Pubes is a short, informal word for the hair that grows around the sexual organs after puberty — the same hair a doctor would call pubic hair. People say it at home, with friends, in jokes, and in very plain talk about the body. It sounds blunt. In a clinic or a school book you will more often hear pubic hair, which is the same thing said more carefully. Though actually, the word looks like a plural, and people do treat it that way, but it also works as a mass: you can say “my pubes” the way you say “my hair.” It can also mean the small area of the body where that hair grows, not only the hair itself. It is private talk, not a swear word, and you would not use it in a polite speech. It has nothing to do with a pub, the drinking place — they only look a little alike on the page.