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The Next Mental Breakdown

I have a white hair.

One single white hair.

It mocks me. It taunts me. It grows in on the right side of my part, dead center. I pluck it and it returns, without fail, like a stubborn telephone salesman that won't stop calling as I sit down for dinner. My one white hair stands straight up while it starts to grow in, highlighting to the world that I have one angry white hair. I am debating coloring it in with a black whiteboard marker, but I am not sure if its time for that or not. If my white hair calls in its buddies for a keg party on my head, Miss Clairol will become my new best friend, along with Georges of Beef and his after-dinner buddy Jack Daniels. I will not have black hair streaked with white.

The Elvira look is so 1980's.

I am petrified of getting old.

Since the age of 22 I have been slathering my face and undereyes, twice a day, in wrinkle cream. I will not have wrinkles too soon. I cannot have wrinkles too soon. If they start to come in I will start bathing in anti-wrinkle cream. You will be able to twist my arm like a washcloth and watch anti-oxidants ooze out of it, twinkling the pavement with their radioactive goodness. You will be able to part the Retinol like rivers on my youthful looking flesh. I will wear a neck brace slathered in eucalytptus and lavender to keep the skin from wobbling in any way shape or form on my neck and to ensure no one ever mistakes my neck for an elephant leg (Hey-did you see that head on top of that elephant leg? How'd that get there? Weird.). Barring that, I will take up that weird Countess' ritual and start bathing in the blood of my servants as it makes my skin more youthful.

I just need to get some servants first.

I'm not vain. Just terrified of looking too old too soon.

There are no wrinkles so far. So far I have the one white hair. The one white hair and still smooth skin.

And then yesterday had to happen, as yesterdays do.

I was standing naked in the bathroom perusing my minge (you know. As one does). My minge needs a bit of work, as Angus and I have been changing the shape. We had a star shaved into it for a very long time, and then we decided to change the shape just after Christmas. He laid me-giggling-on the bed and got the new shape we would use, a nice spiffy diamond. As he shaved me it became apparent that my resistant beaver hair was not yet receptive to a new shape. It fought back. It dug its heels in. It wanted traditional.

We had to scrap the shape and my Michelangelo had to clear his canvas. Completely.

So now the canvas is beginning to grow in again, and I have to be vigilant in catching in-grown hairs (which I actually kind of enjoy-I feel like a vindicator, a liberator of wronged pubes faced with a lifetime of not being exposed to open air). I suppose I could just get waxed, but what fun is that? Isn't it better to lay down, splayed out like a lamb dinner, and let the man of your dreams spend ages attending to you?

Yeah. I think so too.

So I was perusing the in-growns, when I saw it.

It. You know. It. Similar to the horror of the novel by the same name.

There, nestled amongst the sleeping other black pubic hair, was a white one.

A white pubic hair.

I had a white pube.

Complete mental breakdown in 5...4...3...2....

"Ohmigod!" I shrieked. "Ohmigod! Ohmigod! Oh-my-fucking-God! I have a white pubic hair! I've been invaded! This is significant! I am not emotionally mature enough to handle this yet!"

No one was home at the time, which was a relief, as talking to myself would only have served to enforce the theory that I am indeed old, and am indeed going senile. I had to sit on the edge of the tub and check out the area, in case the pube had branched out and infected the surrounding area. Contamination measures would need to be set up. Hasmat suits gotten out of storage.

Nearly weeping, I got out my tweezers. My minge would NOT be a home for wayward white hairs. Take that "For Rent" sign down! I will only have black pubic hairs living here, I am a pubist! This couldn't happen. It couldn't be happening to me. I know my 31st birthday is 3 months away, but I cannot have white pubic hair. Not even old people get white pubic hair-I know. I watched "Something's Gotta' Give".

I grasped the pubic hair gently, worried that breaking it could cause pollen from the white pube to spread like a fine dust around my beaver, causing spores of other white pubic hairs to grow. I wondered if a weed whacker would be better here. Or electrolysis. I'm sure I could wire up a home version of it. After all, I have a toaster.

I pull the hair out, too stressed out about the whiteness of it to care about the pain. I look at it, examining the tear shaped root of it. It makes me want to weep. I think of it, staring Angus in the face as he gets me ready for my next shave.

"Honey, what is this?" he will ask, the electric beard trimmer in one hand and the vacuum cleaner in the other.

"It's...sob..." (and I will say the sob with great efficacy. I will sound like a soap opera heroine dying of hand cancer. I will be believable as I choke out my anguish) "it's a white pubic hair."

"No!" Angus will scream and gasp. "My tragic beautiful girlfriend! How can this be? Where did it all go wrong? Oh the humanity!" This he will say after flinging the shaver on the floor, grasping a handful of his lovely brown hair.

"Don't stare directly at it, darling!" I will cry. "It's...too horrible!" Together we will sob in fear.

I take the offensive material to the sink, to the light by the window. I check it out in detail, taking in the little tag on the end that is full of my DNA (I watch CSI!) I examine it in the light of the window and see...it's not white. It's blond.

Blond.

I check it 6 times before I am convinced. I flush it down the sink in order to make myself stop staring at it as it's conceivable I will spend the entire day checking it to make sure it's not white, and that's a little too fucked up, even for me. The pube was blond, not white. I wasn't being delusional.

When Angus comes home, I sit on the stairs. I shakily tell him of the bullet I nearly missed. I tell him it was nearly a breakdown in our house.

He can't see the problem. "You have dark hair. You're bound to go gray faster. It's not a problem."

Easy for him to say. According to the fine sword of society, men get "distinguished" with age. Women just get old.

White pube eliminated, I am calmer. Alert and combing through my remaining hedge on a daily basis, but calmer. Dilligence, after all. One must be dilligent.

-H.