Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens -- J.R.R. Tolkien

Back in the day, many many years ago during the days of wine and roses, when life was slow and oh so mellow, when you could let your children run around outside all day without checking on them because nobody did anything wrong to people, and you could go to sleep or maybe even leave your house for hours without locking all your doors and windows -- hell, you could even leave your front door wide open with a plate of warm brownies on a chair right in plain sight of the sidewalk -- you know, back when Aunt Bea was cooking and Opie was killing birds with his slingshot.  Yeh, back then.  Remember it? 

Well, back then, my niece, Stephanie, was nice and sweet, and gentle and peaceful and wore her hair in a Dorothy Hamill wedge cut and never used any cuss words.  I know, it was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, and it's very hard to remember those days gone by, before Stephanie became the charming, cute and adorable toilet mouth we know and love today.

Anyway, way down yonder in the land of cotton, way back when, she was so elegant, gentile and delicate -- and naive -- that she could not bring herself to soil her lily white lips with the ugly, harsh and common phrase we know now as "pubic hair."  Those base words were too much for her to stand, too much for her to utter, too sinful for her to even consider saying.  Instead of pubic hair, Stephanie always said -- after a pause and a glance from left to right, checking to see if God or Yiayia was around -- "bathroom hair."

How brilliant!  What a great phrase.  The minute she said it, I knew it was the perfect white person phrase, used when you were at the country club enjoying a gin and tonic or at a Philoptochos meeting pretending to have a pot and a window to throw it out of.

Immediately when I first heard her say that, I was pissed off because I had not thought of bathroom hair first.  How could this little slip of a thing, 8 years my junior, a darling little niece who was more of a sister to me than a niece, have thought up this great phrase before me???  I was supposed to be the smart one and, if I didn't have THAT, then what was MY purpose in the family?  But this brief and fleeting self doubt left as quickly as it arrived when Stephanie confided in me that she did not know what manual labor was -- she asked me if it was the name of the president of Mexico.

Whew!  My self confidence dodged a bullet on that one.

When I hear bathroom hair now, it reminds me of the time that my mother confided in me that Thela had confided in her -- which my mother immediately told me -- oh these dastardly Greeks -- that all of Thela's pubic, I mean, bathroom, hair was gone.  GONE?  Not going, going, going, but all done gone!  Oh my.  Where had it gone -- shopping?  Was it somewhere between the back door and her car?  Or, God forbid, was it somewhere at our house?  She did come over quite a bit.

Wherever it went, it was, well, disconcerting to say the least.  One doesn't often hear that one's aunt has lost all her pubic, I mean, bathroom, hair and, believe me, when one does, one feels like someone has shoved hot iron pokers into one's eyes.  Of course, I played it cool and responded "that devil, Uncle Andy."  Mom laughed so hard that she cried and, when she realized that she was crying, she laughed some more.  Then, she laughed even harder and then peed a little bit.  She laughed until she couldn't breath and then I got in trouble for saying it.  But not until she had a good belly laugh over the thought.  For God's sake, Thela and Uncle Andy slept in separate beds, twin beds -- like Wally and Beaver -- as long as I had known them!  How could we go from that to this?  The only way to get over this little rip in my Greek family's cosmic universe was to forget about my aunt's pubic, I mean, bathroom, hair until I was about 50 when I remembered it quite accidentally.

