pubic hair

I remember reading this passage from Kurt Vonnegut’s God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater to my mother. I was working my way through Kurt Vonnegut's oeuvre, having bought most of his novels as used paperbacks. 

Eliot now began to play unconsciously with his public hair. … He would simply uncoil a tight spring of it, let it snap back into place. … 

Eliot … found a hair that was a lulu. He kept extending and extending it until it was revealed as being one foot long. He looked down at it … incredulously proud of owning such a thing. ...

It was the mention of pubic hair that really appalled [Eliot's father, Senator Rosewater]. He had seen very few naked bodies in his time, perhaps five or six, and pubic hair was to him the most unmentionable, unthinkable of all materials.

Oddly, in my memory that pubic hair is a three-foot long pubic hair. Though one foot is pretty long for such a hair, isn't it? 

What she heard coming from her son’s lips appalled my mother, or maybe just embarrassed her — something uncomfortable. How old was I? 12? I think I didn’t have any pubic hair at that point, but if I did it wasn’t anything worth playing with. 

Mom did not censor our reading. If she paid much attention to what book my brother or I had a nose stuck into, she never judged. Not to say, if I offered up some gem like this, she didn’t have an opinion. I think she’d rather I hadn’t read this to her, and that one shouldn’t write such things. She didn’t make a big deal of it going forward, however. She didn’t snatch the book from my hands or remove it from the book shelf in the living room. It was my own copy, not a library book. Surprised at her discomfort, I spluttered a bit about how I only read it to her because I thought it was funny. That didn’t exactly clear the air. But, as I say, it was only a big deal in that moment, and because, you know, puberty. 

source: God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr