Won't Someone Shave Me From Myself?

Facial hair is a vexing subject. With age comes facial hair. The whole subject annoys me on so many levels.

Virgil often misses a few hairs when he shaves. He explains that the electric shaver won't get the soft ones at the top of his cheeks but he can't be bothered to use a razor. Then he tells me that I usually have a few stray hairs like that on my face too.

It's true. Whiskers sprout relentlessly. I think of the Little Prince and his daily searches for the baobab seedlings that would overgrow his home planet if they could. 

But I cannot see the underside of my chin very well and the light in my rented bathroom is - of course - inadequate. Even at the bedroom window with a magnifying mirror and tweezers, the insipidness of London daylight often fails to disclose the hairs. It is usually in the mirror of a lift, car or restaurant loo that I realise I have grown half a moustache or am sporting an incipient mutton chop.

How does it make me feel? I don't know - a weird woman, a bit grubby and inept, as though I'd been walking around with blood on my trousers or laughing with food between my teeth. When I see old women with soft, hairy chins I feel protective.

Femininity is a facade, an impossibility. It's like painting the Forth Bridge.

This morning Virgil comes to talk to me in the bath and notes with some amusement that my legs are currently hairier than his. It's true. I don't feel like doing anything about it. My armpit hairs are a good inch long but that's on purpose. Shaved armpits look wrong to me, like something blind winking.

And my pussy: noted for its hirsuteness by some folk. I think, 'What the fuck?' I have had laser therapy to permanently remove my bikini line and a good inch or two off the top of my bush. It's a neat triangle when trimmed. In the last year or two, liking the feeling, I have started to epilate around my arsehole and as far forward along my labia as I can stand it. (Epilators, for the uninitiated, are quite hardcore.)

I fantasize sometimes about having a hairless pussy and once called Olga Mitova to book a full wax. She's renowned in London for her depilatory skills. Unfortunately another woman answered and explained that Olga was on holiday so she was standing in for her. I made my excuses and didn't call back. I also remember the ingrown hairs I suffered from before I discovered the Turkish ladies with their laser machine. What's sexy about a hairless mons that's covered in spots?

Hair is personal and political. When I try to analyze it I just confound myself.
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A date with Beatrix

Drinks and food with Beatrix on Wednesday. I am delayed, although I still stop to put on mascara and lipstick, and turn up late in pouring rain. She is sheltering in a very small doorway with an umbrella that is actually a sunshade and doesn't keep out water.

In the bar we share a chaise longue. I've always associated them with sex. As a teenager I had a series of fantasies about being seduced by an older couple which were inspired by an older friend's chaise longue. This one has been covered in leatherette. It's overstuffed and bouncy, like perching on a taxi seat. It's not possible to lounge against each other, or even to touch.

Maybe this is why our conversation feels flat and superficial. We have a getting to know more about you talk, in which we swap many details of our lives but nothing important. I admire the little wings of liquid eyeliner that Beatrix always has. I tell her that I can't get the hang of it. Beatrix says that she just does it automatically now and doesn't care that she always gets them a bit uneven but feels better for wearing it.

I don't need to bond in this dry, companiable way. What I want to say is how it is part of Beatrix's mystique for me that she wears liquid eyeliner. That it was one of the first things I noticed about her look and that those tiny angled wings symbolise a particular type of femininity that she embodies and I do not.

We finish the evening at home. Virgil is away working. Earlier he made a point of asking me not to reveal to Beatrix that he is staying in a Travelodge.

"I have some pride," he says.

Beatrix tells me that when she goes away on work she often stays in such places, and even in people's spare rooms, but I don't tell.

We kiss on the sofa. I love the feeling of her body and her small waist, but I'm tired and anyway I know that I am not going to take her to bed tonight. From her kiss she seems to be holding back and waiting. Virgil has said I can. Beatrix has said she would like it. I would too, but not yet. Instead I tell Beatrix that we must have her over really soon. I hope that is enough for her and that she won't change her mind.

It's still raining outside. I call her a cab.
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