Looking through some old cardboard boxes for my dignity one day, I found a weathered picture of Thela in crisp white pedal pushers and a sleeveless white shirt.  She was one white Greek woman except for her mink stole which was pulled fetchingly around her shoulders in the 100 degree heat of a St. Louis summer.  Of course.  Her hair -- the hair on her head not her pubic, I mean, bathroom, hair -- was dyed the exact same color as the mink stole.  I guess it was cheaper to do it that way because she could buy it in bulk.  Anyway, it must have been really really sunny out because Thela was squinting and there was a bright glint on everything in the picture.  The sun was bright, that sort of sunny day that is bone white and everything is shiny.  It was good to see Thela -- she'd been dead for over 20 years at that point -- and I had spent so many happy hours, days, weeks and months over at her house.  She was a lot like my mother -- which seems right since they were sisters -- only my mother was nice.  Anyway, suffice it to say that I have many many good memories of Thela and her taking care of me like I was one of her own.  So, I treasured the picture, looked at it carefully, pouring over every detail of her, from the tip of her mink stole-colored hair, to her bright alert eyes, to the batwings on the bottom of her forearms and, finally, to her camel toe.  YES HER CAMEL TOE!  OMG she had a camel toe long before I even knew what a camel toe was!  I bet I didn't even know what a camel was at that point in my young life!  

Once I saw it, I could not take my eyes off it -- Thela's camel toe -- big as day and looking painful.  I tried to look at her bright alert eyes but MY eyes always took a detour straight south.  I put the photograph down and walked across the room but, damn, wherever I went, that camel toe just seemed to keep following me around the room.  And, when I stared at it more carefully -- which was about all I could do at this point -- the sun was so bright that you could see the outline of her granny panties in her crisp white pedal pushers.

And that's when it hit me.  I remembered that she had no pubic, I mean, bathroom, hair.

I snickered.  I laughed out loud.  I remembered my mom laughing, crying, peeing and laughing some more.  I remembered getting into trouble for talking about my aunt's, her sister's, pubic, I mean, bathroom, hair, and I myself -- in great family tradition -- laughed so hard that I cried, laughed some more and then peed a little myself.  Hey, like mother like son.

It was a beautiful moment in time.

You ever have one of those moments when you remember your childhood?  Some moment that stands out so clearly and reminds you that once, long ago, before you had too much hair and got smelly and old, you were young and cute and wide eyed and everything in the world was new and fresh?

Well, did you?

I don't.  From my earliest memory, I was always thinking of dirty things, nasty things, vile vulgar things that made other people think there was something wrong with me and this -- my aunt's camel toe and pubic, I mean, bathroom, hair -- was no different.

Speaking of pubic, I mean, bathroom, hair -- and who isn't??? -- I had my own pubic, I mean, bathroom, hair problem this week.  I was at Jerry's office on Monday.  This is the office on Dupont Circle in Washington DC.  I always take a bottle of Kirkland brand VitaRain with me in the morning and, once I drink the whole bottle, I fill it with filtered water and drink plain water for the rest of the day.  Well, because I drink so much, I have to pee a lot -- in the privacy of my own home, I like to call myself Sir Pees-a-lot.  So, here in Jerry's DC office, I had to pee so, what else, I went to the bathroom.

Once there, I pulled my pants down and sat on the pot.  As I said in an earlier posting, I am supposed to sit down when I pee because my doctor told me not to lift anything heavy.

Anyway, there I was sitting on the pot, doing my thing.  Since I don't take my hand-held solitaire game with me to work -- I reserve that for the pot in my home -- I had nothing to do so I decided to look inside my underpants.  What a mistake that was. 

If you have never done this before, let me tell you, don't EVER do it under any circumstance.  What you find there will disgust you.  There were little bits of trash like I can only imagine the seats in a baseball stadium look like after a game.  Crumpled up paper, bits of dead skin, old newspaper, discarded Metro tickets, left-over parts of hot dog buns, the shells from half-eaten, as you  might expect, nuts and, again as you might expect, all sorts of crap were in my underpants.  There were stains there that I have never -- let me repeat -- NEVER seen the likes of before.  Grease spots, oily patches, bearnaise sauce and, yes, you guessed it, pubic, I mean, bathroom, hair.  Who the fuck should have underpants this dirty!  It made me think that we don't pay our cleaning lady enough.

But, there, amongst all the dirt and gradue, I saw something even more disturbing -- 2 little spots of blood.

