Page 53 of Christmas Kisses

With Angel’s comment about oily hair bruising my ego more than I care to admit, and needing to take the focus off my cock before I stroke one out in the shower while thinking of a practical stranger like a psycho, I snag a bottle of shampoo from the tub’s edge and pour a generous dollop into my palm.

It lathers well, but no matter how hard I strive to remove the suds my scrub caused from my in-need-of-a-trim hair, the situation worsens instead of improving.

“What the fuck?” I mumble to myself while tugging up the shower faucet, hopeful an increase in water pressure will thin the shampoo clogging every hole in my face and swamping my beard.

My eyes, nose, and mouth are inundated in seconds with ghastly-tasting shampoo. I’m practically inhaling it, and it tastes and smells disgusting.

With water offering no solution to the excess suds, I snag a towel off the hook outside the shower curtain and drag it over my face.

It removes the shampoo suds by replacing them with an itchy, wiry substance. It is as eager to cling to my skin as my gray sweatpants, and a handful of the tickly strands lodge into the back of my throat.

The way its wiry threads irritate my tonsils reminds me of the first time I went down on a woman. She was twelve years older than me and lacked basic maintenance skills.

My sixteen-year-old self didn’t think to check the depth of the wiry mess between her legs. I buried my face headfirst into a carpet of muff and almost mufficated myself.

Her pussy was hairier than my head, and she shed pubic hair like a Husky losing his winter coat. It took weeks to cough up the final hairball our one night beneath the sheets caused, and several more months for me to learn that that much pubic hair isn’t the norm.

She scarred me for life, and I’m suddenly fretful that I am about to be hit with another long absence of pussy-eating. The towel I used to clean the shampoo suds can’t dispute this.

Groaning, I pull the towel away from my face before slowly opening my burning eyes. It is covered with fine blonde hair that stand out against my burnt orange beard. They’re not curly like unkempt pubic hair, but there’s enough to announce their wiry wisp won’t leave the back of my throat anytime within the next week.

“No, God. Please. A woman as beautiful as Angel can’t have a hairy beaver. There should be laws against a travesty of that depth.”

When I lift my eyes to the mirror to assure myself that God wouldn’t be so cruel to the same man twice in his life, another shocking fact smacks into me.

My hair is yellow. It’s not a cute, I-spent-too-much-time-in-the-sun-during-summer yellow. I mean yellow like Big Bird and just as fluffy.

I snap my eyes from an empty bottle of peroxide on the vanity sink to my canary-yellow hair and back numerous times before the truth slaps me hard across the face.

Angel’s shampoo is tainted with peroxide.

Does that mean what I think it does?

Does Angel know my arrival at her apartment was staged?

Peroxide in shampoo is a ruse Jimmy has used numerous times in the past six years, so she could know.

Desperate to find out, I march out of the bathroom. I only make it two steps out before my campaign is ended by tiny knives being stabbed into my feet.

Whoever thought star-shaped Christmas lights would look cute on a tree should be shot. Those fuckers are sharp, and when left on the ground, they have no issue dropping a six-foot-three man to his knees like an overloaded Santa sack.

“Oh my goodness,” says a cutesy, ear-piercing voice from above.

Angel races to me like the blood oozing from my feet doesn’t give her home some of the Christmas charm it is missing.

“With how stinky you were, I wasn’t expecting you to finish showering so soon, so I thought I’d use the hallway to lay out the lights to make sure they’re functioning. You’re not meant to step on them, silly.” She gasps when her eyes shoot up to my hair. “What happened to your hair?” As quickly as surprise leaps onto her face, it is replaced with fake remorse. “Oh no. I should have told you not to use my shampoo. The peroxide bottle cracked when I dropped it earlier, so I used an empty shampoo container to store it in.” She fans her hands across her hips as she twists to face the bathroom. “I could have sworn I left it under the sink. It was right next to the wax strips I haven’t got around to using yet.” Her eyes are back on me, full of humor. “A cool change arrived out of nowhere weeks ago, so I thought, what the hell, you’re meant to wear a winter coat when it’s cold.”

“Weara winter coat.” I cough, certain I’m about to be asphyxiated by a rogue pubic hair. “You’re not meant togrowone.”

With a wave of her dainty hand, shepfftsme. “Why wax a natural warmth that removes the chill anytime you get undressed?”

Before I can tell her personal hygiene isn’t optional, a doorbell buzzes.

Angel claps two times while bouncing from foot to foot.

She appears to be having the time of her life.

I don’t feel the same way.

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