A Brazilian in Antarctica

When James Brown offered me the job at the South Pole Research Station he told me about three things that I would find there: 1. The world’s greatest boss 2. A great love 3. The SKUA shack. The SKUA shack breaks up the ten to twenty-minute walk (depending on the wind strength and chill) from […]

When James Brown offered me the job at the South Pole Research Station he told me about three things that I would find there: 1. The world’s greatest boss 2. A great love 3. The SKUA shack.

The SKUA shack breaks up the ten to twenty-minute walk (depending on the wind strength and chill) from the huts that I lived in and the research station I worked at in Antarctica. It is older than most of the buildings on the ice and is filled with anything you can imagine in the most disorganized fashion. The items in there are questionable and, what we later realized, are mostly things that mothers mail to “cozy up your room” or “give to your new friends for Christmas presents”. During my deploy, my friend Kerri received a stuffed reindeer wearing a tutu, a festive pillowcase, a sarong and a McDonald’s happy meal toy in the mail the same day my mother sent me 12 circular mirrors, a dream catcher and a carved wooden mask she found at the thrift store. All these items ended up in SKUA.

The few practical items in SKUA are found only by the persistently curious or bored Polie who digs past the costumes, golf clubs and glow in the dark stickers. It wasn’t long after I arrived that I became a mixture of bored and desperate for some more lotion when I started digging through the boxes, crates, and piles in the SKUA shack and discovered the Brazilian wax kit.

The combination of the altitude and isolation at the bottom of the world creates an environment perfect for doing crazy things that no one will question. It is expected that at one point during your contract period you will do, say or create something that is completely outside of the person you are back home. This happened for me the night I got off work and found a note in the empty Art room where Churchman, the great love that I had been promised, and I always met. He had decided to go to bed early and I was supposed to wake him up later. This would involve sex followed by immediate sleep and none of that was something I was interested in at the immediate moment.

At this time I was working the 2pm to 11pm shift, which meant I got off work much later than most of the station which was usually quiet by 9pm. Sitting in the art room I decided I still wanted to do something nice for Churchman as long as it didn’t involve naked bodies and an early bedtime. With the art room at my sole disposal, I considered writing him a silly poem or painting him a suggestive picture but I wasn’t feeling inspired. Then, I remembered my SKUA treasure.

And so I headed to the women’s bathroom on the first floor of the main station, where I kept things I might need in an instant and wouldn’t have time to walk the 20 minutes outside to my room for. Important things, like my work uniform, bottles of wine, lotion and the Brazilian wax kit.

With a bottle of wine and the waxing supplies in my hands, I went upstairs to the galley. I put the wax in the microwave and started on my first glass of wine while I waited for it to melt. That first glass of wine turned into two since the wax took much longer than the instructions suggested which I attributed to our high altitude and not the possibility of a long past expiration date. My confidant, Erin, was working that night and I told her of my master plan. She did not encourage my DIY salon night, shook her head and told me to come back and tell her how it went.

There is only one private bathroom inside the research station at the South Pole. It has a toilet, a sink, a faucet low to the ground for filling mop buckets, and a mirror so small that it is only useful for plucking eyebrows or seeing if you had anything in your nose. The color of the tile in the room escapes me, but I do recall a picture on the wall of a child who was about to fall into a large bucket. This image was tag-lined with ‘watch your child or it will fall into this bucket of poison’ and that was the only mention of children during my 100 days at the South Pole.

My two glasses of wine were of the past and only guzzles of wine straight from the bottle would do as I sat on the colorless tile floor with my bare bum and started applying wax with the supplied wooden spoon. Guided by my intoxication and without a method, plan or rhyme I slopped on the lukewarm wax. When I applied the strip to the wax and mercifully ripped it off of my hair and flesh, no hair or pain came up with it. It felt, at the time, that the logical thing to do was apply more wax to a different area and try it again. Every blind pull of the wax strip yielded the same results: a bare wax strip and a new clot of wax unremoved from my skin.

