NTKOG Year Two, #18: The kind of spontaneous romantic who, when presented with the culmination of astronomical odds, wagers her heart (and a potentially awkward two-hour train ride) on the chance that it might. be. fate.

I am: continuing the story I started here, if you missed the first installion.

I am not: buggin’ if you don’t want to go back and read it.

The Recap: Spent a while flirting aggressively with a cute Canadian in a grad student bar in New England College Town. Afterwards, realized, whoa, he was actually kind of into me? and I was kind of into him? and I didn’t know anything except his first name? Went to New York (ie: the biggest friggin’ city in America), and in that city of seven million people, of all the trains at Grand Central, and all the cars on the train — he chooses mine.

We lock eyes. I blush and offer him a seat. He accepts. Okay, back to…

The Scene: The Canadian takes the seat across from me and my eyes stay snapped on him, looking for words like digging through a snowbank. Justice and Kiss-Ducker carry on their own conversation, like mama lions following from a respectful distance, keeping a cautious eye on a cub attempting its first kill.

TKOG: So I forgot to ask you the other night: you’re at Badass University, right? What do you study?
The Canadian:  Architecture. I’m in the second year of a three-year masters program.

He slides down a few inches in his chair, his knee grazing mine. An architect. I’m always drawn to men who live in quiet, orderly apartments inside their own minds. But architects, they think with their hands, don’t they? That’s something altogether different. His knee grazes mine again, more deliberately.

He asks what I do, and I explain that I’m a writer, sort of, and went to school for Russian literature. His eyes light up.

The Canadian: I double-majored in studio art and comparative literatures! I love Russian literature!
TKOG: Who’s your favorite?
The Canadian:  Totally Gogol. That guy’s awesome. He’s so hilarious.

We chat about The Overcoat for a few moments, before The Canadian exclaims:  Yeah, that story’s so funny! It reminds me of that show Curb Your Enthusiasm! Do you watch it? No, I tell him, and he launches into a five-minute reenactment of a scene, laughing a bit too slowly at his own recreated punchlines. I pull my knee away from his and he switches gears.

The Canadian: What’d you do in New York?
TKOG: Oh, we had a great day! Went to the Met for a bit, saw some German Expressionism — that’s totally my art jam. Walked around Central Park, then went to a cool Belgian beer bar and got classic cocktails at Pegu Club. You?
The Canadian:  Man, it was epic. I came up on Friday and spent the night with a high school friend. We smoked a lot of pot. Then hung out with a college friend. We smoked a lot of pot. Then I hung out with another high school friend. We didn’t smoke any pot.

…epic indeed. But — but he goes to one of the best architecture graduate programs in the country! He’s just one of those weekday Type-A personalities who relaxes intensely on the weekends! Besides, there’s nothing hotter than a man with a concrete talent, who works toward it with great ambition.

He digs through his backpack for gum and I see a sketchpad. Hey, I tell him, my friend has a National Draw A Dinosaur Day coming up on January 30th [click that link, y'all!] — you’re an artsy dude. Can you draw me a dinosaur I can submit and pretend I drew? He gamely produced the following masterpiece:

Architect! Artsy! Sort of! I pursue this.

TKOG: So, I like architecture but I don’t know anything about it. What’s the best building in the world? Like, what’s your personal favorite?
The Canadian:  Uhhhhhhhhhhhh. I don’t — oh! Yeah. There’s a building I like in Toronto. It’s this big brick building. It’s pretty cool.
TKOG:  Cool. What kind of building? Like a bank or an old library or…
The Canadian:  It’s made of brick.

That thud you hear is not the beating of my feverish heart, just to clarify. It is the thud of a conversation dying forever and, with it, any interest I could possibly lather up in the human being sitting across from me.

TKOG: So, uh, how much longer ’til we get to New Haven?
The Canadian: About two hours.
TKOG: Oh. Okay.

Justice, Kiss-Ducker and I spent the rest of the trip in an animated discussion of the social networking model of internet search and writing captions for New Yorker cartoons, tolerating his awkward intrusions  with conspiratorial smirks at one another.

