Friendly Atheist

See the Vanity Fair slideshow. It’s “from the second stage of Christopher Hitchens’s ongoing self-improvement project.”

One of the captions:

Yes, a Brazilian wax was involved.

You’ve been warned.

It almost looks as if he’s praying in that picture…

I can anticipate his pain.

No wonder he thinks God is not great.

From the print version of the magazine:

I had no idea it would be so excruciating. The combined effect was like being tortured for information that you do not possess, with intervals for a (incidentally very costly) sandpaper handjob. The thing is that, in order to rip, you have to grip. A point of leverage is required; a place that can be firmly gripped and pulled while the skin is tautened

The impression of being a huge baby was enhanced by the blizzards of talcum powder that followed each searing application. I swear that several times [J Sister waxer Janea Padilha] soothingly said that I was being a brave little boy… Meanwhile, everything in the general area was fighting to retract itself into my body…

…By this stage, I thought I could tell we were drawing agonizingly near to the close, but I was wrong. Boy was I ever wrong.

You ladies will know what I mean by the stirrup position, which I was now unceremoniously instructed to assume. That’s to say, I braced one leg up while Ms. Padilha braced the other. And she does this for a living. To be [a dentist Hitchens previously visited for the article] and to spend every day up to your elbows in other people’s oral cavities would be tough enough. But this … And wait: surely you can’t be serious about putting … Oh Jesus. I was overwhelmed by a sudden access of lava-like agony, accompanied by the vertiginous sensation that there was no there there.

[tags]atheist, atheism, Christopher Hitchens[/tags]