I want to ask this girl from class if she would like to go out to dinner with me. I know it doesn’t sound spectacular, but in this particular situation, it has some poetry to it. I want to ask her tomorrow. A week ago—Valentine’s Day if you can stomach the cliché—she had plans to go with Mark to this downtown restaurant called Escobar’s. The place specializes in nuevo latino cuisine, and it’s the best in town according to our poetry instructor. You need a reservation to get in. Normally Escobar’s is closed on Monday, but it was open for Valentine’s Day with some forty dollars deal for couples. Our instructor asked everyone about their plans for Valentine’s Day, and she told the class about the deal and how she made the reservations a week in advance but cancelled that morning because, she says, it’s just too expensive. On the following Wednesday at the end of class, I hear her tell our instructor that this Mark scumbag went to the restaurant last night with a professor. She tells him, “we’re still friends,” and I wonder at all of the details I am missing.
I want to tell her that I would like to take her to this place. Really, I’d like to take her anywhere, but I also don’t want to be the schmuck with a pickup line. It may all be irrelevant, though, because I can see the red mark just beginning to expose itself, and the mound slowly growing into its protrusion. Most likely a white head will have formed on my face by morning. Slightly off-center on the bridge of my nose, just below my eye. If I were good-looking in the first place, the minor blemish could, probably, be forgiven. With this face, I’m not so sure, but here I go sounding like a fucking Hank Chinaski character.
***
I leave the mirror behind and go about the day, but in the car and through the aisles at the grocer, I’m reminded of those terrible junior high years…being on multiple medications, a treatment cream, a pill, a special facial cleansing soap…learning what a dermatologist was…being told my uncle had to be treated into his late twenties, that the Marines completely eliminated dairy from his diet. I used to pick at the flecks of dead skin—the medicine and cream and cleanser thoroughly drying out the pores, expurgating and eliminating the oil. I feared living later, covered in pockmarks like Robert Davi. Now, I worry about the lines mapping the creases of my brow into a permanent scowl. It’s mostly from thinking but it’s also from stress—my skin would always clear up in the summers—of work, school, relationships fallen by the wayside…memories like the day Angie Maskeet broke up with me. I wasn’t so bothered by her breaking up with me—I preferred to be with her best friend anyway—but with the fact that she did so on a day when she had the largest pimple brimming in the center of her nose just above the tip, agitated with a little red circle around the transparent layer of skin barely containing the white pus waiting below, waiting to burst forth into the light and wail its existence into the world like a just-birthed babe. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I remember glancing at her eyes once or twice to seem to be listening, and I remember the part where she said 'I only think of you as a friend,' but otherwise, I was transfixed on this thing ready to ooze on her nose. I wanted to pop it, if not only to get rid of it and start the healing process but to simply see what would happen. Would it burst in a terrific splash of wet pus, or would the stuff have become a hardened paste that had to be squeezed out of the sore, the enlarged pore, like it were a tube of toothpaste? I stared, dumbfounded, as she finished whatever it was she was saying, hugged me, turned and walked from my front door to her car, and left my driveway to go marry some zealot eight years older four years later, a guy her parents could accept because his favorite book is the Bible.
I return home and return to the vanity in the bathroom. Move my face within inches of the mirror’s surface to gain a closer look. Nothing has changed yet. I scrub my face with a palm full of acne wash. I know it does not matter at this point.
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The above is from a short work of fiction, entitled "Mirrors, or Intro. to Creative Writing: A Work of Fantasy." Most people that have read my fiction will note that I often have an almost obsessive perspective on skin in a lot of stories. The obsession is particularly marked with acne. The above is fiction, but of course, with fiction there is truth, and it's little surprise that there is a lot of truth in that obsessing, not just for me either.
It is true that I was plagued in junior high and some of high school with those irritating little red bumps. I still occassionally get flare ups of stress acne now just like the character from "Mirrors," who is and isn't me. In college, I was particularly conscious of the potential for breakouts, especially when I was elbow deep in dirty, greasy dishwater thirty hours a week for work. I scoured myself at home immediately upon arrival to purge myself of the dirt, sweat, and food oils from the job. For the most part it worked perfectly fine. The stress free summers were never anything to worry about. The warm and humid midwest air does my skin a great deal of good in keeping it moisturized. The harsh cold and dryness of the winter was and still is something to be combatted after showering and washing the face--the skin easily becomes dried out, cracked, and flaking under those stressful conditions.