When we finally reached the station, dead-tired and happy to be rid of him, he bolted out of the train ahead of us, then slowed to a walk so we could catch up again. Hey, he asked, are you taking a taxi, or…? It was the kind of wintry New England night so cold that your scalp constricts to shrink-wrap your skull and roman candles go off behind your eyes.

So Justice, gracious goddess that she is, dropped him off at his apartment, then took us back to her place where, exhausted, I crawled into the guest room bed alone alone oh god so happily alone.

The Verdict: To this tale of urban dating woe, I see three morals:

1) You know all those times you have sultry eye contact with a stranger, walk out of each other’s lives, and spend days wondering, by god, WHAT IF?! It’s okay, dude. You probably didn’t miss the love of your life.

2) But SERIOUSLY?! I meet a grad student. At one of the best universities in the free world. We instantly like each other. Then happen to meet him again, days later, in a city of seven million people. And he’s read Gogol. And he’s STILL a kinda-dumb stoner? How is that possibly the end to this story?! I’m not even disappointed in the universe — I’m mad at it.

3) Disappointing though this was, we can all agree that dinosaurs make things better. Draw A Dinosaur Day is Sunday, with submissions accepted today through then! You should submit one! I know I am.

[Edit: A few hours after writing this post, got an email from Justice:

"So I'm sitting on a bus right now on my way to the grad student ski trip and guess who's sitting next to me? Yup, the Canadian. Destiny."

Hmmmm. Maybe he's HER soulmate...? Too bad she's already engaged!]

NTKOG Year 2, #14: The kind of effortlessly kitchen-confident child of Child who, with nary a glance at her shelf of cookbooks (or, let’s be honest here, a google search of her favorite cooking blogs), whips together a gourmet meal. Or at least an edible one.

I am: risk-adverse to a fault. This might sound silly coming from the girl who thinks nothing of shaking her junk on a jumbotron or acing a blowjob class, but when it comes to goal-oriented pursuits like cooking, I need: 1) numbered directions; 2) hand-holding; and 3) uh, maybe half a Klonopin.

I am not: even getting into the cuticle-gnawing follies involved when someone gives me directions that contradict Google Maps.

The Scene: My postage-stamp Brighton kitchen, too small for cabinets or counter-space, to say nothing of big culinary dreams. My kitchen’s so tiny that even throwing together an omelette is akin to building a rocket launcher in a phone booth. Still, I proceeded.

Following my New Year’s resolution to cook at least once a week, a few days ago I made a batch of sweet potato and black bean burritos; however, I rather bungled the shopping trip, which left me with sixteen tortillas, two sweet potatoes and three red onions that needed to be used, like, yesterday.

While I’m usually fairly awful about just letting groceries get fuzzy in my fridge, instead, dug through my shelves and figured out what I had: a tin of crushed pineapple, half a frozen can of jalapenos, infinite black beans — and hey, pork shoulder’s on sale at the Stop and Shop down the street! Perfect for modifying Budget Bytes’s to-die-for pork and pineapple burritos. (Do you read Budget Bytes yet? Everyone with a working oven, stomach and/or brain should be reading this blog.)

But the catch: I decided not to let myself look at the recipe. Like, at all. Instead, let me present you my own recipe for:

Cleaning Out The Refrigerator Pork and Pineapple Burritos (with a huge nod to the sainted Budget Bytes)

Ingredients:

• A few-pound pork roast with bones and skin and weird shit in it because even after four years of university education, you’re not smart enough to look for the word “boneless” on the wrapper;
• A few or, like, infinite cans of black beans
• Two cups of shredded cheese, the some forgotten garlic Laughing Cow in the back of the fridge for when you run out.
• Two big cans of crushed pineapple in juice
• Can of jalapenos. Don’t touch your eyes. Don’t touch your eyes. Don’t touch your eyes.
• A few sweet potatoes shaped disconcertingly like limbless guinea pigs.
• Sixteen tortillas with a sell-by date set for tomorrow
• Various spices
• Proof that god loves us and wants us to be happy (ie: garlic and onions)

