“And extra cheese on the large pizza, please,” said the woman.

 I added the changes to their order, and tried to make the action of pushing my pelvis forward so that my pubic mound might brush against the lower part of the counter – even for a second of relief – look small enough to be unnoticeable, or natural enough not to look like I was trying to hump the counter.

The night that 1996 became 1997, my boyfriend and I left a boring New Year’s Eve party to shave off our pubic hair and as midnight came ‘round we were fucking each other freshly shorn. I remember wondering why we’d never tried this before. Unencumbered by hair, every sensation was titillating. It was awesome. And then it started to grow back.

At first it was a manageable amount of prickle and itch, a slight discomfort really. But in no time I was taking pizza orders while shifting my weight side to side in a strange jerky little dance behind the cash register. Or hitching one leg up suddenly with the hope that my baggy corduroys would rub my stubbly mound. I went commando because underwear during this phase just added irritation. If I’d already wiggled and danced too much while taking someone’s order, I’d simply stand very very still, only my hands moving, a single tear rolling down my cheek.

After my New Year’s experience I was hesitant to take a razor to my pubis again. Back when my lifestyle was ruled by my biological clock and trying to find a husband , an aesthetician friend of mine did my Brazilians. I saw her every 12-14 weeks. I’d take my pants off, spread my legs, and we’d catch up on our lives in between my exhaling through the pain of warm wax and hair being ripped away from my skin. Waxing gives you entire days of silky enjoyment before the growing back phase. And the itching wasn’t as bad as with shaving. Though largely unconscious, my waxing habit attempted to make my cunt into a manicured and marriable body part, something the patriarchy could be proud of. Something small and orderly that didn’t make demands or think about requesting some extra time to swell with desire. 

I only run in queer circles now and hair is a badge of honor, at least in my city, which I’ve heard is rather hair forward as cities go. It’s freeing to be in a hair-positive community. Grow it on your legs. Cultivate it under your arms. Let it linger upon your chin if you like. It turns out humans have hair all over the place and it’s not so connected to the tackle we’re walking around with. These neat divisions we’ve made, where women look like this and men look like that, aren’t so tidy. It’s hard to cram ourselves into these confines. Hair grows where it grows on humans and when this is allowed to happen it becomes clear that the difference isn’t so much “men” and “women” but genetically that some folks have a lot of hair and others don’t.

I like body hair, mine and others’. My current preference for my pubes is barely groomed, a little scissor-over-comb across my bush and that’s it. Little hairs would poke out of a swimsuit if, gods forbid, I had to wear one at all. I usually swim at a well-known secret nude beach here in the city, no suit needed. My primary sweetheart barely grooms either. Our pussies get to be hairy and they get to drip and engorge if that’s what wants to happen, and that’s pretty much what always wants to happen.

The feeling of agency and permission that it’s okay to have juicy labia and a hair-adorned pussy is a bright contrast to my old life. The freedom and acceptance works its way up my vagina and further still to my cervix, that glorious gal who’s slow to warm up but once there will keep me turned on for hours upon hours, and even into the next morning if she’s up for it.

When I’m turned on enough my entire vagina is an electric cavern of bliss, not to mention my vulva, radiating this bliss along the lines of my skin, outside my body. The sparkles shoot up my spine and into my heart and sometimes they make me cry and other times they continue up to my head and I have the thought that there’s some accuracy to getting your brains fucked out. It makes me wonder how things might be different if a larger portion of us were walking around well-fucked. I couldn’t access all this pleasure when I was trying to groom my pubic hair into the shape of ‘wife.’  

I bit their thigh and licked slowly. The taste of their skin was silky and beckoning like a woods in early autumn with a whisper of summer campfires. As I rode their pelvis with my face, I flattened my tongue against their vulva, inhaling through my mouth because my nose was smashed into their nest of hair.

“Hold on,” I whispered and sat up to pull a hair from between my front teeth, trying to do so in a way that didn’t ruin the steaminess of the moment. I began sucking at them again, enjoying the way their pussy tasted and the noises they made as they pressed their hips into my face. We moaned and writhed together. We flipped so that I was on my back, their ass on my chest.

After some time I said again, shifting, “Sorry, hold on.”

They lifted their buttcheek so I could turn and reach my arm up from underneath, my thumb and first finger pausing in front of my mouth. My tongue swished around, searching. It felt longer and coarser than I knew it actually was but my tongue couldn’t bring the single hair to my fingers. I cleared my throat trying to coax it to the front of my mouth with air instead but my attempts pushed it back toward my tonsils. There wasn’t much spit in my mouth because of all the panting but I gulped anyway, trying to swallow the hair down. Finally I reached for the glass of water on the bedside table and took a gulp. The pube now out of my way, I held their hips and lapped at their beauty.

Some wisdom I’ve learned over the years, something I’d impart to a younger me were they to ask is, once a pube is lodged deep enough in your mouth, Sweetie, don’t attempt to lure it back from whence it came. It feels big on your tongue, I know, but you are never gonna find it. Just swallow that pube down and go back to fucking the sweet person on top of you.  

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