But the end of this summer, unfortunately, has proved challenging as well. I think it's pretty safe to argue the correlation between employment and stress...and the pimples. It's been a long month of preparation and getting settled into the new home and work environment. Since last Tuesday, I've been putting in close to sixteen or more hour days, waking around five in the morning to work out and prepare for school meetings, setting up the classroom, developing lesson plans, and so on. And I've been working until at least seven or eight at night before calling it quits. Monday was the first official school day, and I crawled out of bed at 4:45 am, remained at school working until 4:45 pm, and then watched the boys' soccer game until almost seven before heading home to do another hour of planning. Today was pretty much the same story, except I had my first classes today--Monday was just an assembly with all students and faculty--and I worked until six before attending the girls' volleyball scrimmage night. My "me" time was grilling a small burger and watching an hour of the Little League World Series at home--did I mention I skipped lunch today to get some more class planning done.
It's no surprise to me that the pores are clogging up in rebellion against my body and it's current abuse. They're attacking the most vulnerable places, the weak points in the front line. It's like they're seasoned veterans when it comes to this war of attrition.
It's hard enough being a twenty-three-year-old teacher, only five years ahead of some of your students, trying to occupy a respectable position of authority in class. Matters are made worse when you're 5'9" and weigh 140 lbs. Showing up to class with a nice zit to the side of my nose makes me feel like I should be sitting in one of the one-armed desk chairs rather than standing in front of a bunch of hormone-oozing teens. I think the beard is about the only thing that sets me apart, otherwise I'd be blending in much too easily in the crowded hallways. At the same time, the beard is a contributing factor to my skin problems. As I said, it's a war of attrition in more regards than one.
One of my students, who I only met two days ago, helps me keep this in mind as he has dubbed me "The Resurrection" in light of my supposed Jesus-esque appearance, which in the Western mind equates to any white male with slightly longer hair and a beard. This stems from the traditional Western art depictions of, what I like to refer to as, "stoned-out hippy Jesus." I was assisting in another teacher's homeroom when this particular student brilliantly realized the most obvious and easiest referential point for my appearance--like I haven't heard the "Jesus" thing before (and both my hair and beard are many inches shorter than they have been in the past, and "inches" is not an exaggeration). I informed him that this connection was nothing new and that it too lacked certain attention to details. As I informed the student, who I in turn dubbed "Max Power" (you see, the pus is even affecting my brain at this point as I respond to a sixteen year-olds weak witticism with something equally juvenile), Jesus was a Middle-Eastern Jew, and I am neither Middle-Eastern nor Jewish and strongly doubt that I resemble the man in any real sense (it seems more likely that Jesus was a blackhead and not a whitehead). This was delivered in my near perfected Midwestern drawl at a precise sloth-paced monotone pitch and tone. The homeroom teacher, one of my former teachers and coaches, chuckled and explained to the kids that if they had Mr. Asscot for class, they'd have to be study the dead-pan humor to stay sharp with my passive agressive comebacks. Perhaps, I shouldn't be upset about the supposed likeness to Jesus, I mean if he reportedly cured lepers than a couple goddamned zits should be no problem for me. Right?
But that's the thing about students and new teachers, it's all about testing boundaries and seeing how far the line will bend before it breaks. What occurs on the surface is one thing, but what goes on below the surface is psychological warfare. In my weaker states, it's biological warfare, and casualties run high in the initial battles, while the surviving few sluggishly march on in Neutrogena's counterattack charge. Sometimes, it feels like you have to work miracles for the most basic of things, and you're just never compensated for those little troubles. In these struggles to maintain, if you really want to get under my skin, all you have to do is merely point out the slowly growing red protrusion with the milky white middle just off-center my nose, or corner-mouth, or chin, or cheek, or wherever those bastards choose to sneak attack next. Ssssh, don't tell Max.
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