I hadn't shaved my legs in over a week. My ankles looked like my freshmen-in-college, testosterone-pumped guy friends that shave every three days: sparse, uneven, dark, and cactusy. My leg hair is wiry and straight; it gets a little sweaty from time to time. If you run a hand in the opposite direction that it grows, I get a slight tickling sensation. The hair from my follicles is especially thick around the knee and ankle. In the winter I let it grow. It helps with insulation under those thin, skanky dress pants we have to wear to funerals and baby showers.
Last night I was tired. Instead of putting my leg up on the hand bar like I normally do to shave in the shower, I decided to take a seat. Sitting solidly in the tub (because there is no other way to sit without sliding around), I lathered up my legs. It was a little hard to rinse the razor, but I found it very beneficial to be so close to the hair while I was ridding myself of it. I don't wear my glasses in the shower, I usually shave by feel; I have a centimeter long scar on my left thumb as evidence.
When I completed my hair-extraction, I knelt down and looked at the shallow end of the tub. There were some soap suds. There was some water. I could have made a Wooly-Willy with the pile of tiny hairs dredged up amongst the regular bathtub scum. It looked like someone had mowed the lawn without putting a bag on the mower. I twirled my finger around in the hairs and they gracefully followed the current of the puddle. I scootched them together in an attempt to make a kind of sandcastle, but the water was slowly carrying them away...
My legs remind me of the hide of a whale. They are scarred and scratched. Pink scars, white scars, brown scars, red scars. Burns, falls, too much shaving without eyeglasses. My shin bones have little bumps on them that make up the backbone. Odd hairs stick up here and there. After almost a decade, my shaving skills still remain imperfect. I just remembered that I forgot about my armpits.
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