1. Like twenty hours before you want to eat (which for me, is literally. any. time.), cut the netting off the roast. immediately grab a handful of pigskin and gag convulsively. Continue gagging while you plunge your knife deep into the roast and shove in peeled cloves of garlic.
2. Spice rub. You need a spice rub. Panic; fight the urge to google; think about what tastes like Mexican food. Cumin? Garlic salt? Chile powder? Paprika? Oh for the love of pete, put back the cinnamon. This is a beginner-level course.
3. Rough-chop the onions and stick ‘em all around the roast, then seal up the whole shebang in the pot of your slow cooker and refrigerate it for eight hours. You could consider sleeping during those hours. Or browsing cooking blogs and getting irrationally angry about sanctimonious militant vegan dickbags.
4. Once the roast is totally marinated, stick it with a few cups of water in the slow cooker on low for eight hours. Wish you’d thought to buy bell peppers. But how many more bell peppers need to cruelly die before humans realize the atrocity of their — oh my god I hate vegans.
5. Woohoo! The meat’s done and your apartment smells gooooood. Use tongs to shred the meat off of the bones and into your biggest skillet. When you’ve gotten off as much meat as you can, dump the contents of the slow cooker into a colander and pick through the bones, fat and skin for any more usable meat.
6. Be sad about the holocaust for a little while.
7. Dump a cup and a half of water in the skillet with a packet of taco seasoning. Give the whole shebang a good stir and let it get thick and bubbly over a low flame. Whenever it looks like a good thickness, just turn it off and let it chill.
8. Scrub the sweet potatoes, then wrap them in saran wrap. Plunge a fork as hard as you can into them every inch or so. Don’t think about guinea pigs. Don’t think about guinea pigs. Stick ‘em in the microwave to bake (eight minutes worked well for two medium dudes).
9. Halve the onions and chop them into strips. In your second-biggest skillet, heat a few extravagant turns of oil over medium-high heat, then drop in your onions. Toss the strips to make sure they’re all oiled, then let them cook for ten minutes without agitating them all that much. The burn is good! The burn is where the flavor comes from! Try hard not to imagine the smoke detector going off; open a window just in case.
10. Open and rinse like six cans of black beans. The world’s most perfect union of fiber and protein.
11. Chop up jalapenos and pineapple. Reserve the pineapple juice in a plastic bag because it feels like a susie homemaker thing to do. Immediately drop the plastic bag.
12. Wait, frig, your neighbors can totally see you through the open window. See, this is why you shouldn’t cook naked. At least put on a bathrobe or something.
13. After the first ten minutes have passed, throw some salt on the onions to help pull out the water, and maybe a sprinkle of sugar to help start caramelization. Lower the heat after a few minutes if you’d like, and while you finish everything else, just give the onions a poke every once in a while. Let ‘em get dark and sweet.
14. Skin the sweet potatoes and mash ‘em in a bowl.
15. When everything’s done (I personally check for onion doneness by picking out strands and tasting them. When they’re so delicious I want to lick the spatula like a lollypop, bam, done.), stick it in bowls, take a few photos, and wait for Tony Bourdain to send you fanmail.

Things! Things I made! Things I made without a recipe! (Let's ignore the fact that the only things I actually cooked here were pork and onions. I still had to use my mad knife skills!)

Aww, it seems Mr. Bourdain’s being coy. Guess while I’m waiting, I might as well actually assemble the burritos.

In honor of my attempted culinary upgrade, I even learned the proper way to fold burritos. Way easier than I'd imagined! Just pile yo' fixin's a bit bottom of center, fold the right and left sides in, then roll from front to back. Bam.

The Verdict: Hey! You know those obnoxious cooks who, when they give recipes, ignore the measuring cups and instead give aggravating directions like “a pinch” of this and “a soupçon” of that! BAM! I’m totally one of those annoying dudes now! I prepared edible food, all by myself, and did not have a crying panic attack while deviating from my inspiration recipe!

Heck, I was so high on my newly faked culinary prowess that I used the reserved pineapple juice to whip together a coconut/pineapple dreamcake! (Okay, okay, it was from a mix. Still.)

