Zits

Zits



The most personal thing I can say about myself is that in high school I had zits.  What this meant to me, and what this means to me, is a lot.  Some people can just slip into the mainstream without being noticed, but in my case zits were doom.

My face was handsome as a teenager.  It still is now but minus the zits.  Because my face was so classically statuesque I had to sort of find different ways to present my face.  I’d look in the mirror after popping my zits and try to make an amenable face, a face that people would forgive for the red spots all over it.

I had to become much nicer as a person because of my zits.  That’s one of the facts of life, if you are different in any way you must work harder to sustain faith in people.  I considered myself just another person who had to be nicer and cooler because of certain differences.  There could be much worse, like being crippled in a wheelchair, or having a big nose, or being transgendered, or anything.  My little dilemma was about my zits.

There were certain friends that were close to me.  They could see past my zits and could listen to me in another way.  I didn’t have to put on all the lights and smiles just for their acceptance and friendship.  But whenever we went out anywhere I had to be at my best.  This involved lots of smiling.

Was it beneath me to smile just because people were superficial?  No.  People will eat you up like beef jerky if you don’t abide by their rules.  These people that didn’t care were seen as conceited.  If they were handsome and smart but conceited they passed muster but, if, like me, they had zits and stood apart from the rest they became fodder for rumors and hatred.  And that translated into fights, social problems, and eventual conceit, and conceit was bad.

In the ninth grade I started to grow zits on my face.  At first I thought they were some kind of rash.  But it developed into full scale pimples that I had to pop nightly before I went to sleep.  I was as surprised at myself than anybody else was.  Something was going wrong.  I knew enough about puberty during sex-ed and I knew about pimples in general, but why me?

During this time I became a little bit softer to people.  They wouldn’t exactly let me in per say.  Something had changed as if it were the cost of friendship.  Anyone that differed in even the slightest way had to pay this price.

But I learned fast, how to start a conversation, the various hi’s and hey’s.  I learned to make my face still while listening, even if this is totally boring.  It seemed everybody could get along in this way, provided I look and act politely.

Even acting politely wasn’t enough.  You had to really admire and respect someone that would let you in their mind in order to talk about precious things, or anything, even the boring stuff.

Every night I would look at myself in the mirror, locating on my face where every zit was and determining whether to pop it or not.  The zits on my chin were ready to pop when a whitehead came up from the bottom of the zit to the top.  You squeezed the zit between two fingers and tried to pop the core out, which was a white filament that popped sometimes explosively into the mirror or was wiped away with a piece of toilet paper.

I became an expert on popping zits.  There was no zit I could not pop.  But I went to great lengths to stay on the good side of all people, even if all they saw in me was some nervous kid with lots of ugly zits.

I knew by the time I graduated I’d be free of zits.  At least that’s what they taught in sex ed.  Puberty stops by the time you’re sixteen or seventeen and your face becomes clear again.  This was my hope and salvation.

By the tenth grade I met a girl that really liked me and could see past my ugly red pimples.  She would even kiss me on the face.  I didn’t wear Clearasil when she came over at night so she could kiss me wherever.

Her name was Sandy and she was alright to hang out with.  Our relationship got so deep we knew each other as if we were kin.  It was hard to say I loved her but one time I did.  She was taken aback.  “Leon, we were doing so well.  How could you just hurl that at me?”

“I don’t know.  I thought you might like to hear it.”

“No.  We aren’t going that deep.  Let’s just stay friends with benefits.”

“Fine.  It just, at times, feels like we’re going somewhere, and when we get to a certain point along that somewhere, we’re going to have to admit we love each other.”

“Then don’t admit it, stupid.”

“Fine.  I’ll keep it as a secret.”

“You know I’m your best friend.  I can see you even past your zits.  You’re a great guy.  People love you.  Don’t jeopardize this.”

“Fine, fine,” I said.  I wondered whether we’d still have sex but then we did and that was fine.

By the time I was seventeen my zits were raging across my face.  Wherever there was an area of clean, zitless skin, the zits came and crowded in among the others.  I almost cried in defeat as the zits were coming in in droves.

People saw me and I said hi and gave high fives.  The understanding was I was a zitty kid that was cool, but that I had to listen and look when people talked.  Some of these people were so dull and boring it hurt my pride to act politely to them.  It was like talking to a moron that thought I was stupid than him.

Soon after I learned to act.  What that meant was inside I was sure and on the outside all I had to do was smile and sometimes think.  I walked through the halls with a smile on and I pretended to be even happier than I was, and at times even more sincere.

Sandy and I knew each other so well.  These were the times when things went deeper.  It seemed under my acting was loneliness that could only be satiated by being in and making love to her.  She came closer to me, inside as well.  We were like these elegant dancers on stage before no one, in a kind of bewildered art.

But I wasn’t too deep to smile.  Inside I healed from the thrashing my zits caused.  I was a decent guy, and despite my zits I am still a decent guy.  It seems I could keep all my ugly thoughts, thoughts that had been beaten and bruised, deep inside, and I only had to say a few words at certain times.

Sandy and I spent more time together and the grades went by like falling leaves in the autumn.  From knowing each other so deeply we had come to the surface to really be a knockout team of friends, with wit and conversation always brewing.

She didn’t seem to mind the war on my face and the worsening of my acne condition.  It didn’t seem to change anything.  Whether she saw me truly or not didn’t matter, we were the closest of friends.

In Canada the grades go up to thirteen, called OAC’s or Ontario Academic Credit.  I got some good grades, between B and A.  Sandy and I spent more time together knowing that university was around the corner.  She wanted to be an optometrist and I wanted to study forestry.

