I am a very hairy person. Ever since adolescence, my legs, hands, toes, armpits, and butt have been adorned by a layer of thick dark brown fur. I chalk it up to my lineage: I am Ashkenazi-Jew on my father's side, and Sicilian-Neapolitan on my mother's side. The two hairiest ethnic groups came together in holy matrimony and got pregnant. But instead of producing a baby, a hamster came out. With my genes, I didn't stand a chance: I was doomed to have hair sprouting out of my body like weeds in a field.

When I was 8 or 9, I used to be just like all the other blond, hairless kids in school: I had beautiful caramel skin that was as smooth and supple as a chunk of Land O'Lakes butter. I could proudly flaunt my tanned, pre-pubescent legs in public and wear a tank top without batting an eye. I even spiked the hair on my head (where my hair belonged) with gobs of electric blue gel, so I would look like one of the members of NSYNC. This was the early 2000s, when heartthrobs like Justin Timberlake and Nick Lachey graced the covers of tabloids with their cherubic faces, six-packs, and hairless bodies. This was well before man buns, and No Shave November became cool: Hairless was the only thing to be. And I wanted to be it, even though I was just a half-Jewish kid from the suburbs with a round belly and an overbite. But I had my fantasies, and I clung to them.

But around the age of 11, things began to change. I started to get a few honey gold hairs on my arms. It was no big deal. But then a couple blonde of hairs suddenly became a patch of blond hairs, and then a whole forest of them. The hairs spread down to my legs, sprouting from my knees, my calves, my femur, and the top of my toes. Even my crotch became surrounded by a nest of soft blond hairs, hovering just above the area that often turned hard when under wooden school desks or on long car rides in my mom's Volvo. I would gaze at that nest of hair when I would take baths in my teal bathroom. The cloud of blond pubic hair hovered above the shallow layer of bathwater, and I would gaze at it, marveling at the fact that the inner workings of my body were a mystery even to myself.

But then came adolescence. And with adolescence came armpit hair. And chest hair. And neck hair. And these weren't wispy angelic blond hairs. No. These were dark, black Sicilian hairs that shot up long, thick, and curly, straight from the root. At summer camp, the other boys looked at my armpit hair with disgust and fascination, as if I were a dead bird carcass they had just found on the sidewalk. A pudgy kid named Tyler would chant, "He has hair under there, he looks like a bear." I would burn with embarrassment and silent shame. When I got back to school in September, every time I raised my hand in class, I made sure to cover my armpit with my other hand.

The hair followed me everywhere I went. At tap class in high school, I was told to stop wearing shorts to the studio because my hairy legs were scaring the other girls in class. And at the beach when I was a teenager, a family friend's daughter caught me raising my arm, saw my hairy armpit in its full glory, and told me that I was a "boy with a man's problem." I started shaving my chest in the shower, repulsed that the dark black hairs had made it to my floppy chest. I still have little white scars on my nipples from those clumsy first attempts at ridding my body of unwanted fur.

And it even followed me into adulthood. One time, I asked a straight British gentleman to have sex with me, but he said I that was too hairy to sleep with. Apparently, the fact that I was a man did not matter to him, but my body hair was the deal breaker. A middle-aged man from my gym's steam room one time came up to me; he told me that he loved to watch gay porn with hairy men in it. Complete strangers would approach me on the subway and say, "You're a very hairy person." Was this a compliment? An insult? A harmless observation? I could never tell. I would just mutter an awkward "thank you," and turn away.

Why did people care so much that I was hairy? Why were the young girls in tap class repulsed by it, the young boys at summer camp fascinated by it, and why did the horny old men in the New York Sports Club steam room fetishize it? How is it that something can be disgusting, sexy, and eye-catching all at the same time? Were people gawking at the hair, or were they gawking at me? It was hard to know where my hair ended and where I began.

Here's my theory: Hair titillates or disgusts people because it reminds them that humans are animals. At the end of the day, we just eat, sleep, and have sex: Body hair reminds us that, like animals, our bodies have needs and desires that are ultimately out of our control. And I think that scares people. That reminder that we are all vulnerable to our most primal desires.

Hair reminds us that, at the end of the day, we are all like dogs and felines, roaming the terrain for a good meal and a fertile mate, prisoners to our most feral and secret longings. It can be hard to be a walking reminder of this truth, a conspicuous hairball in a sea of bare-chested, bare-armed men in a city like New York. But sometimes, the right man can take your deepest insecurity and make it feel like your biggest asset.

I was on a date with one such guy recently. We were having dinner at a divey Mexican restaurant on Ninth Avenue. I was stuffing my face with beef enchiladas, and he was cutting his taco into neat, equal pieces. "What do you think of my hair?" I asked him. "I think it's beautiful," he said. To him, it was just a question asked by a 26-year-old man. But for me, his five-word answer made my 11-year-old self feel loved, accepted, and beautiful. A magic wand wasn't waved: I still have my insecurities, just as anyone else does. But this man's words of love put a Band-Aid on a wound that was already healing and getting stronger with every year.

Now, when I look in my bathroom mirror, I don't see a rat's nest of black fuzz. I see soft brown hair that is not for shaving, but for stroking, fondling, and loving. There is more of me for him to grab onto, and more of me to draw us closer together. I think of how, when he touches me, the friction between my skin and my hair's root makes me tremble. Instead of feeling gawky or ugly, I feel earthy, natural, and true. The exact way my body wanted itself to be.