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July 20, 2005
Ugliest Face Ever
I’m on a new skin care regimen.
My face is totally fucked up now, but the doctor says this is temporary.
I don’t know when exactly I became obsessed with the skin on my face.
Maybe I should have never decided anonymity wasn’t awesome. Maybe then I wouldn’t be obsessed with the threading and the facials and the Nars and the cocoa butter application all night to the stomach and backs of the thighs. A girl likes to kick it natural sometimes, but the paranoia that someone gives a fuck enough to say hi to me randomly at the Dunkin Donuts is enough to deter me from this natural bullshit. Sounds like I should be doing some re-evaluating, for real.
Later though. Re-evaluation is so draining.
For now, I want to talk about my face that is melting off as I write this.
Let’s just get this out there. Proactiv doesn’t work. And that little scam they pull on you if you order on the Internet – they ought to be ashamed of themselves. If you order online, they automatically assume that you want to be in their Proactive Forever club and every month, they just charge your credit card and send you more before you’ve even figured out if the shit works for you. Then, when you’ve already quit using it because it sucks, you get a new batch in the mail and you look at your credit card statement and there the charge is. You call and they say, “But you’re in the club…” and you say, “But I don’t want to be in your club because your shit doesn’t work…” and they say, “Well we already charged you, but you can send it back” and you send it back and wait all year for them to give you back your $45. From the product down to the shady customer service, they’re on some bullshit and I hate their guts. Besides, I should have known better but P. Diddy lied to me.
I saw that P Diddy uses Proactiv, and I was like, okay, if that fool uses that shit, it must work because he doesn’t seem to be the type to just blindly testify to some product’s effectiveness for cash like Jessica Simpson, but I was wrong. Proactiv does NOT work. It makes you think it’s working for the first two weeks. For the first two weeks, I was looking fly. I felt confident. I was wearing just Nars Orgasm on my cheeks, some Lancome Hypnose on the lashes and some Rosebud Salve on the lips and I felt done up. I was glowing. But that shit wore off. I became immune and the dullness resurfaced. I even broke out a couple times. And thank God it happened during the filming of Battle of the Network Reality Stars where make-up is pretty much pointless when you’re swimming relays and fucking around in a dunk tank. My skin is going to look like shit on that show so all you message board fiends won’t be hurting my feelings. I already know so whatever. Besides, fuck my face. I was wearing a one-piece Speedo bathing suit, with the leg holes cut all high forcing my butt to look totally 80s. Can’t wait for that episode. My boyfriend will be on tour at the time of the airing and I hope he stays on tour. Go to Canada. Go play your metal music for the fans in Iraq. But when he gets home and the reruns start, I’m going to have to figure out a way to keep him from turning the television on. I better start practicing all my recipes and get that dumb ass lingerie cracking.
J says I’m insane for starting this new regimen. He’s like, “Your skin is perfect. You’re an asshole if you don’t think it’s perfect. I think it’s awesome and now look…” he says to me, as my face is flaking off on all the good furniture. But what does he really know about girl skin? This is a man who, just a couple years ago when we were just friends, believed that the trickle-down effect works when it comes to washing your legs.
“So you don’t bend over and actually scrub your legs clean?” I asked.
He shook his head no and I searched his eyes and his soul for reasons, good reasons, like sciatica or something. Nope. He says, “Showering on tour is quick, man” and “Sometimes I can’t just bend down” and “Shut up, this doesn’t even matter…” Oh, but it does. He washes those legs now, I assure you.
Besides, now that I fully totally understand him, nothing shocks me anymore. He’s got crazy ideas all day long. Every evening when he gets home from work, it’s “Babe, I thought of the best invention and it’s so fucking awesome because I thought of it…”
I stopped wondering about him at about the time he told me he wanted to open his own Italian Ices store that only sold vanilla flavor so that he could call it Vanilla Ices and hire only Vanilla Ice look-a-likes to work there. He knows Robert Van Winkle aka Vanilla Ice personally somehow. Met him on the road maybe and has since kicked him out of his The Cool Posse of the World club for some minor club rules violation (liking the band Korn, I think) – crossing his name off of the TCPOTW official t-shirt and everything. Other members include the singer from Alien Ant Farm and Gay Cock Suck. No, I’m not a member because I am not cool, he’s told me.
But enough about him. This is about my shitty skin.
You see, to the outside world I don’t have problem skin. To the formerly really anonymous, formerly sociable and less superficial person that I used to be, I didn’t have a skin problem. But now, as I’m getting old as fuck, I notice everything. Migrations, brown spots, cellulite, overgrown cuticles – it’s all there obstructing perfection which is totally not possible. Rationally, it is not possible but shit, it’s not really my fault I have these issues. I can’t just stop reading the magazines and get real. I thrive on impossibility.