When she asked me why I wanted to study forestry I told her that as a child I loved trees.  In my backyard were these gigantic, enormous trees that I imagined could talk.  My affiliation for them hadn’t died since childhood and I wanted to be with them every day.

“But don’t you have to kill trees as a forester?”

“No, that’s a tree feller.  Foresters oversee the operation, from cutting the trees down to replanting them.  It’s a life thing.”

“You’ll be surrounded by all that dead wood.”

“I don’t mind.  It pays too, like $ 50,000 dollars a year.”

“Well.  If you must know, I’ve always been interested in the eyes and I want to learn how to be an optometrist.”

“Don’t you need really high marks for that?”

“I’ve got a ninety two percent average, Leon.  I can go to the finest schools.”

“Well, I’ll miss you.  We’re going in opposite directions, east and west.”

Sandy choked, coming to tears, “Life is dragging us apart.”

I looked directly at her.  He put his face close to hers while she cried, his soft skin against hers.  “I love you, Leon.”

“I love you too, Sandy.”

“We’re going to forget each other.”

“I know.  But you were the sweetest.”

“And you were the handsomest and smartest.”

“Aw,” I said, “Thank you.”

We hugged each other after graduation, and we both smiled deeply at each other, kissed on the lips and said goodbye.

That night my friends and I went drinking and by midnight I puked.  I had drank too much.  Some of my friends weren’t going to university but would stay in town.  They were all weepy that I was going to Thunder Bay to study forestry.

“When you come back west we’ll party like we never partied before.”

“You can bet on it,” I said.

By September, the month school started, my zits were abating.  From popping four or five a night I now popped two or three.  And they weren’t these annoying, big and ugly pimples anymore but just little ones with thin white cores.

One day I looked at myself in the mirror and approved myself.  I was now a handsome guy, not some cute little kid or pimply faced teenager.  I practiced a smile and some facial expressions.  I was going to be the coolest kid in school.  At that, I looked at my two eyes and could see the genuine sincerity in my eyes, whatever it was.

Forestry was awfully boring.  There was a class though, called dendrology, that was pretty interesting.  We had to memorize all the kinds of trees in the boreal forest and the classroom was always open to people who wanted to study the Latin names of trees before a test.

The room smelled great and the people there were cool.  We partied all the time and I went up in the ranks of popularity.  I found another woman and we got along great.  She was sooner to admit she loved me than Sandy ever was.

By the second year of university my zits were gone.  All that remained were the scars of pimples once popped.  People saw me and I’d smile and laugh and people loved me.  I looked like a tall scary Russian.  I didn’t smile in the hallway but I was always willing to give a high five.

Some friends of mine from school rented an apartment that wasn’t too far away from school.  We all studied intently and sometimes on the weekends we’d drink too many beer.

For moments I’d look at myself in the mirror and who I had made myself to be.  I never smiled the same way again.  People respected me for the cool person I was.  The smile I gave now was short and fleeting, not permanent like anything mattered all that much.  In university were high school graduates and there were only a few who were too dark to accept anybody.  But I wanted that peace of knowing everyone loved me.

I was always like that as a kid.  I’d say something and listen to what I said and pay attention to what others did.  I wanted everybody on my good side.  But my face was acne free and I just wanted to blend into the main.  Almost everybody in my forestry class was a friend of mine.

Years went by and I got a job out west in British Columbia.  I started from a low ranking office clerk and was sure I’d make my way up in the ranks.  There were no sour tempered people just good reliable workers.  I delighted in the peace around me.

Soon I was in the field and barking orders.  I once got a chance to ride the feller buncher and learned how to operate it.  This was a hallmark in my life.

Years passed and I married my university beaux.  We bought a house in a nice suburb and had kids.

I started to imagine those trees as the jerks I knew in school, that big old feller buncher sawing into the base of the tree and straightening them out and ripping the branches off the bole and piling it behind him for the skidder to pick up.

In fact I counted how many trees were cut and I counted how many jerks I knew in high school and how many pimples I popped.  I often counted in my spare time.

I saw a plastic surgeon about my face and they did a chemical peel on my face.  They did a great job.

I looked at my face in the mirror, a bit more sombre now and I could see nothing wrong with me.  I was a decent dude.

Work paid about $ 65, 000 a year and my wife worked as well.  Soon we had a large house with three babies that I loved so deeply.  I wondered if they’d have to get over a case of pimples.  For at least five years I struggled with pimples.

But I saw them in their crib and they were happy and pure and smart.  They were beautiful babies and deserved to be here.

What I wasn’t expecting was this giant zit to come on right at the tip of my nose.  It swelled like a big red button and the whitehead didn’t show for a week.  When I finally popped it I realized it was the biggest zit I’d ever popped.

As far as I know that was the biggest zit I ever had and probably the last zit I’ll ever have.

What struck me as relevant was the high school reunion.  Most everybody that was in my grade was there.  There were some guys there that couldn’t make eye contact with me.  And apart from that there were my regular friends and they all grew up well and married and had jobs and some of them had kids.

One of my friends said a bit too loud, “You’re one of the most handsome guys on the earth now.  Look at you.  You’ve got no zits.”

I smiled, not knowing what to expect.  One of the guys I knew from high school snickered.  Right at that instant I felt like punching him out, transferring all my hatred to my fist and punching him out.  But he saw my face and apologized humbly.

My wife and I danced all night, embracing each other and carrying on, talking to principals and teachers, then finally saying goodbye to my friends.

We drove home and I looked at my wife and she smiled, and I smiled back to her.  I was a lucky man, and now I’m a handsome, lucky man, with a wife, kids, and a beautiful house.  For what it is worth, I’m done.