This One's For the Ladies

Spoiler Alert…vagina sensitive readers stop here.

So like any other regular Friday I woke up and decided 'hey, I think I’ll wax ALL the hair off my vagina today and maybe throw in a brow wax too, just in case I’m feeling incredibly masochistic while I'm there'.  I picked up the phone and dialed the salon, where in the past year I have enjoyed relatively pain free bikini waxes from a lovely girl named Christine. 

Phone call as I remember it:

"Hi Christine! It's Katie....Yes I know, it's been a while (girl got a little lazy on the waxes for a while). I was just wondering if you had room today to fit me in.  You do? Great! Actually I was thinking of a Brazilian wax this time.....Yes.....Uhuh....I know, my skin is pretty sensitive....Yes, I was assuming it would hurt....can you numb the area? No? OK....yes, fair warning....Oh, ok I'll expect to bleed (JESUS!). Great, thanks."

(at this time giggling was heard from the bedroom where my boyfriend lay in blissful anticipation of what was to come - what a jerk.)

I was thinking it would be a bit weird having Christine do this wax, as our Waxer/Clientele relationship has progressed to a friendly level and she's never had to actually look at my entire vagina before - so I was absolutely relieved to find out that another, equally talented lady would be doing the honors.

Remembering a little something my best friend told me before my first regular wax, I fully intended to bring my super extra strength Advil to numb my entire body in preparation.  Now those of you who are passing judgment right now thinking I'm a waxing-wuss...SCREW YOU! A first time Brazilian wax deserves all the pain relieving prep you can imagine.  I grabbed my music books, grabbed my book for the subway, got my wallet, my keys, my phone, lip gloss.....

I left the house with no Advil. NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!

All right. That’s ok, I can get through this with no pain meds, it's fine, I’ll be fine...ha ha ha ha hahhaaaahh (insert nervous psychopath laugh here).

Lets skip to the event.

I arrived and was greeted by Christine, who had a sweet puppy dog look in her eyes and put her hand on my shoulder and said "you're gonna be fine!".  Huh. Not even a hello?  The new lady was very nice, sweet and soft spoken.  Unfortunately (for story purposes) I forgot her name, but really...who can concentrate when she's telling you to take off your pants and slip on a paper thong the size of something my grandmother would wear?.

She walked into the room and said "First time?" I sort of laughed and mumbled "yes", so she looked at me with incredibly sincere eyes and stated "poor baby!! But I'm so honored to be the one to pull out your virgin hair!"................................What?

Did she really just say that? My VIRGIN HAIR!? Oh ladies it gets better.  She looked at my face and crooned, "ooohhhh, this is going to hurt, you have tough hair, I can tell from your eyebrows". Ok, hold on.  My best friend told me nothing of checking my eyebrows first to see if the pain level would be tolerable!  How did I miss this important detail!!?

What happened next was a mix of pain, more pain and then laughter to mask how much freakin' pain I was in.  She was very nice, and went as fast as she could to get it over with quickly, but as I'd never had the hair down there pulled out before...well, let's just say there was a fair amount of bleeding going on. 

"Ooohhh my!!! I've never seen anyone bleed this much! You are soooo sensitive!" Ya, thanks for the 411 on my sensitive vagina lady.  It went on forever, it felt like I just kept growing hair as she pulled the rest out.  If you’ve never had the pleasure of this experience before, I'll just leave it at this: walk into your bathroom, pour hot wax inside your mouth, then proceed to rip off strip after strip of skin layers. 

But, I survived ladies. I thought I should have a Brazilian done at least once in my life, and I did it.  The nice waxing lady told me I was very brave, and I think from all the bleeding and swelling she thought I should get the whole thing for free, unfortunately the woman and the front desk didn't think so. On the way out she called after me…"the first time's the hardest!"  

No shit.

PS: I didn't get my brows done.

The Diva Strikes Back

Three musical scenarios of a Diva who takes control of a bad situation.

Performing on stage and my accompanist has forgotten a page of music, so she tries to improvise chords in the wrong Key.

