Armpit Politics

My name is Harry A. Pitt. Of course, this is not the name I was given at birth, but my old name doesn't matter. Harry A. Pitt is 100% legal. It's even on my driver's license.

I changed my name as a protest against man's enduring tyranny over his true better: woman. More specifically, a protest against just one of the many manifestations of this tyranny evident in our culture. I'm talking about the society-mandated self-mutilation women inflict upon themselves every time they shave the hairs that grow naturally on their bodies. I'm not referring to the legs. A naturally hairy leg is beautiful, yes, but my concerns are directed a little north of this.

I am what a cynical person would label an "armpit fetishist." Personally, I prefer to be called either an "armpit activist" or "underarm connoisseur." That which most men (and most women, so deeply has the folkway become entrenched) find to be distasteful affects me in ways that go beyond sexual arousal.

I have spent hours in the library, nose-deep in archeology, anthropology, psychology, and sociology, attempting to uncover the origins of the contemptible practice of armpit shaving. There is a conspiracy of silence surrounding the matter. Not once have I found a mention of how this needless ritual has become so widespread. Nevertheless, I have formed a few theories.

Possibly, it's due to man's age-old need to make the woman separate so he won't have to face latent homosexual tendencies that he has buried in a shallow psychic grave. These harmless subconscious urges are, for some reason, man's greatest fear. Wars have been fought for the sole purpose of a man proving to himself and to the world that he is not gay! As a result, men like everything black and white. Masculine and feminine. Men have body hair and women do not. Anything that defies the narrow rules and exists in the shadowy grey area in between provokes outrage.

Or it could be that most men are, at heart, pedophiles, and this is a way of keeping women in a prepubescent state of hairlessness. The recurrent image in pornography of women with even their pubic hairs shorn supports this theory.

Another possibility; this is another blatant example of how a woman's self-image is shaped by advertising and the media. There's a lot of money to be made by making women self-conscious about their natural hairiness. The hair removal industry makes millions each year from razors, shaving cream, and other depilatory products.

No doubt it is a combination of all these, but my own personal theory is that an unshaven armpit is a too-blatant look-alike of the female pubic region. A natural woman, nude, with her arms raised, outlines the three points of a pyramid with her patches of hair. This serves as a reminder to man of what he was born from. Women alone have the power to bring life into the world. They are the gatekeepers to heaven. It is this power, the ultimate power, which has so terrified men since the beginning of time that they have used physical, mental, and spiritual slavery to beat the women down. An unshaven armpit is a badge of sexual power. Women who shave are afraid of their own strength.

Most of the conversations I have on this subject end in frustration. People don't like to talk about it. No one wants to admit that it's a problem. Even women. Especially women. They absolutely steadfastly refuse to consider that this is one of the thousand little shackles that keep them bound in sexual slavery. "I shave because that's the way I like it," they invariably say. They cannot understand that they have been conditioned to prefer the unnatural look by years of exposure to our male-dominated society.

The tradition is carried on primarily from mother to daughter. The mother shaves and teaches her daughter to do the same, just as her own mother (also brainwashed) did for her. The custom is reinforced in the media (unshaven women have been made the butt of a joke in many television shows and comedy routines) and by the girl's peer group (the unshaven pubescent is chastised by her friends, possibly ridiculed by male peers.) By the time a woman reaches adulthood, the behavior is firmly established. The shorn look has become linked to "normalcy" in her mind. Women whose only ambition is to be normal do not interest me in the least.

Because of my beliefs, my friends, family, and co-workers view me as some sort of deviant. Many of them even refuse to call me Harry, using instead my hated given name: Barry. Barry Unger. Can you believe it? My mother, the esteemed Celia Unger (a firm believer in shaving, by the way) actually christened her first and only son Barry, after some uncle similarly cursed. I loathed that name for twenty-two years until I finally gained the courage and resources to have it changed. Barry Unger is dead. Long live Harry A. Pitt.

I met Sheila at Max's, a bar where I used to sing on open-mike nights. I noticed her as soon as she walked in. I was sitting beside the stage, drinking a beer while waiting to go on, when she slid in the door; a tall, beautiful black woman in a red dress. The dress had a tank top and she wasn't wearing a jacket.

She had The Look about her. I can usually tell even before I see a woman's underarms if she shaves or not. The natural women always have something extra in their eyes, or maybe in the way they move, that always gives it away. I classified the situation as an Armpit Watch. Conditions were very good for a positive sighting.

I watched her, growing more and more deliciously frustrated by the second. She went to the bar, ordered a drink, walked across the room to talk to someone for a few seconds, and then found a seat at a table by herself in the center of the room. She refused to raise her arms. When she did raise them, she wasn't facing in my direction. It drove me crazy. She knew how to get my attention.

I was so entranced that I missed my introduction and did not step out onto the stage for a whole minute. Then I staggered around the tiny stage, drunk with thoughts of her, unable for several frantic seconds to find the microphone.

Once in the spotlight, though, I was fine. My eyes scanned the dark room and I found Her. I couldn't tell for sure, but I imagined that her eyes were now on me expectantly. I stared right at her, strummed my guitar, and sang: "This one's for the women out there . . ."

"Armpit Politics" by Harry A. Pitt

(Chorus)

Armpit Politics, sweeping the land.

Armpit Politics, sisters hand in hand.

Armpit Politics, don't you understand,

That armpit politics will wait for no man?

Male tyranny surrounds you every day.

You can close your eyes, but it won't go away.

Male tyranny makes you shave every day.

Forget about that, and go the armpit way!

(Chorus repeats)

Men don't like to see that hair.

Men like to see no underwear.

C'mon, women, show that hairy pair.

Sing it with me, 'better dead than Nair!'

