By
Al Bruno III
No one ever intends to become an addict but all it takes is that
first sip of wine at dinner or a sampling of an illicit pharmaceutical
at a party for an unlucky individual to start down a path of
self-destruction. Drugs and alcohol aren’t the only thing that can prey
on the weak willed or unlucky, shopping, food and gambling have all made
people miserable at one time or another. Whole industries have sprung up
to help men and women from all walks of life take back control of their
lives. But Ethel’s addiction was an unusual one, there were no
recognized treatments or easy explanations.
Ethel, you see, was addicted to popping pimples. It began with a
YouTube video that her friends shared amongst themselves. A woman with a
cyst on her back the size of an apple. It was the kind of video that was
sent with the header of, “Can you watch all the way through?” or “Super
Gross Out!”
The woman in the video, Ethel never saw her face or heard her name,
was in what looked like a doctor’s office. Hands in latex gloves covered
the oversized blemish with antiseptic and made sure plenty of gauze was
nearby. Then a sharp scalpel came into view. It cut the skin and
white-yellow fluid all but burst from the wound. It went everywhere some
even landing on the camera filming the event. The person using the
scalpel kept working, rolling the tip of the instrument around, coaxing
more and more of the noxious-looking fluid out until all the flowed from
the wound was blood.
Ethel was riveted, she watched the video dozens of times.
That YouTube video led to others, link after link of squeezing
fingers and lancing instruments. The videos led her to Reddits and
forums, to exclusive Facebook and Pinterest pages.
Watching kept her up late at night, sometimes she never went to bed
at all.
She remembered being a teenager, the occasional breakouts and her
mother cautioning her not to pick at her face. Compared to the other
girls she had been lucky; there were some that had hidden their faces
behind the books they were caring, who had endured insults like ‘Pizza
Face’ and worse. Everyone said Ethel was one of the prettiest girls in
class.
But she was thirty years old now, bored with work and marriage, The
next time Ethel got a blemish, it was on her shoulder, she stared at it
a long time. She had drawers of special skin care products for this kind
of thing, but she decided that this time she would take matters into her
own hands.
pop
It took barely any pressure at all, certainly less than she expected.
And it was so much better experienced than watched; the discomfort, the
sudden pressure, the release, and the lingering soreness. On some level
she couldn’t understand she both heard and felt the blemish give
way.
Then Ethel took to giving her husband Floyd back rubs. He certainly
didn’t protest, that hour or so was probably the most time they’d spent
together in months. His law practice kept him busy, maddeningly so at
times.
When she found some ingrown hair or neglected pustule he would ask
her to not pick at it and she wouldn’t listen. She was relentless, it
didn’t matter how much he squealed or if she drew blood. To keep him
from shying away she made sure that her grooming sessions ended with
sexual intercourse.
To Ethel it was a perfectly mature understanding, Floyd got what he
wanted and she got what she wanted.
It went on like that for a time, Ethel sating herself with videos
until a bump or blackhead appeared on herself or her husband. Those were
moments she savored like fine wine. She probably could have gone on like
for the rest of her life but Floyd had other ideas. One night at dinner
he told her that he was in love with a coworker and he was leaving.
Ethel had wondered why he’d pulled the old suitcase out of the attic
days earlier but never thought to ask. She’d never suspected she needed
to.
Soon enough she was living alone for the first time in her life,
alone and inconsolable. She had friends and family close by but it
wasn’t enough, she had a busy work schedule and that wasn’t enough.
Finishing off one bottle of Chablis a week wasn’t enough.
Even the pimple popping videos weren’t enough.
So, Ethel changed her diet, eating more and more fast food, more and
more chocolate. She read articles with skin care advice and did the
opposite of their recommendations. Then she waited.
The first few blemishes were small, little pinpricks of red that
almost looked like freckles. Ethel worked at them eagerly having grown
her nails out and bought a new makeup mirror for just this occasion.
pop
Tiny but exhilarating, the discharge they expelled was thick and
solid; she could roll it around on her fingertips.
pop
When the next few pimples began to show she left them be, let them
fatten up; whiteheads grew, blackheads darkened. The whiteheads almost
always went painlessly but spectacularly, marking the surface of her
mirror with speckles of yellow, white and green. Sometimes she would
keep the pressure on until she added a spattering of red to the mix.
The blackheads could be more challenging, sometimes resisting her
attentions for hours at a time until they were nothing so much as
swollen nubs of pain that felt far larger than they actually were. When
the surface of one finally broke it would exclude a thin streamer of
puss. She would watch in fascination as the little filament of exudate
twisted along her finger and then squeeze harder and harder until
something would give way and a rivulet of blood veined with yellow and
white shot from the wound.
She would celebrate each of her victories of those blemishes with a
glass of wine and a dab of Sea Breeze.
pop
Left cheek then right cheek, forehead then chin, she would let one
part of her face fester and work at another. She learned how to
cultivate razor bumps when she shaved her legs and was amazed at how
resistant they could be but made them give up their secrets. All it took
was a sewing needle and persistence.
