Jackie Papandrew

“How much underarm hair is too much on a man?”

 That’s what was shouted at me recently as I stood hunched over in the bathroom, drying my hair upside down. I dry my hair upside down in the forlorn hope that this will infuse it with volume and leave me with the kind of bouncy, beautiful locks you’d see on a Victoria’s Secret runway model. As I said, it’s a forlorn hope.  My hair was still damp and not yet infused with volume, and my mind was not even fully awake when my husband of more than 20 years posed his bizarre question. I straightened up, shut off the dryer and glared at the man standing with his arms raised, staring at himself in the mirror.

“It is just way too early in the morning for me to deal with another one of your body hair issues,” I said.

 OK, so it wasn’t my finest moment as a supportive spouse. But my man has been driving me crazy lately with his concerns about hordes of hair accumulating in places where just a little hair had been before. Like his ears and his nose. And now, apparently, under his arms.

 “Men are supposed to have hair under their arms,” I said, realizing I was running out of time to make my own hair look decent. “Would you put your arms down! I don’t need to see it.”

 “I know,” he sighed, lowering his arms, “but lately mine has gotten much bushier. I wonder if I should trim it?” He sighed again. “I’m getting old.”

 Not long ago we attended a marriage retreat in which we were told there are five phases of marriage, ranging from the honeymoon phase right on through to that golden phase when you sit happily together in rocking chairs on the front porch, and you don’t care about where hair might be growing because, thankfully, you can’t see it.

 In between are some nitty-gritty stages during which you develop a realistic view of your spouse and yourself, and learn to love each other anyway. I guess we’re somewhere in one of those stages.

 I suddenly remembered a day back in our honeymoon phase when I was again drying my hair upside down, and my husband was shaving in front of the bathroom mirror with a towel wrapped around his torso. Playfully, I stuck the dryer under the towel to give him a little shot of hot air. But I pushed it in a little further than I intended, and the hot coils scorched his fanny, leaving a red ring on his butt and prompting him to tell everyone we knew that I’d tried to brand him.

My husband was still contemplating his armpits when I turned the dryer back on. 

“Hey,” I said, “remember when I branded your butt?” I turned the dryer toward him. “I could do it again, just to take your mind off all that proliferating body hair of yours.”

 “Don’t you dare,” he said, walking grumpily out of the bathroom. “I’m too old for that.”

We’re definitely out of the honeymoon phase.