I spotted it from across the room and squirmed in my chair like a kitten watching a fly. It was a huge looming bull’s eye at the center of a swollen red band. Beaded in warm shower water and several inches below the towel that enclosed him, a huge imperfection lay untended as my husband walked into the living room oblivious, as if all in the world were right.

Didn’t he see it? How could he shower and get dressed regularly without tending to the blemishes that infiltrated his back and legs? What did he do before he met me? Seeing it there on him beckoned me; the outside world ceased to exist and his untended blemish became the focal point of my existence. I leaped forward to slay my enemy. Jay caught the look in my eye and his body tightened.

By the time I married my husband, Jay, he was well aware of my need to preen him. He later told me that me that on our first date, when I pulled a cuticle scissors out of my purse to cut a wiry stray hair off the middle of his face, he knew that
a.) he could run away from me screaming or
b.) smile and chalk it off to over enthusiasm.

Thank God, he chose the latter. Little did he know what he was in for.

I later explained to my dear husband that with a wild hair in the middle of his face, I could think of nothing but getting rid of it when I tried to gaze into his eyes. I merely cut the hair off so I could pay attention to what he was saying and fall in love with him. It was cupid’s ether, not control that drove me.

O.K., I’m lying. I’m a Virgo. I’ve got to make sure he’s groomed. I can’t help myself. But what self-respecting woman could?

After I have spent countless hours in the 10X mirror pulling the tiny ingrown hairs from my perfectly shaped eyebrows until they are whittled into a pencil thin line, and I have assailed the slightest beginning of a blemish until I’ve made it into a mound that half covers my forehead, I climb into bed. I lean in to kiss my husband and am confronted with ear fur.

If one is fortunate enough to love a man as deeply as I well into middle age, she will discover that he begins to blanket himself naturally. Hairs begin to sprout everywhere, driving his obsessive compulsive Virgo mate to near madness.  On the other hand, just like it does the chimpanzees, preening him helps to dispel the anxiety of my long, hard day. It also helps me avoid destroying my face.

 “Jay, you have a hair on your ear that is at least an inch long, probably two. Didn’t you see it” I ask incredulously.

“No.” he answers, undaunted by the alarm in my voice.

“Did you see the other 25 hairs keeping it company? I’m going to have to put you in thick smudged glasses with scotch taped temples and stick you in the library stacks,” I tease.

“You used to love me,” he answers. “You used to take care of me.”

I smile and gently begin to scour his ear.

“Ow! he shouts.

“Shhhh!” I reply. Beauty is not without sacrifice. Sighing, I feel the worries of my day slip away.