There's one weird, specific memory I have of being a kid - a teenager I guess. It won't surprise anyone that I spent a good portion of those teen years being hopelessly self-absorbed, & managed - through sheer luck - to avoid incurring the wrath of the bullies who picked on other people I knew. Because I was a total nerd. I should've at least been pants once or twice.
Anyway, at some point, because of the horrible hormones coursing through my body, I became a pimply-faced adolescent. I'm sure it wasn't pretty but at some point I must've realized it didn't matter to me because, quite frankly, I was an unattractive kid & I was wholly incapable of being anything but a bystander to the whole dating/experimenting with sex stuff that was happening to so many of my classmates. This is not to say I didn't want something like that (the hormones were making me want something like that); I was just enough of a realist to understand it would be something other than my looks that would get me into that world. I had to make some kind of plan.*
Therefore I didn't bother with cremes or ointments or whatever kids use or used to try to keep pimples away. In fact, I found them fascinating, & when bored in class I would often just touch them, these odd growths on my face that didn't seem to stay in any one place. I don't know if I noticed them on anyone else, but maybe I did. I just wouldn't have judged, since I myself knew my face was awful splotchy. Or what's that British term? Spotty. Boy, I must've been awful spotty.
Oh, but I had a friend - he might better be called a "friend," for although he seemed to enjoy hanging out with me, much of the fun he derived from doing so involved making fun of me - which is something I came to understand much later, because, you know, head up my own ass & all - & at some point he became aware that my skin was much worse than his (if it was - I wasn't staring so intently in his face). He began to criticize me for my "whiteheads."
That was not a term with which I was terribly familiar. I knew "blackheads" - they used that word in all the pimple cream commercials. But this guy - his name was Gus - he used "whiteheads" in a way that made me think someone had just taught him the word. He made me self-conscious, & I began to pick or pop them (whatever the term) rather than ignoring them as they more or less had ignored me.
Luckily I grew older, & they went away. & hey! Gus did too. But he did leave me this weird, specific memory about my skin - which I might not have if he hadn't been such a little douche to me when we were teens.
* "Others conquered love, but I ran.
I sat in my room & I drew up a plan."
- Morrissey
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