It all happened so fast, as crazy things happen to, and suddenly I’m sitting on a tiled floor, someone is knocking on the door and I have the beginnings of a bikini bottom made of wax. “I’ll be out in a moment!”. The bottle of wine, chugged between applications, is empty so I put it in the garbage, neglecting the importance of recycling. I pull on my light-pink bikini briefs, my work pants and shoes then slide out the door with some barely-used wax strips crumpled in my hands and a half-empty bottle of wax.

Back at the galley, Erin is not shocked by my look of concern.

“So, what happened?”

She is expecting a tale of pain and screams and raw flesh.

“Nothing.”

And I tell her how nothing happened. That the wax was still stuck to my pubic hair. That the strips were bare and lacked traction. That I had to find a way to remove the wax from my overgrown bush of hair. She suggests baby oil and a long sit in the sauna, which is followed by another shaking of her head and a request for me to come back and tell her how it went.

Downstairs in the bathroom, which is conveniently located across from the sauna, I begin to undress. The shoes come off. The work pants come off. The light-pink bikini briefs do not. They have become one with the wax and stay on. Opening another bottle of wine, which is also conveniently located in the bathroom that is across from the sauna, I decided to still follow Erin’s instructions. Wrapping a towel around my waist, I slink into the sauna and turn it on to the highest temperature. The baby oil, another SKUA find, is generously applied over the underwear until the light pink fabric is soaked and develops an orange tint. While I wait for the sauna to heat, I relax and play with my delusions. The wax will come off. Churchman will be grateful when he sees my raw, bare vagina. “oh my!” he will exclaim and I will pretend like it is no big thing. It was nothing, after all.

My fantasy is interrupted when, less than 5 minutes later, the handsome cryogenic scientist walks into the sauna after a late night work out. “Halley! How are you doing?!” Too embarrassed and maybe a little too drunk to reply, I walk out of the sauna without a word. The next day at dinner he will ask me if I am upset with him and I will tell him “No, I just have body image issues” as I eat my fourth slice of pizza.

Back in the women’s restroom, I start to put on the attire that is required for my walk back to my hut. This month is one of the coldest and my Carhart overalls are nowhere to be found, so I have sufficed with just my boots, jacket, and half-empty second wine bottle. With the wind chill it is about -40 below Fahrenheit and as soon as I step outside I can feel the wax tighten its grasp around each individual pubic hair as it freezes closer to me.

It’s almost 2 a.m and thirteen minutes later when I make it to my hut, which is filled with 14 sleeping people. I trudge as quietly as I can to my room and fall onto my bed and slip off the work pants and glare at my pink underwear.

“I could just leave them there until they rot off…” crosses my mind.

It’s not the idea that I would have to hold in my bodily fluids forever that makes me realize this is a bad plan, it is realizing that I wouldn’t be able to have sex with Churchman that does. With scissors, I cut away any pink fabric that is not melted/frozen to my body.

The remaining fabric is in the form of a V. I begin to peel a little from the left peak of the V and then a little from the right. Nothing is happening because despite my best efforts I am still sober enough to feel pain. I reach for the wine bottle and brace myself for what is about to come. In the private bathroom, I would have been able to scream. Here in the hut of 14 sleeping people

I can’t scream.

  When I go to peel the fabric that is waxed on in the crest of my thigh it is almost a relief since the pain, even though extreme, is still less than the meatier areas. I rejoice by holding back screams of relief until I realize that worst is yet to come.

Sitting up in my bed with my legs bent and spread, I am staring down at raw patches of flesh and hair and one last strip of light-pink fabric while sipping on the last of my bottle of wine. Gripping onto the edge of my mattress with my left hand and the fabric with my right I promise myself that if I live through this there are three things I will not do: 1. Scream 2. Tell Churchman 3. Put the remaining wax supplies back in SKUA