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sublingua | |||||
| The heart with a mind of its own.(Be present.) | The mind with a heart of its own.(It's past.) | The dream that is your waking life.(Go there now.) | |||
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The Demon Who Has A Solution to Every Problem
I have a sty. (No, that's not some veiled confession about my lack of housekeeping abilities--though in fact, I am not much of a housekeeper and have, in the past, actually done things like throw out dirty dishes rather than wash them.) I mean, I have a STY in my EYE. My left eye. And it is annoying. Because every single blink is accompanied by that sty-induced inner dialogue: "oh, ouch it's going to hurt, oh, no, that wasn't that bad, oh, ouch it's going to hurt, oh, no, that wasn't that bad, oh, ouch--." That, plus, I'm not a very patient person, and so I'm always sure that any sty could be more quickly taken care of by, for example, lancing. But self-lancing isn't really that great an idea it turns out. Hey, that reminds me of a story. A few months ago Sophistica told me about using pliers to pull off skin tags and I was, like, you know, anything you have to pull off your body with pliers should probably be shown to a doctor first, and she was, like, it's a skin tag. And then a few months after that, Mel (rockabillybabe) told me about how her industrial piercing had started a piece of her ear growing into a kind of tube (up around the piercing) and how, to remedy this, she had taken an exacto knife and done a bit of self-surgery, and I was, like, that stuff is best left to cult members who want to rid themselves of their testicles and if there's anything on your body that you feel compelled to remove with an exacto knife, well, that's something that should probably be seen by a doctor, and she was, like, psh, what a baby you are. And I should've known from this particular run of stories and from my particular reaction to them, that my time was coming. So a few weeks ago, I'm in the shower. And I'm doing what one does in the shower--and then I'm washing up afterwards. (No, that's a joke. Doing that standing up is not all that easy or satisfying for most women I'd say. Mostly we do that in bed while the boy is in the shower...) I was washing my face with a washcloth and while scrubbing around my nose ring, yep, I yanked the damn thing halfway out. Now, it wasn't a terribly new piercing; I'd had it since August. But I had never changed the thing myself, mostly because it kind of hurts to do so and I'm pretty much a big baby when it comes to most kinds of pain, especially pain having to do with my face (and I blame this on my childhood dentist, who, for years, led me to believe that things like anesthesia didn't exist, no, they didn't, and anyway, it only takes a minute to drill a hole in a tooth, you can lie there quietly for a minute, can't you?). And yanking the nose ring out with a washcloth, well, it wasn't like having a hole drilled in a tooth without anesthesia beforehand, but it still hurt. So I get out of the shower, dripping wet, and go to look at the damage in the mirror. The nose ring--and, actually, it was a nose screw, but I call it a nose ring because not everyone knows what a nose screw is, or what it looks like when it's not actually in the nose, and so don't be insulted if I tell you that a nose screw not in the nose looks like a regular earring stud that turns a corner and then has a large J-shaped piece at the end. And it's that corner part that gets you when you are either changing the screw or having it changed by your friendly piercer. Because the wire turns a 90 degree angle, but the hole in your nose? Doesn't. So it's a square peg, round hole kind of lesson--that you have to ignore to get the nose screw in. So, I always have mine changed because it fucking hurts to do, and it makes me a bit sick everytime I try to do it by myself. But there was my nose screw, the corner on the outside and not the inside of my nose, and there was no way I was going to push that bad boy back in. So, naked, dripping wet, sans my glasses or contacts and therefore sans vision, I fumble around for the old ring that my nose had been pierced with. (And this was a proper ring--think Johnny Depp in that pirate movie.) And when you put the ring in, you have to bend it open (not pull it open so that you increase the diameter of the ring, but sort of twist the ring open so that you have an opening, but the ring remains the same diameter), and this I did. And I actually managed to get it into the hole in my nose, which was very angry with me by now. So I get the ring in, but then I can't close it. And the piercers don't much pay attention to your "ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch" when they're closing the things, but try standing--naked, vulnerable, wet, in your bathroom--and ignoring your own "ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch." And I could not even get a good grip on the damn thing to try and pry it closed. So what did I do? I went for the pliers. Now, I know, I know. I was thinking the same thing: Are there any skin tags I need to take care of at the same time? No, actually, I wasn't thinking this at all. The Brain had taken over by this point. Well, not the whole Brain, just the part of The Brain that problem-solves. You know what I'm talking about, right? It's the one main part that most men use all the time. That same part that doesn't think but rather the part that just does--and that usually "just does" with some kind of tool from Sears' Craftsman line. And so I got the pliers (and, of course, the only pliers I had were the huge kind, lifted from my stepfather's tool box years ago, with red rubber handles with those holes pressed in them for gripping purposes, and all of it crusty with God knows what, all this black earwaxy-like stuff) and I came at my own face with them. And if it had been a horror movie, I would've been hiding my eyes behind my hands at this point. But it wasn't like I was doing all this entirely without thinking. Because I did think: Well, I should turn off the shower first, because I sure am wasting a lot of water. So I turned off the shower and then proceeded to try to get a tiny little ring closed with the kind of pliers you'd use to fix, say, a leaky pipe beneath the kitchen sink. And it didn't work, sadly. I didn't have the guts to get it done. I began to feel a little sick after a few minutes of trying to get the ring closed and so, admitting defeat, I pulled out the ring and finished my shower. Anyway, it's been nice to be able to scrub around my nose without having to worry that it's going to end up with me on rather close terms with a pair of pliers. Oh, but that wasn't even the story I wanted to tell you. I had wanted to tell about this Trivial Pursuit question that came up from a random box of questions that Max and I were reading while waiting for our breakfast the other morning at the Blue Dragon. The question was something like, "How many holes did so-and-so have to drill in his own head with a hand drill to successfully commit suicide?" And the answer? Do you know it? Eight.
More lies:
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