Blood!  I immediately went into full hypochondriacal mode.  I pulled my underpants tight so I could see it better.  Sure enough -- blood.  Deep red, almost black on the fringes.  One big splatter like the blood had dropped from some height.  Then, off to the right, a schmear of blood, small for sure but definitely a schmear.

Clearly, I was dying.  Bladder cancer is always the worst kind although it could be testicular cancer but I'm too old to fit that profile but if it is bladder cancer I am clearly not Lance Armstrong -- why would he ever have dated that ugly bull dyke Sheryl Crow -- and I would never survive that.  If the cancer doesn't get me, then  the sheer embarassment of having people look at my nuts for hours and hours will surely do the trick.  Last time that happened, I was about 25 years old and living in Miami.  If I do happen to survive the cancer -- which I won't -- there's the embarrassment of the nut removal and the uncomfortable replacements.  What do they use anyway, golf balls?  Certainly, in my case, they will want to use golf balls, or -- better yet -- tennis balls.

Hematuria is the medical term for blood in the urine.  This can be caused by strenuous exercise -- forget that, moving on -- urinary tract infections -- but I drink lots of cranberry juice and that's really good for your peepee so that's probably not the case -- kidney stones or other sorts of kidney injuries -- mine has been pretty safe lately because I practice safe peeing as I pointed out before. 

All that's left is the cancer.

I felt around in the area where the blood would have come from.  I stood up, pulled my underpants up and pin-pointed the blood by sticking my finger pretty hard there so I would remember where on my body to look.  Of course, once I pulled my underpants down, I could not see or reach that area.  But there did not seem to be any pimples and I know for sure I couldn't get THAT area stuck in my zipper.

No, the cancer, is what it had to be.

I pulled my underpants up, put my pants and belt on.  I washed my face off.  I pulled myself together.

I went back to my office and was just about to get my affairs in order -- I'd hate to leave Jerry with my messy affairs -- when I saw an email from one of my best law school friends Diane. 

I call her the Beastmistress because she was such a slut in law school.  She wanted to have lunch with me.  That was good, right?  Yes, very good.  So good, in fact, that it made my cancer go away, I mean, go into remission. 

Until after lunch. 

When I was alone again in the office -- without my dear Beastmistress -- the cancer came back but of course there was nothing I could do about it then either.  I peed several more times that day and no blood.  I drank and peed lots that night and no blood.  In fact, I have not seen a drop of blood at all anywhere since I first had my cancer.  So maybe I'm seriously in remission or maybe Jesus simply noticed how sacred and pious I am and this was my own personal kind of stigmata.  No, think about it, there is kind of a holy trinity -- down there.  Well, to me at least!

I'm pretty sure I'm going to hell for that one.

Anyway, I am now on the 5th day with the cancer -- or not -- and the 75th day of the rest of my life -- and there has been no more blood, thanks be to God.  But I do have to live with the fact that my underpants are a filthy cesspool of sewer shit and, of course, there's the shame of imagining my niece mouthing the words "bathroom hair," knowing that, this time, she is thinking about her own Uncle Lew's underpants while I am furiously trying to gouge my own eyes out in a vain -- but desperate -- attempt to erase from my own memory the most vile and hideous vision of all.  Like the Sirens of Anthemusa, I am drawn to -- without free will to pass by -- the grotesque and monstrous memory of my aunt's pubic, I mean, bathroom, hair, her shiny camel toe and smooth, but erstwhile mink-colored, landing patch.  Although the same Greek blood flows through me as flowed through Odysseus, I am neither as clever as he nor as convincing as he -- I mean, seriously, would you sail the Mediterranean, lash me to a pole and let me melt beeswax on your eyeballs so I could safely look at my aunt's bush?  I think not.



Oh my God what the hell is wrong with me?  Please forgive me, God.  Please forgive me, Thela.  Please forgive me, Odysseus and the rest of humanity.  I admit that I am seriously twisted and sick and vulgar and disgusting and, most of all, disrespectful.  Or, on the other hand, could it just be the brain cancer???  Either way, I just can't help myself.