Oh
Pubes. Why are you? What maladies did you protect our forebears against? Why do
you curl and tangle and grow unkempt, suggestive of a habitat for small species
of nocturnal predatory rodent? What secrets have you to conceal, other than
delicate meatparts? But mostly: why. Why are you?
I
am not opposed to your existence. I almost understand. You may have at one time
helped a lot, and us humans may need to call on you again someday. Have you
heard about the amount of methane being released from polar melts? It’s
frightening, Pubes. Frightening. None of us humans know how things are going to
be on this crazy blue marble of ours. Some of our smarter people have said
it’ll be hotter on average, but we don’t know if that means hotter everywhere
or hotter all the time or hotter for how long before another ice age or what.
Climatology is complicated. We may yet need your help to keep our genitals warm
before all is said and done. If that’s even what you do. We don’t know that
either.
We
never talk, Pubes. What’s your story, anyway? Are you just hoping to be
ignored? That makes me sad, Pubes. Are you hunkering down like a middle school
outcast with a huge backpack full of Dungeon Masters Guides, trying your best
to grow up while nobody’s looking? Do you take the long way from Earth Science
to Algebra 2 because Ty Bradley and Jen Nuñez are in D Hall after third period
and they have clippers? Is that what you are? Who are you? What are you like?
Are
you bitter, Pubes? Do you want to be left alone? Or do you prefer to be coifed
and fussed over? Are you the industrious type? Do you emerge purposefully from
a pruning, feeling leaner and more effective and deadly, ready to take on the
world and hit this two o’clock meeting out of the park? Do you vacillate between
the two poles, generally preferring the tidy morning commuter look of being a
fully engaged contributor to the events of the world, but in occasional dark times
growing long and gnarled and wild and forlorn and reckless, like a
thirtysomething shoe store clerk with nothing left to lose hitting the bottle
hard after a nasty breakup with a deeply flawed person?
How
do you feel about being fully removed, torn out by the root? Does that make you
angry? Do you thirst for revenge? Do you go underground, torching the system
until your people are free? Is one Pube waxed one too many, or will you make
concessions to oversight within reason? How much or how little control are you
comfortable with? Do you function wholesomely under rigorously maintained strictures,
healthily but creepily thriving like a Singapore of hair, or do you rankle
under the yoke of oppression?
Are
you religious? Do you have a native creation myth centered on the Happy Trail?
Do you think of a mass reaping as a necessary sacrifice to the Great Genital,
from whom all blessings and scourges must flow? Are you ideological? What
precepts do you cling to? What are the foundations of your value system, Pubes?
Do you abide all slights, or are you warlike? How closely do you associate with
the hairs of Belly or Upper Inner Thigh or Taint or Asshole? And in what
capacity? Compromises and Treaties and Trade Agreements? Do you consider
yourself a small but vital part of the greater brotherhood of hair, accepting
responsibilities and demanding an equal say, or are you Isolationist?
I
don’t know why you are, so I never asked who you are. We never talk. I don’t
understand you, and I’m not sure you’re interested in understanding me. I want
to do what’s best for both of us. I trimmed you today without even thinking
about it. I’ve been Master and Sun God of your universe, and I’ve been fickle
and inattentive. But is this the natural state of things? Do you strive for
more? Should I give a damn about your hopes and dreams? What? What, Pubes,
what?
Moisturize
your skin? Sure. Yeah, sure, I can do that. Anything else? No? That’s all you
have to tell me? No wisdom or pleas for mercy or... okay. You know what? Okay.
Moisturize your skin. You got it, Pubes. Good talk.
