Half life
Gaining face
Carole Morin
Masochists get on my nerves, but every month no matter how poor I'm feel- ing I pay a woman in a white coat to stab me in the face. The first time I had my blackheads vacuum-suctioned, I wanted to leap out of the leather chair and make sure I wasn't scarred for life as soon as Janet had finished cleansing my pores. Even now that I've been having facials for years, I still need a big gulp of Russian vodka before going into the Filderman salon.
In the innocuous pastel waiting-room, ex- client Princess Diana is just visible on a shelf behind Michelle Lineker and her blackhead-free husband, Gary. I tried to make an appointment for Dangerous Don- ald, who has a shaving rash from hacking at his neck at least three times a day because I'm pogonophobic.
'Is he a man?' the cautious receptionist asked. Yes, I admitted, my husband is a man. 'If he's a man we can't see him, there's only one loo.' Gary Lineker's clear com- plexion must be a coincidence, unless he promised not to urinate while on the premises; or (sinister) his wife pretended he isn't a man?
Saint Janet wasn't there this week, which meant her bad-tempered little dog Hogan didn't get the chance to gnaw my foot. As one of her exotic Polish assistants showed me into the treatment room, I was worried sick about Janet's recent operation. I'm ashamed to admit that my interest in her health is intense because we both have kidney disease. The difference between us is that she's the brave heroic type and I'm a hysterical hypochondriac. Every time I get a stitch in my side, I'm planning my funeral.
The Polish redhead examined my pores under a microscope, tutting, The white- head will have to come out.' Whiteheads are rarer and more perverse than black- heads. The redhead inserted a sterile nee- dle, then warned me to expect pain. That's the difference between a doctor and a beautician. Doctors are always pretending it won't hurt a bit. Before I could say low pain threshold, she had pressed the metal extrac- tor onto my whitehead and scooped out the pus. Lovely. After that, the electronic vacu- um suction probe felt like fun.
I took my clean skin to the frenzy of the MAC counter in Harvey Nichol's — a shop I wouldn't be seen dead in, if it wasn't the only place in London that stocks MAC cos- metics. Skinny girls with teenage skin jos- tled to buy Russian Red, not fooled by the hype for pale mouths this season.
`Make-up,' as my Presbyterian Uncle Neddie used to say to my favourite aunt, 'is the root of all evil.' Maddie says that her Harlow-blonde sister Irene the Slut's pan- stick had to be scraped off with a nail file at night. Auntie Irene wore Firebrand red lip- stick before it was fashionable in women who weren't prostitutes, and kohled her eyes until they looked like they'd been punched. She escaped to New York where she had an affair with — of all things — a Chinaman. Somewhere, I have a Chinese cousin. I've always been madly in love with the China of Fu Manchu and bandaged feet, and sometimes in photographs my eyes look slanty.
As far as I know, Irene the Slut wasn't committed to monthly facials. Loyal to her religious past, she took no thought for tomorrow — going to bed in her make-up, when she wasn't out all night showing it off.
Uncle Neddie was over the moon when Irene came to a bad end. She was killed in a traffic jam between Fifth and Madison when a garbage truck reversed into her windscreen. The photograph of her that used to sit on top of Grandfather Money's television is now sitting on my Chinese cabi- net. Irene's skin has the atmosphere of Rus- sian vodka about it. 'That woman's a bad influence on you,' Maddie says every time she sees it. 'How much would I have to pay you to wear Honey Honey lipstick?'
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