Light and hearty observations from a fat and ugly guy. Home of hackneyed drivel and ersatz-existentialist effluence. Choleric biliousness a specialty, since 1958.

Nigel, pizza-faced teenager

Shaving this morning, and I scraped the Gillette Mac 3 across a small zit. Charming, I know, but you can't always handle the pimples easily while shaving. Typical stuff ensued; a wad of toilet paper stuck to my face driving in, and eventually no harm done.

When I was a teen, I had possibly the worst pizza face history has ever known. La visage du Nigel was one ol' big bumpy red mess, endless, non-stop, always changing but always there, with pus-filled disgusting whiteheads complemented by huge boils on my cheeks and nose. And nothing was done about it till it was too late. My parents, particularly my mother, were dead set against me having any kind of social life in high school -- almost no dating, no nothing to do with girls -- so my already disgusting face, being marred further by a case of acne so aggressive as to receive medals in wartime...well, you can understand why they never took action to help me clear it up. Till it was way too late, psychologically, I mean.

Remedies? I tried them all. Scraping together whatever was left over from working part-time at Sears selling paint, I bought me buckets of Clearasil. Endless bottles of Oxy 5 (remember the radio ad? "What would you rather have...a few less cents, or a few less zits?"). When they failed, I resorted to scrubbing with fucking Scotchbrite pads. Nothing helped.

The one time I attempted and was allowed to go out--my only date in high school-- was as a sophomore, and I front up to pick up the then secret love of my life (one Trixie Luther--Trixie, darling, where are you now?) with a gigantic, honking, huge, angry, red one-inch in diameter pimple right square on the middle of my nose. Needless to say, nothing happened with Trixie.

Eventually (after I tried to kill myself in 12th grade), the parents relented and took me to see a specialist, who dubbed my case "extraordinary" and begged me for subsequent visits, holding out the promise of residuals and future stardom, because I would be front and center in upcoming National Geographic specials and TV infomercials.

Anyhow, this dermatologist took one look at Nigel the pepperoni kid, and after about 20 seconds of hmmm-ing, prescribed something that immediately and completely cleared everything up. Right away.

Bitter, me? As in, if I'd visited said dermatologist say, two years previously, all that heartache and self-hatred could have been avoided?

Nah.

posted by Nigel St.John Regina Smegmatica Howle-Raines @ 10:04 PM