Electrologeeeeeee! Please Stop!! It Hurts!!!

The editor of Patch Studio City, Mike Szymanski, said he had received a pitch from The American Electrology Association. This electrology individual had read a story about Tom Gabel from Against Me and his coming out transgendered. Tom will start living as a woman and will remain the front person for the band. It’s so much more pleasant when you have a little money and you can make your transition your next album. The person from American Electrology Association thought about all the other stories about transgendered people lately and must have thought, “Customer$” 

You might be asking, “The American Electrology Association?  Who the heck are they?” Electrology is the official term for removing unwanted hair permanently by using electrolysis. You know like in chrome plating. There are other methods for removing unwanted or unsightly hair. Good old shaving, waxing and now also in the mix is laser hair removal. Shaving and waxing are never permanent and laser has mixed results and is still prohibitively expensive. The only permanent method of hair removal that is reasonable in price is electrology. Guys, if you have a girlfriend, she probably knows about elctrology and hopes she never has to use it or if she has, she hopes you never find out. 

Maybe some of you are saying with some certainty, "Hair removal? Not my satiny gal.” Well there are some women who don’t want hair growing in certain places. Some women who might have a very light moustache or hair on some part of the body that can’t easily be removed by shaving or they are a Kardashian and want to be seen suffering electrology. 

For Transgendered women it can an Odyssey of years and one that Odysseus might have failed at this task. The dirty little secret in the transgendered women community is that most of us have tons of unwanted hair and are just ripe for the picking. WE are NOT hairless. One of the reasons I didn’t believe I could be transgendered was because I possessed body hair. Actually it's not so much that I had body hair but more accurately I had a coat of hair. Think Golden Retriever. Years ago my wife in the evening before she would go to bed had a ritual of giving a little pat to our Golden, our Old English Sheepdog and me. 

As I wrote before there is shaving and while transgendered women might be very familiar with shaving their face, it will never achieve the feel of a woman’s face.  If you’ve decided to transition like Tom Gabel you are or will be on Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) and if you are on HRT you want to be a woman now!! You feel like a woman inside, you look at the world differently than you did with a man’s perspective all because of what the HRT does to your physiology and it does so almost immediately.  Unfortunately no matter how you feel inside, you don’t look like a woman on the outside. Over months and sometimes even years your body does change shape, your skin does soften and you grow a great head of hair. But months later and even years, you still have the beard. It does soften and finally goes away (Remember the bearded lady at the carney?) but again it takes years. And you want to wait years you the beard off now!!

The best way right now to forever remove your beard is elctrology. Women do not share this with anyone. Even with other women. And why would they? Women are supposed to be hairless except in all the right places.  Women, and rightfully so, want electrology to be a secret forever.  If they do share the experience with a very understanding husband it is probably because that husband is in a coma. 

My body ha—my coat of hair was first removed by specialist in waxing. It took two days. At one point I passed out and needed to be revived.  I was beet red. When I started my HRT it became less painful but only a little.   I have had a massive coronary from which I actually died (a previous blog) and I tell you as God is my witness that full body waxing is more painful. But now take that pain and ratchet it up by a factor of ten and we have the electrology experience. That’s because the hair you have to remove permanently (your beard) is much more difficult to remove. For this blog, lets discuss the wonders of a man’s beard.

First of all, did I mention the removal of a beard is painful?  Let me relate my very brief encounter with electrology.  I went for five months.  When I decided to stop I was not even close to being done. It takes about a year for a beard to be fully removed. The individual hairs in beards are like Great White Shark’s teeth. The come in three sets. You remove the one layer and another layer pops up. And then another and often another and another until it’s finally smooth to the touch. You see in a man’s beard there are about 300,000 thousand individual hairs give or take 40,000.  Sure there are many men who don’t have heavy beards. In the transgendered women’s world we call them implausibly blessed. 

How much does it hurt?  Well when I finally decided to do this I informed my doctor and my therapist they were READY!  One reason tey were so ready is because for transgendered women it has to be done because, well, IT HAS TO DONE and you might as well start with the beard.  My doctor gave me a prescription for hydrocodone and this crème (that is custom made in [where else?] West Hollywood) that is an antihistamine that “deadens” your face.  It is recommended to do this an hour before you go AND after you have applied the crème on your face you should wrap it your face up with SARAN WRAP.  Make sure you take the hydrocodone first because it’s hard to get it through the wrap and you’re going to want the hydrocodone.  It actually works out because the hydrocodone and the crème take about an hour to work. It still hurt and the number 300,000 thousand keeps spinning in your brain with each elctirc shock.  A month after my heart attack I resumed the electrolysis but after one turn in the chair I stopped.  It was a bit too intense for me and I stated having visions of dying in the chair. Not a good look.

I have found another way to lose my facial and other unwanted hair. Patience. It does get thinner and thinner over time and becomes personally manageable. There is some hair that needs to be removed and you can’t do it yourself and for that you get professional help and I got professional help. Otherwise I rid myself of my unwanted hair myself.

Let me finish by giving props to the persons who have dedicated their life to this profession. I have found them all to be courteous and very compassionate to your pain. They have nearly all had it done themselves and they know what you are going through. They are also very quick and professional at their job whether it waxing or electrolysis. Thank you for making that which is so painful manageable.