I thought I was going to marry my college girlfriend. Was this because I considered her my soulmate? Not necessarily. Rather, I thought that that was just how it was done: you date in college, you graduate and live in the same city, you get engaged, you move in, you marry. Done and done. Simple.

(And yes, I actually thought like this, whereas now I see marriage as the death of the best part of one’s life. Uncle Jason’s really grown up a lot since then.)

This was not something that I obsessed over or even really thought about when I was 22 and 23 when we were dating; it’s not like I was looking for engagement rings or reading up on wedding chapels. In fact, what’s remarkable about this was the almost complete lack of thought involved. We were on a path, it was a normal path to be on, and eventually, almost without our input, it would lead us to this destination. Again, simple. Jus’ the way it is.

Unfortunately for me (at the time – boy, did this ultimately work out), my girlfriend didn’t think so and she broke up with me. I was pretty devastated. I had never really been dumped before, so there was a certain ego bruising involved, but my initial reaction was not “How could you do this?!?,” but rather, “Wait – that’s not how it’s supposed to happen.”

After about a week of wallowing around my apartment, thinking things to myself like, “Crap, I’m going to have to meet a whole new girlfriend’s family and stuff” and “Now it’s right back to my family thinking I’m gay again!,” I decided to focus on certain more pressing matters: I needed to get laid. Immediately. But before I could throw myself back on the market, I first needed to take care of a nasty little secret that had developed over the course of my and the ex’s relationship: genital warts.

Just kidding! It was back hair.

That I had started getting back hair during my junior year of college was not a total surprise. I had developed all my hairs (pube, pit, face, chest) rather early (I was probably about 5’9” and 180 pounds as a freshman in high school), but I wasn’t really “hairy.” Yeah, I could grow a beard, but it was modest, thin; yes, I had chest hair, but it wasn’t a rug – it’s not like I was Greek, here. I just had some hair. Because I’m fucking man, baby.

When the back hair started coming, the college girlfriend was, shall we say, dismayed. But I was in college – I wasn’t going to go to a fucking salon to get my back waxed. And who cares, anyway? Does it make that big of a difference? I’m a man, men get hairy, and you’re my girlfriend. Again, this is just the way it is. So let’s just roll with it.

Over the course of the relationship, the girlfriend would complain here and there about the back hair, though it wasn’t a constant thing. So we rolled with it. And then we broke up. Are the two things related? Probably not. But now that I was single and planning to meet and (likely unsuccessfully) attempt to bring to climax all sorts of new women, new women who might not be so ok with that back hair, it had to go. So what to do…

To me, there were three options: I could shave it, wax it myself, or have it waxed. 1) Shave it: Shaving was the easiest option because I could do it myself, in-house. The only problem was that I was hardly a Yogi over here, so my flexibility was (and is) pretty limited. Thus, there were certain areas of my back that I couldn’t reach on my own; I could do the top of the back by going over each of my shoulders, and I could the bottom by going underhand left and right, but there was that middle section that I couldn’t reach. So in a stroke of genius, I took my razor, some rubber bands and one of those old-school wooden rulers that we had in grade school and fastened the razor to the ruler with the rubber bands to get to the hard to reach spots. And it worked. I could easily shave my entire back with my little device, something so technologically ingenious it served as a testament as to why humans rule the earth. Man had, once again, triumphed.

But shaving the back was not ideal. For one, it didn’t feel good to me to have prickly stubble growing out of back, rubbing against a t-shirt or undershirt. Further, I thought shaving would only encourage more hair growth, causing it to grow back thicker. But the death knell for shaving occurred a few weeks after my break-up (and into my back shaving phase) when I was playing the role of gay best friend with a few female friends at brunch when the subject of hairy guys came up and one of them send, “Ugh, I don’t mind hairy guys too much, but there’s nothing worse than when you touch a guy’s back and it’s all prickly and stubbly.” The four other girls at the table agreed.

