What a Woman

I unbutton her pants after enough red wine and the kind of late-night talk that goes nowhere good—her brother, her roommate’s lasagna—and my hand slides between her legs into this thick mass of pubic hair. Curled, stubborn, unshaved for years. I like it.

Hair used to matter because of lice. Now it’s just beauty standards dressed as necessity. Girls are supposed to be smooth like children. Men too. The ideal is hairless and shaved everywhere—makes the dick look bigger, nothing in the way of a blow job. You’re supposed to want that. It’s what men want.

I picture Theresa hairless and it doesn’t work. That bundle of hair between her legs is hers, makes her a real woman, not a child’s body. I haven’t felt like a creep in a while, not the way I do sometimes with people who’ve been razed completely clean.

Twelve-year-old girls having panic attacks over the hair they’re growing. Men going around saying they only fuck smooth pussies. It’s bleak.

Morning comes. She gets up, gets dressed. I mention the pubic hair. Your ass isn’t even shaved, she says, quick and flat, before the shower. Fair point. I nod. Taking her to the U-Bahn, I still taste some of her dark hairs between my teeth. She drops into the station with that look and I’m thinking what a woman.