When I was twenty years old I moved back to the kibbutz in Israel where I had spent my gap year between high school and college.  It was great to be back.  I felt deeply connected to the community I had formed at Kibbutz Kfar Hanasi, which lies atop a cliff in northern Israel.  Getting the chance to work hard/play hard in Israel for one more summer was a gift I was unwrapping with great enthusiasm. 

And then there were the pub nights.  The bi-weekly Tuesday and Friday night thrusts into inebriation and depravity.  These nights at the kibbutz bar were where I first learned how to drink, and how not to drink -- I also found out the hard way that tequila is an angry dwarf who stabs your insides with a fiery blade.  It was an educational time. Often these life lessons were taught in pairs.  Lustful, sweaty, desperate pairs -- grasping at each others bodies like water in the desert.

Because I was a return volunteer, I got a single bedroom all to myself. It was a luxury that most other internationals living on the kibbutz were not afforded.  It gave me a major competitive advantage come last call at the pub.  What can I say, it may not have been the classiest of places, but it was incredibly honest. 

One pub night early on in my second stay, I found myself in the corner of the dance floor making out with another American volunteer named Stacey, who was finishing her year on kibbutz and scheduled to depart the following week.  With her departure imminent, there was no chance of miscommunication about silly details like "what are you looking for out of this experience."  So naturally, a few hard ciders later and we were neck deep down each others throats. 

When the pub stopped serving us drinks (which we paid for with paper, kibbutz-use only, coupon currency incidentally) Stacey and I stumbled our way back to my place.  As I recall, there was a lot of stumbling around in the dark on kibbutz, or maybe that was just my twenties in general, but doubly so on kibbutz.  Not long after that, clothes went flying this way and that as we maneuvered around my thrift store furniture on the way to the army issue single bed with exposed metal springs.  Ok, so maybe it wasn't army issue, but it was that small.  The privacy my single allowed for, however, more than made up for any potential turn-off caused by the minuscule dimensions of my mattress.

When we finally laid down like Adam and Eve, I gazed upon her naked body, only to realize her tree of knowledge was shorn of all its roughage. There wasn't even the hint of a burning bush (if you'll allow me to mix my biblical metaphors). And, like Adam pre-apple ingestion, I had no fucking clue what was going on.  

"What the . . ."  

I wish Tina Fey would have already coined the phrase, what the what?!?, back in '98, cause that would have bene the perfect response. As it stood, I had to finish my sentence with some plebeian rejoinder like hell. 

Because back then, people had pubic hair.  Sure there was some inherent man/woman-scaping going on, but the absence of any trace of puberty? That was downright creep-tastic.  Pubic hair's demise was sometime in the past decade, cause at the turn of the century, puberty was still en vogue, pubicly.

Even drunk as a skunk, Stacey's utter nudity was enough to stop my advances dead in their tracks.  I didn't know what question to ask, I just knew that some explanation was in order.  In lieu of any answer, my brain was forced to reason that I was hooking up with some underaged girl, and that conclusion was currently winning an award in my brain for "Biggest Turn-Off Ever."

"Oh," Stacey quipped, realizing why my jaw hung agape, "I got crabs, so instead of using that horrible shampoo, I just shaved it all off."

"Smart," I said.

What are you SUPPOSED to say to that!

this was the least offense of the images I found searching "Funny Pubic Hair" (this was the most offensive)

The pace of our heavy petting slowed dramatically from there on out.  I stayed well above the waist, trying to will a force shield of STD protection between our nether regions.  I was young, immature, and paying for alcohol with paper coupons -- the potential consequences of this hook-up had just skyrocketed way above my pay grade.
________

What a difference a decade makes. 

Pubic lice, crabs if you will, are on the decline (especially among the wealthy/White populations).  It seems that one of the unintended benefits of a culture convincing women to shave off any "unwanted" body hair so as to appear prepubescent, is that we haven't left  pubic lice with a hair to stand on.  Once the razor, shaving cream, and beauty magazines had women removing all traces of follicle growth, they then turned their self-esteem absorbing stare toward men.  Now guys are trim trim shave shaving their way to baby bodies as well.  What a win for humanity. 

More to the point, I have it on good authority (from "the youths") that minimally, female pubes are no longer the norm.  A college kid goes downtown these days, and (s)he'd expect a clear path to the runway.  And what really sends chills down my spine, is that were I back in Israel with Stacey today, I wouldn't even have batted an eyelash at her child-like presentation.  Woulda been par for the course.

We live in a crazy crazy culture. Don't let anyone tell you different, unless they can show you their glorious flourishing bush.