So shaving was out.

2) Wax it myself: This was not a good phase. I started with Nair, and then something stronger, and both were disasters. For those of you who don’t know, this really isn’t “waxing” per se – basically you layer this shit (kinda like a cream) on a hairy area, wait a few minutes, then wipe it (and the hair) off with a cool, damp towel. Sounds simple, right? Well, if by “simple” you mean “breathtakingly painful,” then yes.

I’ve blacked out most of the few times I tried this, but I’m at least glad I still don’t have the third degree burns on various sections of my back. I don’t know if I waited too long each time or didn’t wipe the stuff off thoroughly enough but, man, ouch. I only did this maybe three times, but each time ended with me yelping in the bathroom and then jumping under the cold water of the shower to cool off. And then, of course, masturbating (I was very into sex and pain at this time).

I guess technically it did work, as parts of my back where definitely hair-free and perfectly smooth. But those small parts of my back were also now beat red and sensitive (in a bad way) to the touch. Needless to say, this was very, very unsuccessful.

3) Have it waxed: This was honestly never even really an option. I can’t express this enough: there is no greater sin to me than vanity in men. Yes, I realize the hypocrisy of this statement when I’ve spent 1000 words describing my quest to rid my back of hair. But being broken-hearted, lonely and trying to remove your back hair with a godddamn razor attached to a ruler so that you can find some female affection is not the kind of vanity I’m talking about. (Straight) Guys who tan, who tweeze their eyebrows (not including unibrow), who spend hundreds of dollars a week on clothing, who spend more than 18 seconds on their hair, who use shampoo that can’t be found in your local CVS, who wear any sort of jewelry other than a wedding ring, who go to a fucking dentist’s office on a monthly basis to get teeth-whitening treatments, who carry around moisturizer or (worse) hand sanitizer – these are people that I want removed from my life, and possibly the entire planet earth. I’m not claiming I’m some sort of Ultimate Manly Man who hunts wolverines with rocks and eats eggs and steak for every meal and has sex only in missionary position (because that’s the way God intended and it’s damned fine as is and don’t need no tinkerin’), but the only circumstance in which I could ever see myself going into a salon to get my back waxed is if Jenna Jameson ca. 1998 showed up at my apartment offering to fuck me and give me $100,000 cash and the deed to the Philadelphia Eagles. In short, I’d rather keep the back hair, thanks.

So I was stuck. But then I had another stroke of genius.

I had (and still have) a beard. For as long as I’ve had the beard, I joked that the beard served as a warning to women, kinda like, “Do you see this hair on my face? Well, there’s a lot more where this came from, honey.” I had (and still have) a beard trimmer. What if instead of affixing the razor the ruler and cleanly shaving my back (and subsequently having to deal with stubble) I affixed the beard trimmer to my back and just trimmed it – trimmed it as much as possible, but not so far down that it was prickly?

This would ultimately become the method I’d use to control my back hair for the next eight years.

The reason why it worked is that it allowed me to reach all of areas of my back AND not let the prickly stubble grow back. Instead, I maintained a fine sheen of back hair, only slightly visible and soft to the touch, kind of like petting a chihuahua. Every Friday (or Thursday, if I was going out that night), it became part of the weekly ritual: vodka red bull in the shower while listening to music, dry off, quickly trim the back, and boom – fathers, lock up your daughters. I was ready to go.

(I knew the beard trimmer/ruler combo was successful when a few short months after the break-up, the ex and I got together for a “drink” for some “catching up” and possible “closure” and we ended up “getting bombed” and “having sex” (though I was “too drunk to ejaculate”) and when touching my back mid-coitus she said, “Oh, your [chihuahua-haired] back…it feels nice.” Win.)