(Chorus repeats)

The men, they want you to behave,

And all the men, they like it when you shave.

C'mon, women, you got something to save!

We can all do the armpit wave!

(Chorus repeats)

It's the bra-burning of the nineties, don't you know.

You've got to let your armpits grow.

Then male tyranny will start to go,

Down where it belongs, far below.

(Chorus repeats; big finale)

That night they let me get all the way to the third verse. Sometimes I was booed off the stage before I could even get to the second. I sang there every week and had become a regular attraction. Come see the freak at Max's. I didn't care what they thought of me, though. If I could just reach one person and make them think . . .

To my indescribable joy, I did reach at least one person that night. The beautiful woman I had been watching sat calmly in the center of the hostile audience. All around her, people were standing up, booing, and shouting obscenities at me. Some were actually throwing fruit, which I thought only happened in cartoons. I saw none of them. I saw only Her.

Her left arm was raised straight up to the sky. She had a glorious mound, darker than her dark skin, thicker than any woman's underarm hair I'd ever seen. She ran the fingers of her right hand through the hair, playing it like a harp. Her sweat glistened in the red and blue stage lights, reflecting back the entire spectrum.

The crowd was growing more furious by the second, screaming at me to get off, but I was paralyzed with awe. My eyes popped out of my head in a desperate attempt to see more. My penis went erect like a balloon filled from a helium tank. My jaw dropped open and a pretzel, thrown by someone in the audience, landed squarely on my tongue. This cleared my head. I relinquished the stage and ran out the side door to avoid assault by the angry mob.

I sat down on the corner and tried to catch my breath. I shouldn't have bothered. The door opened behind me and I heard a pair of high-heeled feet join me on the sidewalk. I turned around slowly, afraid to look, afraid it wouldn't be Her.

But it was. It was Her.

I jumped to my feet.

"Hi," she said softly.

"Hi," I said.

"What's your name? The man said it when he introduced you, but I didn't quite catch it."

"I'm Harry," I said. "Harry A. Pitt."

"That's right," she smiled. "I'm Sheila."

"Hello, Sheila." The situation was awkward and I wasn't sure how to proceed. Was I supposed to shake her hand now?

"I like your shoes, Harry," she said mysteriously, looking down at them.

I followed her gaze. I was wearing ordinary tennis shoes. It's hard to find good shoes in my size. Through some freak genetic aberration, I have been cursed with feet disproportionate to the rest of my body. I'm only five-six, but I wear size fourteen shoes. I somewhat resemble the letter 'L.' Apart from the size, my shoes were not at all remarkable. I did not yet understand her interest.

"I, uh, saw you in the audience," I stammered. Sheila did not look up from my feet.

I decided to damn it all and put my heart right out there on my sleeve. I said: "You have beautiful armpits, Sheila. I think you have the most beautiful armpits I've ever seen in my life."

She hesitated for a moment, still gazing at my shoes, and I was afraid that I had offended her with my declaration. But then she kissed me.

"Would you like to come back to my apartment with me, Harry?" Sheila asked.

"That would be wonderful, Sheila," was my sincere reply.

Her apartment was a short walk from Max's. As soon as we were in the door, our clothes came off.

We almost made it to the bedroom, but doing this without letting go of each other proved to be impossible. We fell down on her living room floor, me on top of her, and she raised her arms above her head. I looked down at those twin fuzzy gems and knew I could wait no longer. I took her left armpit into my mouth and sucked on it as if for life itself. Sheila moaned out loud as her delicious sweat poured down my throat. I was in ecstasy, pure and simple. I licked the kinky hair. I bit it. I flossed my teeth with it. When one pit was spent, I went to work on the other.

Then Sheila gently pushed me off her.

"Lay down," she commanded, and I obeyed. I didn't know yet what she had in mind.

She took the big toe of my left foot into her mouth and began to suck on it. She bobbed up and down like she was giving head to my toe. Every time she came up for air, she would gasp: "oh god oh god oh god." She went further down on my foot, taking in two toes, then three, then four, and then all five were in her mouth, cheeks stretched wide to accommodate them. Her tongue danced artfully between my toes. The feeling was pleasant, although unusual.

"Oh God," she said, stopping breathlessly. "I love your big feet."

Oh yeah? I led her into her own bedroom. We climbed onto the bed and sat on opposite sides. I slid one foot between her legs and dug my heel gently into her hot, wet center. We held onto each other's hands for leverage and it was like she was trying to pull me inside her leg first. She panted with desire. I slid my foot up and down slowly, then gradually I moved faster. Spasms racked her body as I pressed my foot more firmly against her. First I sunk my heel halfway into her vagina and rub my sole against her clitoris, then I slid down so the balls of my feet were inside her and I could tickle her clit with my toes. My entire foot was drenched with excitement. She let go of my hands and screamed when she came.

Then it was my turn.

She sat up in bed and I knelt on some pillows behind her. It worked out perfectly. My penis was at exactly the right height. She lifted her arm to let me in, then closed it tight around me. I thrust wildly, letting out some unmanly yelps of glee. I was fucking her armpit. No woman had ever let me do this. It was my life's greatest fantasy. The hair provided friction, and her sweat was lubrication. The balance between the two was ideal. It didn't take me long. I came a gallon, pumping it all into her closed underarm, my head feeling like it was about to explode from the sudden endorphin overload.

When I was finished, we both collapsed onto the bed. I looked over at her. Her arm was up and there was something very gratifying about the sight of my milky white semen soaking into her dark, dark hair. I stared fascinated for several seconds, paralyzed with exhaustion. I felt like I could not move a muscle.

"Oh God, Harry," Sheila purred. "I want you to fuck me with your toe. I want you to fuck me with your big, big toe."

Even as tired as I was, I couldn't let Sheila down.