zits

during the hair-down-there transition i got hit with serious acne. zits appeared all over my face, crusty, puss-oozing mini volcanos. all my friends, save one, were zit free. i grinned my way through it, feigning obliviousness. weekly visits with Dr Savage (her real name) didn't do much good. she focused a hot lamp on my face and went at them with a stainless-steel, miniature cocaine spoon that had a tiny hole in the center that she pressed against a black head and popped the puss out in a thin wormy ribbon. if we were quiet enough and god knows i kept my 14 year old mouth shut, you could hear the thing geyser, a teensy pip followed by the faint hiss of mustardy ooze. i wasn't sure how to handle this. feeling ugly on top of wondering why i had uncontrollable erections when my friends slept over did not make for an easy passage. meanwhile i was in choir. at this point, with puberty, an alto. i felt the glare of stares as we entered chapel. one kid called me 'pizza face' but Ricky Simonson told the kid to shut up. they painted out the crust in the class portrait, but you could tell. there were tiny removal scars all over the gloss. i guess we're not supposed to be reminded of our grotesque teen face way down the road when memory becomes selective. every time i see a kid who used to have that perfect peach complexion suddenly show up with a pimple problem, my heart goes out to him. seems to me that boys have it worse than girls. or maybe with my predilection i don't notice. i actually think a zitty face is kinda hot. maybe like heroin chique they'll be zit chique in Details magazine.