(Also, I’ve become a big fan of the “our relationship is over, but how about one more for old times’ sake?” thing, which I’m fortunate to have done with a bunch of my ex’s. If it’s done right, boy, it’s a lot of fun. I remember dating a girl and telling her that I often did this “one last time” with my ex’s, and she assured me that no, if/when we ended our relationship, she would not sleep with me again. A few weeks later, it was over. A few weeks after that, we were bombed and back in my bedroom practically ripping each others’ arms off in order to get our clothes off as quickly as possible. Good times.)

(And just for the record, how great is booze, for making things like this possible? I don’t think we appreciate it enough, folks. Honestly.)

I’ve had the same wooden ruler and the same beard trimmer for all of these eight years, and we’ve bonded more than a little bit. The beard trimmer/ruler shaver has outlasted girlfriends, moved with me through five different apartments in NYC and back and forth across the country, and always, has been reliable. It’s a both a relic and a tool; a constant reminder of the good times in the past on those nights when I’d do my back before hitting the town at 23 (in the LES) or 25 (on the UES) or 27 (in Little Italy), and a fixture in my life now – I set up the iPod speakers in my bathroom, make that vodka red bull and hop in the shower, knowing that I’ll do my back on that small, hopeful chance that that night will lead to some sexual indiscretions.

But even those most scintillating and steady relationships falter and eventually die out (another thing I’ve learned: love always dies). With me and the beard trimmer/ruler, it was slow, and not entirely either of our faults. The thing is, I’m getting old. Which means two things for our discussion. The first is that I don’t care as much about how I look, specificially in terms of the back hair, anymore – or at least, I’m not interested in trying as hard, in continuing with that little “vanity” I once had. When it comes to women, nowadays it’s kinda like, look, I have a good job, can make you laugh, and am not too weird, sexually-speaking. If that’s not enough, then your loss, sister. The second is that I’m a 30 year old man, and guess what? A lot of 30 year old dudes have back hair. While I was in the small minority at 20 or 23 or even 25, a lot of guys my age are getting hair in places where it didn’t exist ten years ago. So, to me, my slight furriness is not as much of a big deal.

And the “fun” of getting out of the shower to do my back has decreased, and is more like a chore. Though it allows me to reach those middle sections that I wouldn’t otherwise be able to get it, I still have to do a fair amount of stretching, moving and even shimmying with the beard trimmer/ruler to get those middle areas (perhaps I’m getting less flexible as I age, too). I can still nail the top and the bottom of the back with the beard trimmer/ruler, but sometimes I’ll half-ass the middle section and leave patches and…ugh. Just ugh.

So while I couldn’t give up entirely on doing the back (I can’t imagine what six weeks of neglect might look like, but it’d be, you know, not good), the current system, the one that I had used for years, was untenable – it was too difficult, took too long, and just wasn’t getting all the spots. So I recently made the decision to purchase something I’ve been getting emails about from you all for years. I went ahead and bought The Mangroomer.

Well.

I am not here to shill for this product. But I will tell you this: so far, it works. Really works. Like, a lot.

But this is not about how well the Mangroomer (an idea that I really should have patented years ago) works. Instead, it is a sad story. After using the Mangroomer for the first time and being amazed at the results, I opened my medicine cabinet and saw my “works,” my trimmer, ruler and rubber bands, sitting there, undoubtedly sad. Because it knew, and I knew, that it was over. We’d had a good run, but…it was just over.

I’m tempted to make some sort of analogy about breaking up with your old girlfriend for a new girlfriend who is brutally efficient in the sack, but that wouldn’t be fair. As I said, my beard trimmer/ruler outlasted girlfriends; our relationship is bigger than that, so I won’t cheapen it. And there is no real end to this story. The wounds are too fresh, and as such, I do not have time for the proper perspective through which to view our eight years together.

But instead, I know that tonight and in the coming weeks, I will be trimming my back hair with a heavy heart, remembering all those good times, but with an eye towards a bright future. And I can always hope that maybe, just maybe, sometime a ways down the road we’ll get together for just one more, just for old time’s sake.

[Have a good weekend.]