Granted, this was a lot more work than walking to the pizzeria across the street, but I think I made enough food to last me a few days…

Uh, that takes care of my lunch plans. For 2011.

Hey loves! While I’m prisoner of my own fiction-writing career (Update: I finished the hopefully penultimate draft of my second short story for my portfolio. Also, if any other fiction writers out there want to exchange short stories to workshop and you have a strong stomach for graphic zombie-sex, dude, shoot me an email!), thought I’d post a little update about the TKOP program!

Since i’m gonna break your heart absolutely miraculously donated funds to rent a PO Box a few months ago, I’ve tried to send out birthday cards every few weeks, and have started steady correspondence with four inmates. And trust me when I say, I’ve learned more about writing in these past few months than any great literary binge of my life.

Quotes from “The Art of War,” stomach-churning descriptions of prison food, descriptions of solitary confinement that have left me bleeding mascara on the page.

If you’re interested in writing letters or sending cards to inmates, please do check out my information page about the project. You can use the TKOP mail address as a return address, so you don’t have to disclose your own information. And if you email me at notthatkindofgirlblog@gmail.com to let me know your name and address, I’m more than happy to forward any mail directly on to you.

Thanksgiving’s coming up, and it’s a lonely time for — gosh, lots of people. Maybe you’d be interested in sending out a few holiday cards to give someone out there something to be thankful for?

That about sums up my three-day weekend. Hit me up with some Good News / Bad News from your week so far!

Happy Friday, loves! Engaging in random acts of Follow-Up Friday to give you a little update on the That Kind of Penpal Program — my teensy little initiative to provide a safe-haven mailbox to serve as a return address for people who would like to write to inmates, but don’t feel comfortable revealing their home addresses to their pen(itentiary) pals.

Since I got the mailbox in early August, I’ve made a personal goal of writing five birthday cards a week to inmates, and am thrilled to report that I’ve started receiving replies! It takes a while for letters to get processed through prison mail systems, but the results? So, so worth it.

In the past two weeks, I’ve received letters that include: a lengthy literary critique of The Odyssey, which a young man had just read because “Odysseus reminds me of me, kind of”; a beautifully rendered line drawing of a motorcycle; two short thank-you poems; and many, many lines of complaints about prison food.

A few of the letters I’ve received have been simple thank-yous that didn’t really call for a response. Others, though, have sprawled through several pages ripped from legal pads.

I’m doing my best to respond to every letter in a timely manner — a bit daunting for a dude who hasn’t written anything longer than a to-do list longhand since elementary school. A few weeks ago, I grabbed a seat in a tiny Bay Back coffee shop for three hours, rereading and then hand-writing responses to three letters on nice stationery in my best cursive.

As I sealed the last envelope, the waitress wandered by with my check, then hovered while I fished out my debit card. “That’s a long letter,” she said. “Boyfriend?”

I tipped her five percent extra just for the look on her face when I happily chirped, “Inmate!”

I’ve gotten emails from some readers who are taking part in the project, and I can’t tell you how ridiculously kittens-and-hot-cocoa it makes my chilled steel heart. So if you’ve been writing letters, thank you! And if you had only considered it, might I suggest you send out even one birthday card to an inmate today? It only takes a minute. And you never know what small, good thing is going to shift your world just a little on its orbit.

Have a gorgeous weekend! See you back on Monday!

I am: taking a few days off.

I am not: sure I’ll actually be able to stick with that, but we can dream, can’t we?

The Scene: The Boston Public Library after an intense day at work, swinging through my beloved Wodehouse shelf, then setting up shop at a well-lit table in the mezzanine to to do my first post-project fiction writing. After a madcap year, everything I’d been dreaming of: spare time! luxury! new projects! Closed down my email, opened a Word doc and — nothing.

Well, not nothing. Panic. And then nothing. And then more panic. And then a very long, boozy bubble bath. ’cause, hey, I’m nothing if not consistent.

