NDUMISO NGCOBO | I’ve never had a bikini wax, but I have paid for pain

In her 2009 HBO special, American comedian Wanda Sykes had a hilarious bit describing her first experience of a bikini wax. Tongue firmly in cheek, she tells how she blacked out when her aesthetician friend ripped the wax away.

I have never had a bikini wax, mostly because I think I would look ridiculous in a bikini. But also, I like to believe that I’m not a masochist.

Paying some sadist to rip out my little fuzzy hairs by the roots seems like a gateway activity en route to paying a Grace Jones lookalike in a bum-exposing leather suit and stainless steel chains to stand over me and whip me while I’m chained to the bed. That’s not how I roll.

I would submit that 99% of folks reading this would tick the “No” box in a questionnaire asking, “Have you ever paid anyone to inflict pain on you?” Well, let’s put that 99% of readers in the dock and interrogate the veracity of that assertion. I think that you might tick the “Yes” box after reading on.

This column was inspired by a friend whose son is an LLB student at the University of Johannesburg. For extra cash, he is a personal trainer at one of the gyms in the West Rand. A few weeks ago, he returned home with a black eye. The source? Apparently a client had instructed him to pin him down to execute some particularly strenuous and painful exercise, adding, “Even when I scream and beg you to stop, don’t let go.”

The young advocate Ngcukaitobi wannabe followed the instruction too literally and was subjected to an unwelcome meeting between the client’s knuckles and his cheekbone. Please do not ask me for any more details; I’m told that the matter is sub judice.

When they’re done, they’ll mumble something inaudible in Kiswahili and douse you with methylated spirit

I know what you’re thinking because I, too, couldn’t help but be fascinated by the idea of someone being paid to inflict pain by a client and being blasted in the face with a fist for doing exactly that.

I can see this story from both angles. Most of us have paid people to hurt us and hurt us badly. I have never seen the inside of an interrogation room at the US detention centre in Guantanamo Bay, but I have been treated by dentists.

Before hordes of sadists in white lab coats surround my house, toyi-toying like the Red Berets, chanting, “Kill the columnist, kill the writer!”, let me hasten to add that they’re not the only people we pay good cheddar to inflict pain upon us.

Due to an unfortunate erosion in the follicular department on my scalp, I am forced to visit the shady part of Boksburg weekly for some hair gardening.

Unlike my clearly well-to-do sons who go to snazzy barbers, I cannot afford to part with R450 for a haircut. I can get a 3kg lamb pack at Meat World for that much. But there is a downside to using my R50-a-shave guys.

They treat your head like they’re oblivious to the presence of nerve endings on the nape of your neck, leading to many shrieks of pain. When they’re done, they’ll mumble something inaudible in Kiswahili and douse you with methylated spirit. And then you stagger outside, half-blind from the mind-numbing pain and methylated spirit, R50 poorer.

I’m convinced that my missus suffers from an addiction to pain, because every few weeks she makes a booking for a couples’ Thai massage. That’s correct; we fork out the equivalent of about three 3kg Meat World lamb packs to have stout Thai ladies with severe English deficiencies physically abuse us for 90 minutes at a time. I walk out of there feeling like I’ve just come out of a UFC cage after 10 rounds with Dricus du Plessis.

That said, I can live with physical pain. None of it can measure up to forking out the equivalent of half a lamb at your local butchery to see a mind doctor. Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius is rumoured to have paid a servant to walk behind him during victory parades through the streets of Rome, whispering in his ear, “You’re just a man. A mere mortal” to keep himself humble.

Well, to keep myself sane, from time to time I pay an exorbitant consultation fee to listen to a fellow whisper in my ear for 45 minutes: “You’re a terrible human being. A rubbish husband. And your kids are right to hate your guts.”