Occasionally she filmed herself but it was never the same on
playback, no matter how close she got to the camera. And Ethel never
ever considered posting them, this was for her and her alone. She could
imagine no experience more intimate.
Late at night when was lying in bed, half drunk with her face and
legs stinging with astringent, she would wonder how much she had drained
from her body this way, drop by drop, spurt by spurt. A pint? Maybe a
gallon. She tried to imagine it, a an empty carton or milk jug
overflowing with thick, putrefying liquid. She thought of the skin cells
she shed every day and the mucus that gathered in her nose, of the mites
that lived on her eyelashes and the bacteria that made their homes in
her gut.
In the end was that all a person was? A festering wound? A host for
infections?
pop
Ethel’s friends and relatives would try to broach the subject of her
complexion with her, never directly though. They would ask if she was
sick, if she had seen a doctor or what beauty products she was using.
She would wave such concerns away and change the subject. What did they
know about her and her interests? As she drifted from one party or
family reunion to another she would see more and more pitying gazes
thrown her way, Ethel accepted them with a grim amusement.
Sometimes she would see people staring at a particularly swollen
blackhead or purposely neglected twin-headed pimple and see a flash of
something familiar in their eyes. They wanted to get their fingers on
those blemishes as much as she did, to feel the lump skin protest
against the squeezing and then give way. She was never uncomfortable
with these people. Let them stare, let them be jealous.
Other times she would see nothing but pure disgust in someone’s
expression, someone with perfect skin and hair that judged her and saw
her as somehow inferior. With those people Ethel wanted nothing more
than to give a demonstration of her newly developed skills, to send an
arc of pus sailing into their face with a single, simple gesture.
But she never did that, it would have been a waste.
pop
Then she had the accident.
It was a stupid thing really, Ethel had been driving back from the
store when she’d become distracted by a previously unnoticed ingrown
hair lurking just behind her earlobe. She knew better than to text and
drive, or call and drive, she wasn’t even one to fiddle with the radio
while in traffic but her attention kept returning to the blemish. One
hand on the wheel she tried to get it to go by pinching it between the
fingers of her free hand.
No luck. It was maddeningly resistant.
So, finally she gave in to temptation and used both hands to push at
the ingrown hair. The pimple plopped open just as she clipped the front
fender of the Nissan running the yellow light ahead of her.
She wasn’t in the wrong, that was obvious but the officers on the
scene insisted on breathalyzer tests all around. They found Ethel’s
blood alcohol level to be with the legal limit, but just barely.
It was all so embarrassing, and the Nissan’s driver only made things
worse by suing anyone and everyone possible. They told a story that
painted them as a victim of irresponsible drivers, poorly designed
intersections and soft tissue damage.
Ethel was surprised when she saw her ex-husband Floyd among the
attorneys involved in the deposition, she was even more surprised when
he didn’t recognize her. When she finally approached him after the
proceedings all his well trained lawyerly dispassion was gone in an
instant. When he spoke his voice was loud enough that everyone in the
room heard.
“What the Hell happened to you?”
Those words followed Ethel home from the courthouse. Every time she
glimpsed herself in the rearview mirror or reflective surface she heard
it again. “What the Hell happened to you?”
When she got home she cursed that there was no alcohol in the house
but she had told herself she needed to cut down. The accident had been a
close call and she had been frightened to realize later that she didn’t
know how long it had been before her last drink and hitting the road
that night.
But she would have loved a drink right then. She wanted her mind to
be empty and spinning, she wanted her vision and senses blurred.
Once, not too long ago, he had looked upon her face with adoration,
then, later on, resignation. In time Ethel had become used to both, but
the expression of horror on his face. It had been too much to bear.
She cleaned off her makeup mirror and looked at herself, not the
blemishes old and new, not the oily patches and deep, bruised-looking
pockmarks. Ethel saw herself, saw the extent of her self mutilation.
Why had she done this? Why had she become so obsessed with act of
whittling away at herself to the point that she had become
unrecognizable to the man that had shared her bed for nine years?
Remembering the tiny blooms of pleasure she had taken in the act
suddenly left her feeling sick to her stomach.
Ethel ran her hands over her cheeks, they were ragged and eaten away,
her forehead was a ruin of interconnected scars and her chin was a
festering wound of pustules half gone to becoming cysts.
Someday, long from that moment, she would come to learn the terms
Body-Focused Repetitive Behavior and Excoriation Disorder but that
night, the night she wailed with self-disgust and self-realization and
smashed her mirror, Ethel only knew that this it was more than she could
take.
And after all, what was one more multilation at this point?
She hooked each of her hands into claws and brought them forward,
and, after a deep breath to steel her courage, drove them deep into her
eye sockets with all her might.
Then she pinched.
pop pop
