I might not go down in history, but I will go down on your sister

Quote courtesy of Hank Moody, 'Californication' episode 102.

With bathing-suit season upon us, and whilst enjoying the aforementioned brilliant Shotime program, I've had plenty of occasion to consider the ever-pressing question of pubic hair.

I have long maintained the sentiment echoed by Hank that bare down there just isn't appealing. It's weird. I'm sorry, it just is. In all of my sordid adventures, I have only encountered one partner who consistently kept their business shaved. I did not like it. It looked weird, and it scratched my face all to hell. I don't think anyone is honestly invested enough in the supposed cleanliness of totally shaved genitalia to suffer stubble burn and the resultant breakouts.

Granted, there are limits. This is one of the few arenas in life in which I both practice and preach moderation. None is too little, un-tended is too much. I think it's matter of courtesy. If you have any desire to have someone down there, make their experience a little easier, and a little less like flossing. Neatly trimmed and maintain pubes are just more pleasant for everyone involved. Let it go wild, and you hold in a lot more sweat, fluids, and subsequent odors than with a somewhat neater jungle.

I happen to have performed the piece 'Hair' in the VDay Boulder production of 'The Vagina Monologues' this year. My one and only attempt at removing all of my bush was exactly like that of the woman in the monologue.
"I felt little when my hair was gone down there. The skin got irritated, and even calamine lotion didn't help. There were screaming red bumps, I refused to shave it again."
It was awful. It hurt, it itched, there were ingrown hairs, it made sex uncomfortable, and took just about forever to grow back to a point at which it no longer felt prickly.

During the show, I also saw many, many more vaginas in one time and place than in my entire life prior to that point put together. I was shocked to discover how few of them had hair! I had long held the belief that be-nuded vaginas were almost exclusively the domain of celebrities, models, strippers, and others who essentially could not have much by the way of pubis due to their profession, with a few high-maintainance elite thrown in. In the cast of 20, I can only say for certain that four, including me, had any real semblance of pubic hair. There were a few with band-aid sized landing strips, and the rest were completely bare.
When did this begin to happen as a social phenomenon?!

Again, to quote Hank Moody,
"It would be nice to find some pubis down there, not full-on 70's playboy bush, but just something to remind me that I am performing cunnilingus on an adult."

Things that had not occurred to me about the internet: That the person to whom one lost one's virginity on the beach at summer camp* might track one down on facebook, after not having seen or spoken to said person in five years.

*we were counselors, not campers and of an age reasonably to be able to consent. It might also be worth mentioning that, although I am not a person of faith, it was a Church Camp, where I know for a fact lots of other people also had their first sexual experience.