I sound amazing. This is awesome.  Look at everyone looking at me; look at their faces, they love me! I’m gonna rock this next section of music, it’ll be even better than…oh, crap. She just played a wrong chord.  That’s ok, we’ll keep going, no one noticed.  Hey! Another one, she almost made me sound flat there.  Oh my god, I can hear the sheets of music fumbling, is she lost!? What the hell is happening…I can’t find my note, the tempo is all screwed up.  People are going to think I don’t know what I’m doing! What? Ooohhh no no no no no!! She STOPPED playing!!!

I turned to her with eyes full of rage, judging the short distance between us and accounting for the grand piano to my right.  I took two long strides and flew over the piano landing directly on top of her with my hands around her throat.  A crazy, wild roar came out of me and I threw my head into the air screaming “No one stops me in the middle of Puccini!!”  I realized that if she were unconscious it would be very difficult to continue the piece, so I backed off a little and gauged her pulse to be acceptable enough for her to keep playing.  Amidst my assault on this under prepared and unconscionably rude pianist, someone had thought it wise to acquire a complete copy of our music, and placed it on the piano.  I straightened my gown and hair, then turned and hissed to her “If you screw up this time you’ll find yourself in a basement tied up to a steam pipe”.  Hoping that was enough encouragement, I smiled at the audience and focused myself to begin again.  Needless to say, I never worked with her again.

Pianist taking an inhumanly fast tempo and giving me the stink-eye for not being able to sing Handel at mach 20.

Ahhhh, I love Handel.  I mean really, he wrote for my voice so beautifully.  I just love this intro and the way it surges with energy and passion.  Hmmm, that’s a little quick but I guess I can work with it.  Here we go, feels pretty good…wow he’s really playing quickly.  I haven’t done the runs this fast before but let’s see how it goes.  Eeek, I got that one out but it was tough…holy crap is he serious? Faster!? He knows I’m human right? I need to breathe! Great, the really fantastic coach I’m singing for right now thinks I’m an idiot, he thinks this is MY fault all the pitches are smushing together, not this ridiculous speed of a tempo.  Ok, I need to take control; I’ll just slow it down….or maybe not, if this freakin’ masochistic pianist won’t listen to me!  If I can’t get my high C out I’ll lose it…here we gooooooooo…..

The look on the coach’s face is undeniable.  He hated it. That was my one chance in life to impress him!  With amazing strength and impressively agile like movement, I lifted up the piano and threw it at the pianist.  It landed right on his legs, crushing those useless appendages of his that couldn’t play the pedal correctly if his life depended on it.  With my hair wildly streaming down my face I galloped over and pinned him to the floor.  I sat on top of him repeatedly poking his forehead with my finger screaming…“Faster! Faster! Let’s play faster!!”

After an ambulance came and took the pianist away, the really fantastic coach thought it best if he played for me the rest of our lesson.

A Director asking me to sing an incredibly difficult aria whilst hanging upside down and channeling a rabbit.

This show is so wonderful, the music is like magic and I get to sing the most beautiful aria in the whole piece.  I mean it’s really hard, but I seriously sing the crap  out of it.  I bet everyone just loves watching me sing it.  This director has some weird ideas, but I’m sure I’ll be able to handle it.  Ok here comes my entrance…oh, wow its hard to see the conductor with my body upside down.  This ¾ tempo sort of looks funny from here.  Wait…was that the downbeat? No, maybe that was it?  I’ll have to really impress everyone now to make up for that missed queue, but…crap! I just missed another entrance while he made me steam-roll across the floor. Ok, at least I’m right side up again.  Oh no, here comes the bouncing around part…don’t you dare look at me like that! Yes, its SUPER easy to sing legato and beautiful while I’m hopping around the stage like a freakin’ rabbit!

