What's New Pussycat?

I had some interesting conversations with some of my guy friends this weekend. Mostly, we talked about pussy.

(I bet this will be the one blog entry my parents actually read. Ummm... sorry!)

I had been thinking about women and their pubic hair for about a week. I don't know why, I just started wondering what men prefer. I remember when the whole landing strip started showing up, and I thought that was so weird... One thumbsized strip of pubic hair in that whole area and that was it. Then my last roommate happened to be a very sexual young lady who was always strutting around the apartment in pushup bras and skimpy tops and lacy underwear (she really knew how to work it - there were always boys sniffing around) and I saw that she just waxed the whole thing, which was something I only thought existed in porn. Until I dated a guy for a few months who basically brought me a razor expecting the same thing. Oh, and he was really into porn.

So the other day, I was at a friend's house swimming in his pool with his brother and a friend. Mr. I, as I like to call him, was flipping through the French edition of Photo magazine when one of the ads made him laugh out loud. "Max!" he yelled to his friend. "This one has you written all over it."

He flipped the magazine around to show us a Gucci ad, which consisted of a skinny woman in her underwear, stilettos and some sort of open shirt, standing with her legs spread and slightly greased up. You can only see her from about mid-breast down, because there was a guy on his knees at crotch level pulling her underwear off, and her pubic hair was shaved into a "G."

Max asked, "Why do you think that especially interests me?" And Mr. I responded, "Well, didn't you say that you always go at a woman's pussy with a pair of clippers?" And I said, "Oh, are you one of those guys that likes it totally naked?" And he got all defensive and said, "No no no! I just like it groomed! I mean, you take care of the hair on your head, why not the hair down there? After all, I'm gonna pay more attention to the area if I want to be there." And I said, "Of course, that makes sense." And he said, "What - are you au natural?" "What do you mean by that?" "You know, just let it grow wild... just a great big hairy bush." And then I got defensive: "If that were true, you'd see it flowing right out of this bikini, wouldn't you? No, I keep myself trim, thank you very much."

Then Mr. I interjected, "You know though, it's the current wave of the twenty somethings today. All the young girls are just doing this total seventies bush." And I said, "You mean like, lots of it?" "Yep, that's what they say." So I had to ask them, "Well, what do you prefer?"

Max said that he just liked it trimmed small, but not the landing strip thing. Mr. I said he preferred "Stripper couture," which I took to mean landing strip and not totally naked because he'd objected to that earlier. And then Max said, "What is the point of pubic hair anyway?" And Mr. I said, "It's a primitive thing... it has to catch and hold scent, so that men smell it and get turned on and it gets the whole reproductive thing going."

"Ugh," said Max. "I don't want it to smell." But then I said, "I don't know, I've known guys who love the smell, if it smells right. I guess it's a chemistry thing." And Max said, "That's true, like when a girl has a little b.o. - that can smell great." Which led us to a discussion about extracting and somehow selling pheremones, and how that's probably bullshit, and how crazy it is that such a subtle smell can really cause someone to react.

And somehow, this conversation was insanely relevant to something that had happened to me just the night before. My roommate had a friend visiting from NYC, and he had another friend who was in town promoting a book. This writer is a rock critic and is a very witty, observant and hilarious spazz of a guy who was just ending his tour and looking to get away from the book stuff for a bit, so all four of us got together after the writer had finished his reading and wound up at the strip club where Courtney Love got her start. (And who knows - maybe she'll be back there again soon at the rate she's nosediving.)

After hanging out with the naked ladies, we decided to get out of LA on a Friday night and come back to our apartment in Silverlake. My roommate and her friend were making drinks and I was to give the writer a tour, but he was already in my room at the end of the hallway. I said, "Yea, I got lucky and got the big room." And he goes, "This is great. This room is really great." I thought he was looking around, admiring the hipster books on the shelves and Chinese antiques, when he said, "It just smells great in here."

I was a little taken aback, but only because I couldn't smell anything. My sheets were relatively clean and my laundry was in the basket, and I don't wear perfumes or use scented detergent, so I couldn't figure out what he was smelling. "Really? What does it smell like?" He kinda bounced a bit and looked around and said, "It just smells like...like... it smells like girl." "Oh," I said. "Ummm, well, then, here's my big ass walk in closet." And he liked that too, because my CDs and records are hidden away in there, out of display range as he said. He looked through some of my music and we talked about it a bit, and as he walked out of the closet he goes, "So it's not lotion or anything?" And I said, "No, I don't use any scented lotions really." And he goes, "Wow - great."

I guess if these talks taught me anything, it's that men are more into personal grooming than I thought. Mine, that is. Interesting...