B: 10/18/02

Work Diary, 10/18/02

When I was ten years old, I discovered I'd started puberty while at a
Christian summer camp. I'd run back to the barracks instead of peeing
in the lake like all the other boys were doing (not out of modesty, but
because we were eventually meant to swim in that lake). I pulled my
shorts down and my thumb touched what felt like a peach. Sure enough,
some silky hairs had sprouted. They were blond like the hair I had as a
baby.

To this day, I'm not sure why my sister and I were at the camp. Our
mother discovered it through a co-worker; she bought us some bug spray,
sunscreen, new swimsuits, and we were off. She also bought us two tiny
abridged Bibles, as "Bible" was on the list of supplies we were to
bring. They were blue, and small enough to fit in a pocket. The other
campers - in true Christian fashion - were quick to laugh and point at
our hopelessly inadequate versions of the New Testament. My sister and
I would spend three weeks being shunned by the Jesus cliques, all of
whom had well-worn family Bibles with births and deaths neatly penciled
on the inside covers. Even then, I wondered about the use of pencil.
Were they planning on taking back the births and deaths? What, exactly,
was their little secret?

One of my camp counselors had the disconcerting habit of sitting on his
cot in dirty white briefs, so well aged that the leg holes had blown
out and his hairy business was visible to anyone who cared to look. The
counselor was the blond Adonis type, a healthy, robust Texan boy whose
presence made the female campers all but swoon. Clearly, those young
girls hadn't been privy to the furry ugliness of what lies
beneath.

The counselor was also the reason that I met my impending puberty with
dismay. Would I look like that, too? Would I be forced to sit with the
breeze blowing through my legs for fear of squashing a testicle? Why
did it have to be so hairy down there?

I was not alone. When my fifth-grade year started, I was placed in a
desk in front of a boy with chronic halitosis who often whispered
non-sequiturs in my ear. "Oranges are my favorite fruit," he'd say, or:
"My mother has two cars and three boyfriends." Usually I'd just shrug
and continue with what I was doing, but one day the boy hissed, "Hey?
Are you growing hair down there? I am." That sparked my interest, so I
turned to face him.

"Since last summer," I said, ignoring the boy's bad breath in my
excitement. A kindred soul, sitting right behind me this whole
time!

"Yah, mine's as big as a baseball," the boy continued, effectively
ending our conversation. What the hell was he talking about? A
baseball?

The boy, his mother, and her two cars moved away not long after, and
short of the hairy wolf kid who went to my school, I didn't meet up
with any other children on the puberty express. Even the girls remained
flat chested.

The fears induced by my camp counselor turned out to be unfounded. My
little patch turned darker but stayed neat and tidy. Leg hair soon made
an appearance, but it was wispy and largely unnoticeable. I would be a
senior in high school - eighteen years old - before I grew hair in my
armpits. I didn't even wear deodorant until then. I find it freakish
that from the age of ten, I was a proto-adult below the waist, but it
took actual adulthood to get my armpits up to speed.

Now, in my thirties, I've been told by several people that I have a
desirable body type (i.e., hairless). At first I dismissed such silly
notions. Surely men find virility in their manes, or see this fuzzy
secondary sex characteristic as proof positive of their machismo.

Not so, apparently. Men are flocking to clinics where lasers denude
their backs or trim up stray hairs on their chests. Non-bicyclists
shave their legs for summer while their brothers sit through
electrolysis to get rid of their beards. It seems the only place men
want hair is on top of their heads.

Ads for clothing and cologne?Calvin Klein billboards?even the inserts
for packages of cheap underwear - too many feature airbrushed men with
nary a hair in place. And while I can't watch pornography without
giggling at all those displaced feet and rear ends, I have noticed
razor burn on many a chest and crotch. Is it possible that legions of
men are roaming the Earth, half-mad from constant itching?

I understand the desire to change one's body image; I myself would like
to go bald so I could stop worrying about hairstyles. Also, bodies like
mine usually leave me clammy. When I catch a glimpse of my naked self
in a full-length mirror - especially when I'm not wearing my glasses -
I see too much boy and not enough man. Where's the fun in that? Despite
my hirsute camp counselor, I wouldn't mind some extra hair here and
there, particularly on that pasty expanse I call my chest.

Hairlessness also means I will grow old and wrinkled without the
benefit of hair to hide the problem areas. My skin will droop, vericose
veins will pop up, my chin will have twins?and it'll all be as visible
as a newborn baby's bum. On the other hand, if my past body chemistry
is any indication, I might very well get my wish.

I'll keep my fingers crossed.