Exclusive stuff: A lost scene from SPOTLESS!

The pain.

God, the pain.

All in the name of my dream date. I stared at the white ceiling and tried to focus on the pleasant scent of jasmine permeating the air as a beautician tore yet another band of wax-covered cotton from my legs, and I clenched my teeth, braving the agony like a warrior on a dragon-slaying quest.

I had never waxed before—never felt I needed too: a quick shave before going to the swimming pool was the closest I had ever come to being all smooth and dolled up.

For some reason, though, I couldn’t picture my dream romance date with hair on my legs, even if a dress would conceal those, and March probably wouldn’t look anyway. After, he had said himself that we were ‘going too fast’—something I feared to be a tactful way of saying that he wasn’t desperate enough yet to do a weirdo like me.

Regardless, I wanted to look great, so here I was, wincing and gripping the sides of the table as a not so gentle Indian-looking beautician tortured my thighs into perfect smoothness.

I breathed a sigh of relief when she reached the hem of my panties—was there even hair there? I couldn’t feel anything anymore through all this pain. She seemed to finally be done. I felt her lay cool towels on my legs to soothe my reddened skin, and her hand casually moved to lift my undewear’s crotch away from my privates, and place some kind of tiny rolled towel underneath the cream silk to hold it in place.

I immediately sat up to stop her, my cheeks now as red as my legs.

“Bikini.” Okay, she didn’t speak much English—or Japanese, for that matter—but this I understood.

“No, no bikini!” I grumbled, already reaching to remove the rolled towel.

“Bikini.” She repeated icily, staring intently at the brown patch now showing between my legs.

I flushed even harder. Was she trying to tell me something? She moved away from the table to retrieve a little leaflet on a nearby table. Cute, cartoon-like illustrations showcased the kind of haircut (muffcut, if you will) that you could choose from. I kept shaking my head negatively, and she turned another page.

I froze.

Now that was one very explicit comic. And by that I mean that this brown little bear with big eyes and a pink towel was apparently the client, and she wanted the beautician to wax her hair, because she was too ‘furry furry’—the leaflet’s words, not mine.

My eyes narrowed.

The girl’s eyes narrowed. She pointed at my crotch again with a stern finger. “Bikini.”

Swallowing the lump in my throat, I allowed her to bend me into some kind of ridiculous birth-giving position, and she proceeded.

The first band made me scream so loud that I didn’t even realize that she hadn’t waited for me to choose my cut from the leaflet.