Sixteen years passed before I was able to see the other half of my motherland. Trinidad & Tobago is the name of this country, but I’ve been living in Trinidad without seeing Tobago for the past 16 years. The last time I went was at age 4, and the only memory I have of my stay was the plane ride to Tobago. So that does not even count.
I wanted very badly to go to Tobago, especially since I am planning to go on a cruise of the Caribbean in just over 6 months from now. It seems somehow unfair to visit half of the Caribbean without even seeing the supposed better half of your own twin-island state. At the very last minute (practically the day before I wanted to go), I made plans with my cousin’s girlfriend, Krys, to go with her.
I had my mother buy tickets for the 6:30am ship to Tobago, and the 4pm boat back to Trinidad.
Now, according to the tickets, we are to be at the port for 2 hours prior to the ship setting sail. That’s at fucking 4:30 in the morning. Usually, at that time, I am still dribbling on my pillow. Krys, my mom, and I, decided that the Port Authority was fucking nuts, and that we’d arrive at the port for 5am, instead.
You would think that I would use the time to get an extra half an hour sleep. Well, this was not so at all. I actually stayed up the entire night. Damn my parents, they came home late, and I was up until 11pm baby-sitting. By the time they were home, I had to start packing and shaving, and there was no way that I was going to get more than a half hour sleep.
I was so glad to finally shave. It had been over a month since I last shaved, because one does not need to shave when one is at home studying for exams. Now, I am not one of those people who would not shave for a couple of weeks, and then look down at their legs and exclaim:
“Oh my! I should shave!”
And then you would take a look at their legs, see nothing, then put on your glasses, still see nothing but skin, whip out your trusty magnifying glass, not notice a difference, and then finally break into the school laboratory and steal a high powered microscope, only to see a faint fuzziness of the legs.
No, not me.
Thirty-six hours after I shave, you would be able to grate cheese on my knee.
Thirty six *days* after I shave, as was the case Friday night, and I would have to be careful about wearing any pants that stop above my ankles in public.
British Explorer: “Now, I’ve called this press conference about my once-in-a-life-time find. I’ve been searching for the elusive Sasquatch for several years now. Oddly enough, while vacationing in Trinidad, I quite literally stumbled across her. Honestly, I thought the fur was for warmth… Goodness know why the sasquatch would need it in this tropical climate…”
I decided to use the opportunity to wax. I’ve been meaning to wax my legs for a while, and thought that my first trip to Tobago in 16 years warranted my uprooting my leg-hair. Sounds like a good enough idea, right? Well, not unless you do it yourself.
Let me tell you about those hair waxing commercials. That shit is completely misleading. Those commercials show you videos of women waxing on mute. You want a true account of a waxing experience, you look at that waxing scene from 40 Year Old Virgin. The first couple of times I pulled that strip of wax off, all sorts of things were coming out of my mouth, though I suppose some would find this a welcome change from certain non-edible things going in.
Eventually, I got used to the pain not to let out much more than a whimper after every strip. Still, waxing is terribly tedious. Enduring pain is a much more tolerable experience when someone is inflicting the pain on you.
“I moved from Washington to New York. I basically moved from the state with the highest suicide rate, to the state with the highest homicide rate. I guess I’m not a do-it-yourself kind of person.” – Some comedian
I only managed to pull my way through half of one leg before I said “fuck it” and shaved off the rest. Three days after I’ve shaved, those patches that I managed to pull from the roots are still baby-smooth, while the rest of my legs is a substitute for sand-paper.
Still, it was all well and good. Eventually, my legs were devoid of hair, one way or another, and our ride, although half an hour late, managed to drop us at the Port of Port-of-Spain by 5:15am.