sexual partners; who doesn’t vacuum the apartment before guests come over for dinner?

And my partners have also spanned the full spectrum of crotch grooming; I’ve seen everything from Mr. Clean to Chewbacca.

So I knew from firsthand accounts that waxing involved heat, pain and ripping. Before my roomie’s challenge, would I have ever thought to do it myself? Hell no. But what can I say? I’m an idiot.

Claudia wastes no time applying the warm wax to my skin. I stare up at the ceiling and take deep breaths as she presses down a cloth strip on my upper thigh.

With no warning, she yanks the cloth.

There’s a sharp, quick tearing sound and a white flash as my entire body jerks. I gasp.

She works quickly, applying the wax and yanking strip after strip of hair, each pull ripping a short, desperate breath from my lips.

It goes on for more than 30 agonizing minutes. The pain slowly blankets my body with a layer of sweat. I drop more F-bombs than George Carlin at a First Communion.

Later that night, my crotch smoldered as though it had been slathered in sriracha sauce. It took two weeks for the scabs, bumps and weird little pimples to finally heal up.

Now more than ever I don’t understand why people would do this to themselves.

But I do know this: Any guy who expects his partner to get waxed, if he’s not regularly getting waxed himself, deserves to be set on fire and run over by a fucking bus.