I have a 24 carat gold mask on my face. Not in an Alexandre Dumas way, but more in the skincare direction, although it is so tight now, I wonder how long it will be before I lose my ability to blink.
Beauty is not something I have ever aspired to in life. Wit and knowing as much as I can about myself and everything else, so I can level up in therapy and be included in dinner parties has always been the bullseye of the dart board of my life.
Lately, I have noticed I am looking, how to say it, old? Well, I am older, but I think I look careworn. Crushed by the lack of wit, self-reflection (note mirror refections), and dinner parties perhaps, but mostly because I am older. So naturally, I spied a gold face mask on the dresser in my 22 year old’s bedroom and hubris grabbed me by the pussy and whispered in my ear, “Bitch, you need this.”
So I sit, writing this, feeling like Jill Masterson in Goldfinger, about to die from skin suffocation while listening to the dog is barking outside. I try to call out to him I sound like a Mummy from a late night horror movie from the 1970’s as I cannot yell his name. “Bert”, I call, but it sounds like BURRRRR thus the dog keeps barking as he won’t respond to a growling, cold Scottish man.
I have to wait for it to peel off. I hope it comes off cleanly, not like a boiled egg where part of the shell and membrane is still stuck to the googy. This gold paint need to come off like screen protector on a new phone, and my face better look camera ready.
Sometimes I look at pictures of myself and I see how ordinary I look. I am plain, not in a Lauren Newton sort of a way, like a scone, but more a of a Lana Del Ray before the surgery. That’s okay though, I look at the photos with detachment and thank God I got me some brains. Because beauty really does fade and no amount of gold masks will help you.
So now I come to peeling off my face, and like the boiled egg theory I feared, it is painful and difficult. It seems my face is too ripe, or soft or something with my chubby cheeks makes them seem to stretch with the mask, so I look like I am made of golden slime, partly melted, sort of like a dripping Masterchef Challenge dessert that they didn’t quite pull off (like this mask).
I end up washing it off because the pain is intense. My lower eyelids, (do we have eyelids on the bottom?) feel dehydrated, like I have been left in the sun to dry out, raisin style. I should I have thought this through and half closed my eyes while applying, as now I am looking for eyedrops and blinking furiously, like a visual morse code, or in this case, remorse code.
I think I will stay as I am. Skin suffocation is not for me, and my face, as plain as it maybe, is simply fine. Instead I will go and work on my sharpening my wit, while gathering obscure facts that might be useful for a dinner party or a book somewhere in my future.