I Love Little Pussy

First of all, reader, don’t misunderstand the title. All the girls referred to in this submission are over 18 – some of them well over! The title refers to this nursery rhyme:

I love little pussy,
her coat is so warm,
and if I don’t hurt her
she’ll do me no harm;

I won’t pull her tail,
nor drive her away,
but pussy and I
together will play.

A year or so ago, I was doing just that with my Filipina ex, when I started to sing those words in a low, lullaby voice.

She said, “What’s that?”

I replied, “An English nursery rhyme.”

“What’s a nursery rhyme?”

“A song for children.”

She was shocked.

“But ‘pussy’ means… puki.”

“Only in American English,” I explained. “In British English it usually means ‘cat’ – and children only know it as ‘cat’.”

I thought of showing her an extract from the sitcom Are You Being Served, where the two meanings of “pussy” are used by the character, Mrs Slocombe, to generate a few laughs (which sound horribly canned in the video), but she doesn’t get British humour, which is often based on wordplay or irony. Philippine humour is usually of the slapstick kind – such as a man in a gorilla suit jumping out of a fridge. That video clip doubled her up, but I was just – “Huh?”

In any case, British use of the word “pussy” is changing, as it becoming the commonest way of referring to female genitalia – and why not? It’s a nice word, softer, squidgier, more suggestive of the real thing.

But it’s the next line of the rhyme that is the focus of this submission, because I am finding that today’s pussies don’t have a “coat” – they’re all… what’s the old saying?… “bald as a badger”.

My Filipina ex used to go bald from time to time – the instrument of torture being my used razors. In vain I tried to explain to her that a sharp razor is, counter intuitively, safer, but it made no difference. Indeed, it became a regular thing, to the extent that I would put my blunt razors on her side of the sink, calling them in my head “pussy razors”.

I also tried to explain to her that men of my generation prefer a full bush – often referred to in the old nuddie books as a “beaver”.

The other thing that I tried to explain is that, if you are going to shave, you have to do it every day, otherwise you get stubble, and stubble is prickly because, the hairs need to be a bit longer before they bend and feel softer. She should understand this from the number of times I have sandpapered her chin (and other body parts) with my stubble during a morning session, but for some reason, she thinks it is different “down there”. It isn’t, and the stubble results in something which is nothing like a badger or a beaver, but more like a hedgehog – in other words, a prickly pussy.

(I’ve ended up with a lot of small animals running around in this submission: pussies, beavers, badgers, hedgehogs – but I hope you’ll bear with me, as they’re all there to make a point).

Fortunately, I only had to suffer the “hedgehog” every now and then. Most of the time she just trims it short. She says it’s to get a clean bikini line – not that she ever wears a bikini. When she goes swimming, she wears shorts and a T-shirt because she has a horror of going browner than she is.

When we separated, I headed back to the bars, as the place of first (and last) resort to the male expat in SE Asia. My first barfine was Perlita, whom I met in a bar in Subic called The Office. It was her first night in the bar. She was a student at Gordon College in Olongapo, and had decided to try bar work at weekends to make ends meet. She was very shy, but I was a bit awkward too, as it was ten years since I had done this kind of thing – so we were just right for each other. “Down there” she had a good, old-fashioned “beaver” – a full, untrimmed bush of just the kind I like; the kind where you can grab a handful of hair, and pull it (gently) to make her squeak.

The only other girl I can remember with a full, untrimmed bush was Nok (see Bangkok Don Juan, Part 4) who purported to be a virgin. Every other girl I have met since 2005 has trimmed or shaped their pubic hair in one way or another, though I can’t remember many going bald back then.

Of course, in the west, way back in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s (I don’t know after that) few women thought about shaving down below (it was, perhaps, the porn industry that made it popular). Indeed, in the 60’s and 70’s, many French girls made a fashion of sporting underarm hair, as I found out when I went grape picking in the Champagne region of France in 1969. I met a French girl called  Élodie, and it was all there – unshaved, untrimmed. But then, we were all hairy in those days, as is evidenced by photographs of myself with shoulder-length hair and drooping mustachios.

All the girls I have met since Perlita have favoured the trim often described as a “Lolita” (bald) – except Geraldine, a 19-year old beauty whom I describe in Angeles: Same Same but Different, Part 3. She had a closely trimmed triangle – and it looked great! I can vividly remember her standing over me near the head of the bed to adjust the thermostat on the aircon, giving me a perfect upward view of triangle-trimmed pussy, washboard-flat stomach, and full, firm underboob.

The thing is that, with a bald pussy, there’s not much to see (except maybe some protruding inner labia, five o’clock shadow, or a few pimples). Pubic hair gives visual impact to the area (and covers up the grotty bits!) All the other girls I met (Filipina and Thai) had “hedgehogs” – some of them quite prickly, and some of them not visually appealing.

When I met Chompu (whom I met in Hua Hin on my last trip before lockdown) I was anticipating a beaver, as she is in her late 30’s – but no, it was yet another “hedgehog”. She had only been a few weeks in the bar, but that was enough for the other girls to get at her – giving her advice of all sorts, some good, some bad.

When I ask them about it, those that don’t say, “Farang think too mutt,” say that it is more hygienic – but in that belief they are mistaken:

Pubic hair was put there to protect your genitalia from friction and infection. It is more hygienic not to shave it (although depilation does make pubic lice homeless). In removing their pubic hair, most women will get cuts or ingrown hairs, and some will develop inflammation of the hair follicles or hyperpigmentation. If they are really unlucky – or are rubbish with a razor – there is a possibility of skin infections and perhaps an increased risk of catching herpes and other sexually transmitted diseases.

Dr Louisa Dillner (The Guardian, 11 July 2016)

Until recently, I didn’t mind what a girl did with her pussy hair – I appreciated the variety: beaver, Mohican, triangle, landing strip, love heart or Lolita, but these days, a full bush of pubic hair is so rare that I positively yearn to find one – to look at, to stroke and, like it says in the rhyme, to play with. So girls! Let’s make it like that other song, which I have slightly adapted for your edification:

Let it grow!
The cold never bothered me anyway.
Let it grow, let it grow!
And I’ll rise like the break of dawn.
Let it grow, let it grow!
Let it grow (grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow!)

The author of this article can be contacted at : rumblejungle2019@gmail.com