“I don’t think you want to do that,” my wife said.
I’d just informed her that I intended to have all the hair burned off my forearms with a laser.
“That would be . . . weird, right?” she continued. “I mean, you’d look like some kind of creepy, wannabe bodybuilder. Or a woman.”
She held out her bare right arm to demonstrate.
I disagreed.
I didn’t think there was anything the least bit strange about it.
My freakishly hairy arms had tormented me my entire life.
And there had long been a technological solution available to rid me of it.
Lasers.
But I had never considered it.
Until now.
“I think it’s handsome,” my mother had once lied to me. “It’s masculine to have hair on your forearms.”
I was probably in the third grade.
And I had come home from school, crying, for having been ridiculed for my ape-like, hairy arms.
Even then, it was thick and curly and extended from above my elbows down to my knuckles.
My mother did her best to console me, even saying my arms made me resemble Tom Selleck in Magnum, P.I.
I knew the comparison was a stretch.
But I certainly didn’t mind the idea of bearing even the slightest resemblance to Thomas Magnum.
With or without the Ferrari.
Still, it didn’t stop me from taking action.
The next day, during art period, I snuck a pair of scissors into the bathroom.
I held them in my right hand as I gave my left arm a close trim.
The result was exactly what I’d hoped for.
Finally! I said to myself. I looked like a normal kid.
And then I ran into trouble.
I switched the scissors to my left hand, whereupon I discovered that I lacked the dexterity to cut any hair off my right arm.
I tried for as long as I could.
But I didn’t want to get in trouble for being in the bathroom for too long.
I gave up, defeated.
And returned to my classroom with one, smooth, hairless arm.
And one, still-hairy, chimpanzee-looking arm.
The kid who sat next to me recognized it immediately.
“Look!” he practically shouted. “Look what Danny did! He cut the hair off his arm!”
The other kids were merciless.
And continued to be the remainder of the school year.
Because that’s how long it took the hair on my left arm to grow back and even things out.
It’s a helluva thing.
I’m sure I possess numerous, beneficial qualities that distant family members bequeathed to me through the genes I now carry.
None of them comes to mind.
But I am daily reminded of the not-so-beneficial qualities I inherited:
A genetically defective liver that prevents me from enjoying my martinis.
And these ridiculous, furry, afro-wearing forearms.
The hairy-arm problem was most pronounced in spring.
Warm weather brought short sleeves.
And short sleeves revealed a contrasting pallet of pasty-white skin and thick, near-black hair, neither of which had seen the sun in months.
It was not a good look.
And only after a few trips to the city pool and a couple of sunburns would my skin tan and arm hair lighten to the point the contrast between the two would be sufficiently reduced.
The mostly blonde hair would remain nearly invisible throughout the summer and into the fall.
And then the cycle would repeat itself the following spring.
It’s been that way my entire life.
Even as graduate student, I couldn’t escape the cycle.
I wore a polo to class one day in early spring.
Upon completion of the lecture, the girl who sat in front of me turned around and caught sight of my forearms.
“What the . . . ?” she asked out loud. “Is that for real?”
I knew immediately what that meant.
“Wow, Dan,” she continued. “You have some seriously hairy forearms.”
No kidding, sweetheart.
Thanks.
And, of course, everyone who’d heard the comment had to come have a look.
It was the third grade all over again.
I accepted my fate and extended my arms out in front of me for all to see.
And it was thereby confirmed that, yes, I indeed had abnormally hairy forearms.
Which was quite a discovery for my classmates.
Others in the class were quickly called over to have a look.
And I got to imagine what the bearded lady at the circus must have felt like.
Now, maybe I was better equipped emotionally to manage the situation than I had been in the third grade.
But the thirty-year-old me hated it just as much as the eight-year-old.
And I still hated it fifteen years later.
I was on a Navy ship in Japan.
I’d shared with my buddy, Kyle, my practice of gifting myself a new watch at the end of every deployment.
He thought it was a terrific idea, and we’d spent considerable time presenting each other with various post-deployment watch ideas.
Kyle settled on a Hamilton Khaki Aviator.
He bought it at a mall outside Yokohama.
Me, I was undecided.
And I remained so well after Kyle had left the ship for his next duty station.
Finally, with only a couple weeks remaining, I sprang for a Breitling SuperOcean.
I shared the news with Kyle by sending him a picture of the watch sitting on my wrist.
“That’s awesome!” he replied. “But where’s the watch? I can’t see anything through that jungle of hair on your arm.”
Kyle, Kyle, Kyle . . .
I thought we were friends.
“Just kidding,” he said. “Great choice on the Breitling.”
See?
This is the shit I deal with.
It never ends.
Returning to the topic of arm hair removal with my wife, she offered up an alternative to lasers.
“Why don’t you just trim it?” she asked.
“You know,” she said. “Just tame it a little.”
I’d already shared with her the story of my third-grade, bathroom-scissors debacle.
She knew how sensitive I was to the idea of trimming.
Plus, wouldn’t that just make the problem worse?
It would grow back longer, thicker, and darker, right?
“Maybe,” she said. “But if it bothers you that much . . .”
I thought it over.
What the hell? I decided.
I ordered a beard trimmer with various attachments from Amazon.
It arrived the next day.
I stood in the kitchen and examined the different blade guards to decide upon the proper length.
Even the guard that cut the least would reduce my arm hair by more than half.
It’s that long.
So, the risk: I would be irrevocably committed to an arm-hair-trimming regimen the rest of my life.
And the benefit: I might look like a normal human fucking being for a change.
The benefit outweighed the cost.
Okay, I said to my wife, holding the buzzing trimmer above my left arm.
Here we go.
We both stood around the trash can as I made the first pass with the trimmers.
The hair piled up in dense balls, like tumbleweeds, atop the blade guard before falling into the trash can.
I wasn’t following any set course at first and just ran the trimmer anywhere I saw hair.
My wife disapproved of the haphazard approach.
“No, no, no,” she said. “You have to do it in rows.”
Okay, I said. I was open to suggestions.
I made successive passes in parallel rows, causing the hair to peel off my arm like wool from a sheep.
I continued in the same manner to finish my left arm before switching to my right.
When both were finished, I held them out in front of me.
What do you think? I asked my wife.
“Better,” she said. “Much better.”
I agreed.
This was what normal looked like.
And it felt fantastic.
I felt . . . lighter.
Now, I wait.
How quickly will it grow back?
And what color? How thick?
Have I indeed made matters worse?
Will I ultimately need to resort to lasers?
Questions for another day.
In the meantime, I’m putting on a polo.
Spring is in the air.
And I do look forward to short-sleeve weather.
Especially this year.