dear diary …
Well here’s a personally embarrassing story I’m going to tell to make up for all you indignant people who are mad that I’m discussing fat people’s love for Ren Faire. Oh I know you’re out there. Talking about fat people’s rights and how I must think I’m so much better than them.
So. I have this one hair on my chin. It’s like a whisker. Lots of women have them. A lone random hair that for some reason pops out of their chin or cheek. It’s like some male hormone got stuck in a hair follicle and is fervently hoping to grow itself into a beard, except it’s never going to work because there’s usually only one of these hairs around. I’m not talking about women who have a moustache, willingly or not. That’s a whole other issue of which I have thankfully been spared ever having to worry about, given that I’m pretty hairless and what’s there is kind of colorless. If I didn’t wear mascara, you’d think I was in the mid-stages of having chemo–my eyelashes are practically invisible. No, these wannabe-male Lone Ranger hairs are just one sneaky little hair that isn’t there and then all of a sudden, in like 5 minutes, it’s a half-inch long.
Well I have one of those on my chin. There. I’ve told my dirty little secret. It’s funny in a way because it really feels like a whisker, and if you know me even a little, you know why this is funny. Being a cat lady and all. O the irony. Anyway nobody would realize the hair is there except me. Naturally I do not share this information with anyone except people like my sister, or possibly other women who I feel a close personal connection to. I would never tell a man I had a HAIR growing out of my chin. Until now. Yes when I reveal a secret I go all out. First it’s hidden and then I’m telling thousands of people all over the world.
Anyhoo, I have this hair except after a few years of plucking it I think I might have killed it because it hasn’t appeared in at least 6 months. PHEW. I no longer have to keep checking in an OCD-like manner to see if The Hair has made an appearance. Or rather, if it’s able to be felt, because as I said nobody can really see it. As soon as I can feel it I get a flashlight and the tweezers and pluck that little fucker out. And it appeared to work. The Hair is gone.
Or so I thought. It turns out it just … migrated.
I was out to lunch and after finishing thought I better check and make sure I didn’t have food all over my face before I went walking down the street and so pulled out my little mirror and … oh god The Hair had taken revenge on me. But not by appearing it its usual spot on practically the underside of my chin, where at least it would only be barely visible if the light hits it just right. No, The Hair had decide to make itself comfortable IN MY NOSE only it was not content to hide itself UP my nose. It had decided to be in there and yet poke itself out for about a sixteenth of an inch. Yes I had a TREE practically right in the middle of my face. I mean the thing was huge. Me with that hair next to a two-headed man, well trust me you would have thought it was Brad Pitt standing next to me, or Obama, or your last postman. In other words, the only thing visible would be the GIANT ENORMOUS SWAMP THING OF A HAIR waving across my face.
I didn’t have any tweezers and anyway how could I use them while sitting in Qdoba? What was I to do, pull out a manicure kit and start pulling things off my face? Someone probably would have called the authorities. I tried to yank it with my fingers but it was very clever and although appeared as big as a baobob tree, could not really be grasped with my fingernails and if I kept trying to do so it would look like I was picking my nose, which would be worse than walking around with a big hair on my face. Who knows who could have been watching me? Maybe my future husband (imaginary & hypothetical, since I am never getting married) is in there and just about to fall madly in love with me except he thinks I am picking my nose like totally out in the open and so gets completely grossed out and moves on to True Eternal Love for some chick named Wanda at the next table. Or Hard Copy could be doing an exposé and I’d be in living color on televisions all over Wal-Mart, stared at by people in polyester pants. Yuh-huh, as if. So I was forced to just live temporarily with The Hair and walk back to work, praying that I wouldn’t run into anyone on the way. I knew I had tweezers in the office and could yank that thing out easily.
Well I got back to work and FORGOT to do it. And so my life continued on happy and unawares until I was at my rehearsal that night and thought, “Hey something is tickling my face” and I looked at the back of my iPod (nice reflective surface) and THERE IT WAS–THE HAIR IN ALL ITS DISGUSTING WHISKER-ENVY GLORY. I can only imagine what everyone who saw it all day must have been thinking. Probably something along the lines of “Um they shouldn’t let people out of the institution when they look like that” and “Whoa there’s a candidates for Extreme Makeover Electrolysis Special.” I didn’t have tweezers there either so I just kind of tilted my head down and thought maybe I could hang some of my actual hair–the hair that’s in its correct place on the top of my head–over my face and they’d just think I was being all emo and shit and not that I was trying to disguise the foliage coming out of my nose.
So anyway I finally got the sweet relief of rehearsal being over and went home, thinking the whole time that I’d pluck out The Hair when I got home. But wouldn’t you fucking know it–I forgot to do it AGAIN! I swear sometimes I turn totally Forrest Gump. I just went home and went to bed and forgot all about The Hair until the next day when I was at the gas station and happened to glance in the mirror while the attendant was filling the car and shock of shocks I remembered that not only did I *have* a hair, but that I had repeatedly forgotten to remove the hair and now I was in my car in broad daylight with a car right next to me whose passengers I KNOW were staring at me. They probably were gawking at the piece of timber coming off my face and sticking about 3 feet out the window.
But I didn’t care anymore who saw. I wasn’t waiting anymore and taking a chance on this thing turning into the Everglades on my face. I got out my tweezers and destroyed that little bastard. And it hurt like a motherfucker. The nose apparently doesn’t wish to give up its prized possessions, and it must really love hairs, or it wouldn’t have so many of them in there.
So that’s my embarrassing reveal of the day. Probably of the year. I have to keep up appearances, you know? Plus I’m pretty sure any other hairs will be too scared to make themselves known.
I hope this makes up for anyone’s thinking that I don’t love fat people at Ren Faire. Even though I don’t.