I could hear my peers laughing at me; I could see the smirks on their faces.  No one makes me look, let alone SOUND, like an idiot and gets away with it! I ripped the bunny ears from my head, hiked up the floor length tutu harnessed around my waist and ran towards the director.  Unfortunately he saw me coming and was able to raise his arms in protection before I got there.  Re-assessing my strategy, I roundhouse kicked his torso and sent him flying into the orchestra pit.  I lunged forward and landed like a ninja beside him, laughing hysterically at the half conscious expression on his face.  Seizing the conductor’s baton, I quickly inserted it up the director’s ass and asked him politely to “conduct now, bitch!”  Needless to say I wasn’t hired back, but I never had to sing Mozart like a rabbit again, either.

Tax Payers Unite

I get annoyed with large groups of kids...call me insensitive, but 36 eleven year olds in a small space gives me a twitch.  Strangely enough, on this day of streetcar travel I actually found them entirely entertaining as they stuck-it-to a Bay St. Yuppie at the back of our transportation.

Let me explain...

I make weekly trips on the Streetcar to my voice lesson in Leslieville. These are usually spent looking over music on my lap, listening on YouTube to the piece I’m working on, or playing Sally Spa on my iPhone.... stop hating, this game is amazing.  In fact, stop reading, go download the app, play it, and then we can talk.

So, on this particular day Strauss and I were in deep interpretational thought when the most awful thing for a single adult in a hurry happened; 36 eleven year olds burst through the doors with backpacks, loud screechy voices and of course – one teacher. Now granted, any large group of kids are going to be loud, it’s just unavoidable.  Their backpacks are necessary – I get that (even though one in particular was rubbing up and down my face) and I do remember field trip days being awesome, so I was going to take one for the team (my team) and just sit there quietly urging the streetcar to go faster.  My seated position for the following confrontation was pretty optimal; directly across from the teacher and 2 rows in front of Mr. Idiot so it was pretty easy to laugh at him and not give myself away.

Confrontation between parties:

Mr. Idiot: (loud voice) “take a bus next time!”

Teacher: (confused) “what?”

Mr. Idiot: “I said take a bus! This is ridiculous, these kids are bothering everyone on here!” (They had been there for 30 seconds; no bothering had taken place as of yet)

Teacher: “Uh, this is public transportation buddy”

Mr. Idiot: “EXACTLY! It’s for the public, not for your school trip. We have to sit here and wait for all these stupid kids to get on and off. Now I’m going to be late, and we can all blame that on you!” (I think he might have been expecting others to pipe in at that point…no one did…this guy was on his own.)

Teacher: “Well actually, we’re saving tax dollars by taking the streetcar, so we’re sort of helping you out.”

Now, here the guy takes a turn for the worse...he MAY have had an argument before this point, but his next line of thinking is where his name Idiot originates from....

Mr. Idiot: “I make so much money buddy, I have a real job.  I don’t need YOU to save ME tax dollars! What I want is for you to get these annoying kids out of my face!”

Oh boy. Really? I mean, even if you were thinking it, would you really say that with 10 of them surrounding you? If you ask me, he asked for it.

36 KIDS: (loud voices )“Ooooooooh! I make sooooooo much money!!! I’m sooooooo cool...if you make so much money mister, how come you don’t drive a car! Are these your fancy money making clothes?! Hope I don’t spill on them....What’s your problem? You’re so cool that you should get the whole streetcar to yourself?!  Why don’t YOU get off so you don’t annoy US!”

During this entirely enjoyable attack, the teacher stood there in total awe of his kids who had taken the confrontation out of his hands and capably into theirs.  In my mind the kids were all equipped with rapid fire Nerf guns shooting him in slow motion, making the debate even more enjoyable.

The back and forth between the kids and Mr. Idiot went on for about 10 min until he got up in embarrassment and exited the streetcar – to the applause of all 36 kids, and a few civilian patrons.

Teacher: “you know, sometimes you guys really get on my nerves, but that was the best thing I’ve ever seen, and I’ll remember this day for the rest of my life.”

Moral of the story: don’t get locked down by 36 kids on a sugar high after a day of being off school property with all their friends and only 1 teacher. That’s just common sense.