Turns out I … don’t really know what I’m doing with my life without the project? I remember vividly a little over a year ago, sitting on my Las Vegas veranda with my father at an ungodly hour, a secret cabal of insomniacs, dreaming about what to do with my newly reclaimed life.

“I think,” I ventured, “I think I have a project. Something I need to do. Maybe a few people will read it, maybe not, but it’s right for me.” Going to Boston, I may not have had friends or furniture or a job, but I had one little point of certainty, and that was enough.

I was thinking last night about the fantastic serenity of that moment. The 3am air still hot, velvety and perfectly still the way it can only be in the desert.

Maybe I’m foolishly sentimental, but I think there’s a sort of magic to the desert. All auxiliary life is fire-ravaged; the undeveloped land is austere, unadorned. I read somewhere that at any given time, the sun’s rays have a physical weight of five pounds, spread over the globe. On a desert day, you feel that weight — all of it — draped across your chest and thighs, pushing you down, keeping you still.

I don’t spend a lot of time keeping still. I’m also not very good at knowing what I want. It strikes me that these two problems might be related.

I mean, we are talking about the girl who spent years wanting to marry the guy she didn’t want to marry, who poured thousands of hours into writing apple pie recipes instead of novels, who ended up making such a mess of things that she had to ninja-kick herself cross-friggin’-country to start over. So. There’s that.

In the spirit of continual self-improvement, I think right now’s a good time to get a little still and audit my needs, make sure I’m being good to myself. To wit, the three things that, this time last year, I knew for sure that I wanted:

1. To get into a kickass MFA program in creative writing for Fall 2011. I’m almost entirely sure this is still on the docket. I can’t even imagine the luxury of spending 10-12 hours a day writing, without snatching my writing time in dissatisfying pinches on the bus, at my awful job, riding up elevators…
2. Not to make any friends in Boston. A year ago, this was incredibly important to me. I’m only going to be there for two years, I figured! Humans are distracting! Sometimes they try to hug you! But halfway through my time in Boston, this incredible city has become my home — and what’s the point of a home without some friggin’ faces around the hearth? Plus, I totally need someone to go to Sox games with.
3. To write a blog that someone, somewhere, would read. Sweet, year-ago self! Nailed it! And this blog is still very much alive and — this week’s post-project sigh of relief pending — ready to keep evolving and adding new features. That said, I guarantee you it will remain what it always was: a chronicle of my fledgling attempts at self-improvement and, more importantly, incurable talent for making an ass of myself in public all. the. friggin’. time.

Those are the few things I know for sure right now. But before I get ready to make next steps, I need to take a little time to figure out a few more things. I hate getting still, ’cause it lets me hear every thump of the friggin’ pterodactyls in my chest right now. But even if it’s scary to be quiet, I guess it’s the only way you can hear yourself.

Oh goodness. I’m going to take a hiatus ’til after Labor Day, then, uh, remember that time I used to write funny stories about flashing people on trains? We’ll get back to that.

Until then, though, what do you want out of life right now, dudes? Allow me to cheat off of your spiritual crib sheets!

Now that the project is out of its madcap final days and I have a little time to breathe, let’s meet up and catch a dang drink, shall we?

Sunday, August 29th. 3-5pm. Regal Beagle in Brookline.

Yes, it’s Moving Day weekend, BUT! can I tempt you with the information that my friggin’ mother will be there?! Yeah, she’s basically the coolest lady in the world, and definitely funnier than me. I’ll be honest with you guys — I’m the one throwing the silly party and even I’m mostly going to be there to bask in her awesomeness.

Come say hey, grab a gin/basil martini and a bacon-wrapped date, and give me a friggin’ fistbump after a year of awesome.

Also, if you’re interested in coming, can you shoot me a comment so I can have enough of an idea in my head to try to strike up a drink deal with the management?

(And for those of you who might have speculated that I’m trying to avoid a big introspective wrap-up by filling my blog with short administrative posts now that the project’s over, all I can say is that i’m offended, affronted and, what, are you part super-sleuth or something?! While I’m enjoying some blogging rest this week, check me out at Secret Society of List Addicts for a list of completely insignificant things I’m weirdly good at.)

