TMI Vanity Psi

Waking up, pillow feels like someone's been dozing mouth open; turn, same, turn. Neighbor's moped is heard: the unique thump of its being set on the driveway to the alley, and the unmistakable whiney thrumming of its efficient and polluting two-cycle engine. Walk to first floor, get drink of unsweetened lemon Kool-Aid. Touch face, find suspicious crustiness above lip. Good gracious, what has she been up to? Ascend and notice face is dripping blood.

Once in college, I woke up from a half-dream about wiping blood from the same side of my face — left, for the deficiencies of my right brain (also the smaller ______-side; not sure about best eye, etc.). That blood vessel was exposing itself from the tip of my nose. I read once in something like Seventeen or Sassy that picking blackheads on sensitive parts of the face can be detrimental … but I had done no such mutilating thing on that section, the outer rim that juts sweetly into space, of my nose. It was very hard to get it to heal decisively; I think I kept removing the "scab" because it was huge. Who knows. It was ages ago.

Likewise, the creepy little tubule, microscopic, in fact, but gigantic to me, of course, which this morning decided to rupture (or was scratched open while I slept), is in a location where no pimples ever inflame. I don't know why it appeared. Has it been there a year? I have wanted to slice it off, the visible capillary in its transparent and minimal layering of dermal cells, but I did not want the incessant bleeding. I'm not crazy. I've grown much more squeamish.

Sometimes, but not lately, mostly when I was young, I would take one of my disappointingly thin first fingernails and use it to remove white and irritated "taste buds." An incisor plane served as a cutting board. I hate the effect of certain foods; something acidic or unidentified, which is found in those round red-and-white peppermint candies, for example, always causes one of the papillae to enlarge and burn, itch and enrage. I can eat limes without a problem.

There is a mole on my shoulder that has offended me my whole life. The Japanese junior high school students even pointed it out once … my pet cockatiel has tried to chew it. At least I do not have those pouchy little flesh-portions around my eye that some people grow like tiny flaps or scales upon aging. (I looked up a tongue Web site, but it was so gross, I am not going to link to it; I did not find my condition, only a spelling confirmation; you've been subjected to enough!) It's too bad that cosmetic surgery (how these things would be classified by Health Care Incorporated) is expensive (and that I can't stand medical procedures of any kind).

I think the bleeding has been staved off for now. It is the brightest and most oxygenated blood, so I suppose, like all "nosebleeds," it is from an arterial path. I wonder if it would ever clot on its own. It will start up again when I take a shower. Oh, the provocative images. It must be Friday.

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