Fun and unusual question for you: I’m looking for a waxing/aesthetics professional with clean tools, sterilized equipment and a clean facility who will give me a full Brazilian bikini wax, but will also allow my master to watch the process. I suppose I could call up a spa but am not sure whether they would actually accommodate such requests and I don’t know of any private practitioners. The waxer would be doing her normal job (I prefer a female), the master would be in the room watching, no S/M-style clothing and the “inspection” would merely involve master’s observation, no sexual stuff (because that’s just creepy) and no words bandied about like “Master this or that.” CHARMAINE

Fair question, Charmaine, but actually not all that unusual. People often write in to find out where they can drag their mistress/master/sub/slave for some lifestyle sex adventuring — shoe shopping with a kinky twist for example. (Just go to Northbound, people, and leave the poor gals at Balisi alone.)

The Zen 2003–inspired Southern Comfort Spa at 584 Church is amenable to your master being on-premise while you get your hoop and box waxed. Ask for Dora.

Pleading the filth
I have a friend who is considering becoming a forensic anthropologist, which means that she would be testifying in court. Her professors warned her that she should be careful about who her friends are; courts will use any excuse to discredit you. I can understand that you may not want to be best friends with a prostitute for the sole reason that it is illegal, but she believes that people who work in the porn industry are also people she should be avoiding, as “their values are different from hers and she does not agree with those values.” Note that she knows no one in the industry and, I suspect, even less about their values.

Perhaps you do know people in the porn industry and can tell me that they are, as I suspect, individuals who are not defined by their profession and have values as ordinary as the next person’s? It seems to me that we should be standing up for people in the porn industry and for our right to be friends with them without hurting our careers. I see my friend’s stance as maintaining the status quo. ALISA

Kathy Reichs is one of the world’s best-known forensic anthropologists and also writes popular novels about the topic. Reichs says in her profession, “one should always avoid association with individuals involved in criminal activity.” (Except when they’re dead of course — then by all means have a poke and write a book about it.) With some exceptions, porn is legal in Canada so, really, your friend’s only obligation is to remain impartial should she ever come across porn industry workers in her line of work. After all, they have lawyers, too, some of whom are as relentless to expose a witness’ bias as others are to say the victim asked for it.
Prostitution is also not illegal in Canada, Alisa, and from what I understand forensic anthropology deals in part with the study of decomposed or mutilated human remains for expert testimony. To be unfortunately blunt, given the flagrant and sadistic murder of sex workers worldwide it does seem your friend will want to keep her naïve values in check, if only to assert her professional credibility in these cases. Someone who is inclined to use only a person’s profession as a compass to their criminality (or their legitimacy) won’t exactly make a credible expert.

Let me also disabuse you of another common stereotype by saying that several of the people I’ve met in the porn industry are, in fact, defined by their profession in that they take a profound interest in sexual pleasure and exploration. With all the fascinating and open-minded options available, why would you imagine they’d have any interest in befriending people who maintain clichéd generalizations about them?

Love Bits
If you’re looking for a fictional character to fall in love with this summer, I recommend the graphic novel Skim by Torontonian Mariko Tamaki and her cousin Jillian Tamaki.

Remember how amazing the movie Heathers was when it came out on the heels of so many fluffy teen flicks? Have you watched it recently? Time has not improved our heroine Veronica Sawyer, in my opinion. Where 19 years ago I saw her as the ultimate teen renegade, now she seems little more than a carefully crafted, unattainable man-child fantasy: willful and clever yet a totally benign beauty. Skim, on the other hand, is a female outsider created by and for female outsiders. Though she is keenly insightful, Skim is not preternaturally witty or cool, nor is she poised as the awkward beauty waiting to blossom, making her all the more endearingly authentic.

Mariko’s writing has the pitch-perfect quality of a real teenager’s diary, written in private but with a hopeful eye to impressing a snooping audience. Jillian’s art is incredibly evocative, too — it’s fall, and there’s always some dark, windblown street to plod down while you’re stalking your drama teacher, or some semi-forested area of the suburbs for moping and smoking in your school uniform.

If there are any wrought-up teenage girls in your house, former or current, male or female, please get them this book. (Editor: yes, I do mean to call teenage boys girls. There are some boys, adolescent and older, who are definitely teenage girls.)

And www.rocknrollgeishas.com is finally up and I don’t mind saying it has exceeded my expectations. They throw the words “cock” and “cunt” around a lot because they’re, you know, young erotic bad-asses and all, but holy balls, is it ever a good-looking site — I have to admit that the genuine diversity of models (black, white, trans, skinny, voluptuous, disabled) and the inspired photography has got me wanting to drop the laundry myself. And, hey, if you think you’re cute and you want to be naked on the internet and work for a local company that aspires to be ethical, get in touch with them: www.rocknrollgeishas.com/modeling.htm. Go CanCunt! 

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