Warning: adult themes

And in the midst of all the madness, I manage to remind myself what an odd palooka I am.

I make an appointment to have my legs and bikini-line waxed. This is me making a concerted effort at moments of normalcy between the hours of insanity that my life has become since giving birth. Usually I have the luxury of showering before my appointment, but today I am too busy rushing to doctors to manage it. So I do what wise streetwalkers have been doing for generations. I spurt a bit of perfume on my knickers so that my hoo-ha doesn’t hum when the waxer is doing her thing down there.

Wipe that look off your face. A girl likes to be fresh, you know.

Unfortunately, I can’t find my perfume so I use R’s deodorant. It’s some sort of Power Uber Sports stuff and it leaves a dreadful white stain. No matter, I think, I’m sure it will be absorbed in the ten minutes it takes me to drive there.

As I drive I think of the spinal surgery O has coming up. I worry that it won’t be simple or painless. I fear the recovery will be long and difficult. I question whether they’ll find yet another problem lurking like they did the last time they operated. This has become my default thought, constantly sitting at the back of my head, waiting for a moment to rear up and spit itself at me. Then I feel a burning sensation. In my punda. At first I think it's my own fear, eating me from the inside. Then I realise the fecking Uber deodorant has leaked through my undies and is giving me a feeling I last felt after a particularly dirty weekend with a pervy microbiologist.

I scratch. It makes it worse. I race around the corner and park outside the beautician’s house. I pull my jeans down, use an old tissue to wipe the deodorant from my vujak, then spit on my fingers and start to wipe the stain off my panties. I’m wiping up and down, enthusiastically making some progress when I notice a shocked face staring at me through the window. J, the woman who recommended the beautician to me, has finished her appointment. And she thinks I’m masturbating in the car before mine.

I do the only thing I can. I fish my finger out of my crotch and wave at her. She grimaces back, waves quickly and dashes into her car. I notice her pick up her mobile phone and stare out of the corner of her eye at me as she talks.

Fuck it, I think. Maybe I should take to wanking in the car. It’s a stress release, it beats listening to the ads on the radio, and best of all, it will give people like J something to talk about other than my daughter’s medical problems.

I'm feeling frisky already...