Maybe one day I’ll be a fucking billionaire and the excessive and unnecessary python Chloe bag will be mine. Damn those reptiles – they don’t want to live. They want to be overpriced handbags that house my empty wallet. Maybe one day they’ll make clothes my size and sell them right there at the store and I can fire the little Vietnamese lady that hems all my pants. Maybe one day that size 5 ½ shoe will be in stock and I won’t have to settle for the pair consisting of the faded display shoe in the window and the been-touched-a-million times stretched out one on the floor and I won’t have to be the only person in the world that still goes to a fucking cobbler. And maybe one day, my skin will glow like a mother fucker without any Nars bronzer but no.
There are blemishes and unreasonably large pores and small breakouts and hyperpigmentation and things like that that make me feel really self-conscious. I examine the skin of my face obsessively, much like I examine my teeth and I decided I should do something about it if I want to be happy. Because, you know, no amount of amazing shoes or pretty clothes, will make me leave the house without makeup on even though in my Long Island stupor, I have been doing just that. Who have I become?
So I stopped using Proactiv and now it’s just decoration in the bathroom so it appears that I use expensive celebrity-endorsed products. Open my medicine cabinet and the linen closet that I’ve transformed to a beauty arsenal. You will be impressed. Yes, that is the Kiehl’s shelf. Oh, go ahead, you can use any of those Fresh perfumes. Don’t touch my Kerastase though. Isn’t that stack of pink Dove soaps adorable? I could go on and on. I organize that closet for fun. Long Island rules, I swear. I do have a confession though. Long Island rules, totally, yes, but I’m switching my LA number to a NY 917 number and not a 516 because I’m a perpetrator like that. Only the 12 people reading this will know so let’s keep it a secret. Special for just us to know.
Now I was messing around on the Internet and I ended up on some gay Filipino boy’s website. He’s come into money somehow, he doesn’t explain, and he just posts about all the things he buys to maintain his “fabulosity”, and he includes pictures. His Louis Vuitton. His Dior. His Gucci. His Nars. He does have flawless skin and I was like what is that fool doing…
I scrolled down and sure enough, he gave away all his beauty secrets.
Obagi.
I Google’d the nearest dermatologist that carried Obagi and made myself an appointment.
A couple days later, I’m sitting in the waiting room of a plastic surgery office. I’m thinking to myself, this is so vain. How could I do this? Who am I? I’m no Melissa Howard from Valrico where all there is to look forward to is the strawberry festival and two-for-two fillet o’ fish Tuesdays! I’m a fucking crazy bitch now. These people are getting face lifts and shit. I have a blemish. I should be ashamed of myself.
I filled those papers in lightning quick and I sat there, all antsy like it was Christmas Eve in 1987, the last year that Christmas really mattered to me because I was still oblivious to that whole paycheck-to-paycheck lifestyle.
I had to wear no make-up to the consultation so that he could see with his own two eyes that I could not be turned away from the hardcore prescription strength drugs. I was like, “Rip my entire face off with chemicals, I don’t care. Give me the drugs…” and he did.
Now, the really nice aesthetician girl said there would be some discomfort and redness. I said I don’t care. Beauty, pain whatever, give it all to me.
That’s what I said when I had the lower half of my face still attached.
Today, as I type this, my face is flaking off onto the keyboard. Whenever anyone calls, I say, “My face is fucked up” instead of hello. Yawning hurts because the skin is pulled tight and it’s dry. Like crazy dry.
I know I need to stay in the house so I made myself a little MySpace to pass the time. It’s only and specifically for meeting other people with jacked up faces. Nobody wants to be my friend though.
I left the house earlier to buy a velvety yellow chaise lounge at The Salvation Army in Hicksville of all places, thinking no one would notice. I felt a tiny bit of shame when I announced I’d be willing to leave the house for Salvation Army but not for dim sum in the city. J looked at me like I was making a really fucked up political statement and I agreed that I was being a low class snob, but so. It’s my face.
I don’t care. I’ll take the redness and flaking and low self-esteem and the confinement to the house. In six weeks, my face should be a champagne dream. We’re talking repair at the cellular level, okay. Shit’s going on deep beneath the skin. I will be bronzed and poreless and I won’t have to worry about my make-up in this heat and humidity because guess what, I won’t need any.
But for real, my face is wrecked. But, you know what, it’s like helping a compulsive hoarder clean the mess. It’ll look worse before it looks better. Besides, this is a good indication that I’m totally comfortable around my boyfriend. He has to look at my face all day long and he’s not tripping. Every now and again he tells me I’m crazy, but still. In six weeks, we’ll see how insane I am when I’m catwalking down the street with my new face.
For now though, I’m trying to help you learn from my mistakes. Do this system in the winter because then you won’t look as stupid walking around in a pashmina and a hat and a long sweater in the dead of summer. I’m looking like Mary Kate trying to cover up an obvious addiction to anorexia and those white lines. Cocaine is a helluva drug. RIP Rick James, damn. And Luther too. Ol’ Dirty Bastard and Dimebag Darrel and now Luther Vandross. We’re losing all the greats, people.
And with that, I need to go to time out with my scabies face and think about what I’ve done. Thank you for dealing with me during this entirely self-absorbed time. I don’t mean to be this vain. It’s not my fault. Don’t you people see that?
Posted by melissah at July 20, 2005 04:56 PM