I’m absolutely thrilled to tell you, loves, that this morning one of my posts is being featured on the front page of the always-spectacular BlogHer! I can’t even tell you how immensely thrilled I am about this! I may or may not have spent the past ten minutes hyperventilating.

Make my day and check out The Infinite Sadness of 5-Hour Energy. Then BlogHer will notice all the hits I sent ‘em, offer me a long-term writing contract, I’ll get a book deal, Alec Baldwin will star as my boss in the movie adaptation, and I’ll totally make out with him at the red-carpet premiere. Obviously.

Well, or I’ll remain a secretary, but be deeply pleased to be featured on a site I love. Win/win.

Also, this is easily one of the most thrilling moments of the project. Which got me thinking about a belated Choose My Adventure Day request from Ashe Mischief: to, without overthinking it, list my favorite five moments of the project.

Asking a Hamlet like me not to overthink is only courting disaster, but I tried, and here’s what I came up with:

1. My enchanting reign as the Mad Bubbler of Brighton, filling the streets with bubbles and, in the process, getting completely charmed by the small wonders of my neighborhood.
2. Writing the most absurdly specific Craigslist ad in history. Which, for the record, ended up netting me nearly seventy replies, one awful date, and no sexytimes Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme song singalongs.
3. Finally cracking open a horrifying story from the vault: the least hygienic hook-up ever (and how it made me momentarily internet famous). A story so traumatizing (and, in retrospect, hilarious) that it took me five years to c0nfide in another human.
4. My love letter to cigarettes, after I’d quit for a month.
5. Injecting a little summer fun and camaradie in my life by wandering the streets of Cambridge, slapping strangers high-fives. Also of note: possibly the only moment I’ve ever been cool. Not of the project, I mean. Of my life.

That’s only off the top of my head — when I stop to peek at my archives, I always find somewhere between fifty and eighty of these experiments that I don’t even remember doing. But for this moment, those are my favorites. And you are my favorites for reading (and for clicking that BlogHer link, obvi. Hey Alec Baldwin. Call me.)

Kittens! It is officially Choose TKOG’S Adventure Day! Until midnight tonight, I am a slave to your whims, and willing to have any adventure — no matter how banal or outlandish — you suggest here or on twitter. Clean my oven? Serenade a shopkeeper? PUNCH OUT A TRAIN?! Consider it done.

Well, not the last one. I’ve tried before. Trust me.

Make your (inexpensive, non-illegal) suggestions now and read about them tomorrow as part of my last NTKOG of the project! Exciting!

Also, speaking of life recommendations, might I suggest that if you’re in the Brookline area next Sunday, August 29, in the late afternoon/early evening, you drop by to catch a drink with me? This suggestion is made more complicated by my lack of concrete details, but I vow to you I’m working on it.

Basically, though, TKOMom’s going to be in town and we, along with some cool dudes, are going to catch a few drinks and celebrate the end of this project. If you want to come by and say hi, you ought to! Once I deliver proper details. Which I’ll do after I punch out a few trains.

Reminder: on Sunday, August 22, from 12:01AM to 11:59PM, my life is a Choose Your Own Adventure. Except you’re choosing my adventure. Tell me what to do via Twitter or blog comment and, as long as it isn’t illegal or too expensive, I’m all over it, dudes.

NTKOG #249: The kind of immaculately groomed pain-scoffer who — assuming women actually had armpit hair — would shell out the big bucks for a complete stranger to rip hers out by the roots.

I am: a complete wimp about wax-induced pain, which isn’t doing much for my future as a Career Dominatrix.

I am not: sure why women are so grossed out by their armpit hair anyway. We’re sexually mature mammals, dudes. Hair is a genetic factor here.

The Scene: Total Skin Care, a family-run waxing and skin salon in the ever-glamorous Allston. After a few weeks of angsting, breezed into the salon after work on Thursday and asked if they had any appointments for underarm deforestation. The charming woman at the counter penciled me in for an appointment forty-five minutes later then — as I dashed out to find the nearest DIY anesthesia center (ie: bar) — called out anxiously: “Wait, are you sure your armpit hair is long enough to wax? How long has it been since you shaved it?”

Uh, will six months do?

Guys, let’s talk about armpit hair. I realize this is a completely TMI admission, and verges on societal unacceptability, but — I kind of like it. I know, as women we’re total failures unless we pluck, pinch and alter every square inch of our bodies, but, dude, what’s so wrong with a little underarm foliage? About four years ago, I made the aesthetic decision to grow mine out; because The Ex and I were of one mind about the allure of a little spray of hair, I haven’t really looked back since.

The way I see it, my armpit hair is who I am. I’m not vain, I love my body, and my primary goal in 98% of social interactions is to weed out dudes who don’t have a high tolerance for personal eccentricities. Plus, whenever I contemplate shaving, I always think: dude, what if I’m stuck in some sort of missile-launching scenario with half a dozen foreign leaders, all locked in an underground bunker in our shirtsleeves for eighteen hours a day until we reach a final decision and, just at the fever pitch of military negotiation, I’m asked the single most important question of my life — if I shave under my arms, what the hell will I have to stroke contemplatively?

TKOG: greatest sex symbol of our time? Or of all time? Discuss.

Regardless, it was with the heavy heart of Sampson lowering himself into Delilah’s barber’s chair that I wandered down the salon’s steps and thrust myself into my fate. Not ten minutes later, I was folded into the embrace of Barbara, a woman a little older than my mother. Flowing skirt, unfussy hair, radiantly sarcastic grin — you know, like the cool aunt who takes you out whenever she’s in town and talks cute strangers into salsa dancing with you in the middle of taquerias.

Within the first five seconds in the waxing room, she told me to take off my top. Um, okay, I hesitated, waiting for her to leave the room. She didn’t. So off came the shirt and I splayed myself on the chair, arms up, my whole body clenched like a fist to protect me from the awkwardness and pain that was about to come. Except that didn’t happen either.

As she spread the hot wax on my first ‘pit, she launched into a hilarious diatribe about her gay dog and his heterophobia. Dude, you should lend him to me to take on dates, I laughed, then started to warn her that I’d probably scream when she pulled the wax out — except when I looked down at my underarm, it was already shorn. Magic.

“Dude, how’d you do that?!” I yelped. She beamed, almost coquettishly, the sly guru of hair removal, and admitted the secret was in her stories.

“Which one do you want to hear next, honey?” she asked, squirting lotion into her hand. “Wanna hear about my porn stars?” She massaged the lotion into my armpit, firmly, while gazing into the distance. “Some of the ones that come to me are gorgeous. I wouldn’t mind having one of them myself…”

From there, she described trade secrets about removing testicle hair, then told a story about a conservative judge and his hair-removed junk so uproarious that I had to beg her to stop because my abs were cramping from laughter. Big improvement from my last hair-removal experience, which I left shrieking like a freemason during the Inquisition.

By the time my ‘pits were soft and hair-free, I was too in love with Barbara to just let her wander out of my life. Uh, hey, I asked, trying to drag out the interaction, you know those, like, hairs on your toe-knuckles?

“Oh honey, say goodbye to ‘em,” she grinned, dribbling hot wax on my much maligned feet. “This one’s on the house!”

Too soon after, I got properly dressed again and followed her to the counter, where I paid the (incredibly reasonable) fee, volunteered to ghostwrite her memoirs, and promised to be back soon. And, between us, I definitely will.

The Verdict: Wow! Glad I retried waxing! Turns out that the sum of your experience has almost nothing to do with wax types or salon quality — the right warm, radiant personality can turn torture (literal torture!) into a deliriously delightful experience. Frankly, the fact that my armpits look great (and socially acceptable, for once) was just a bonus. I would have paid her just to stand there and listen to her stories.

Also, for what it’s worth, Sampson may have been shorn, but isn’t altogether powerless. I’m still nervous about my lack of meditative strokeability in a nuclear winter scenario, but, that aside, forgot that shaven ‘pits look pretty okay. I may or may not keep it up, but if I do, waxing all the way.