Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson Page B

That’s a … strange way to look at it,” said the nurse uneasily. Apparently she’d had a lot of people grossed out by these pictures, but none had ever had an ethical crisis about them.
    â€œEVACUATE, YOU GUYS!” I tried to yell at my own face. “GO TO THE NECK,” I offered.
    â€œWait,” I asked the nurse, “you aren’t doing my neck, are you?”
    â€œOh, stop being such a hoarder,” Laura said.
    â€œI’m not a hoarder,” I countered. “I’m trying to stop a mass murder on my face.”
    â€œNo,” she replied. “You’re a face hoarder. You’re hoarding bacteria on your face. We’re going to have to have a skintervention.”
    I looked at the nurse, who seemed baffled and slightly unnerved (probably because of Laura’s terrible pun). “Does PETA ever have a problem with this since you’re killing all these tiny life forms?”
    She shook her head. “I can honestly say I’ve never had anyone have a problem with this until now. They’re really not good to have on your face. Your porphyrins are unhealthy and can—”
    â€œWhat the shit?” I interrupted. “THEY’RE CALLED ‘ POOR FRIENDS ’? You want me to murder my ‘poor friends’? ”
    â€œNo. You’re pronouncing it wrong. Honestly, it’s just a routine cleaning.”
    â€œIT’S A GENOCIDE .”
    The nurse took a deep breath and tried to change the subject. “So, what would you expect to have happen as a result of this treatment?”
    I paused and thought about it for a second. “I sort of expect to have my face ripped off and find John Travolta’s underneath it. But just for the day. After that it wouldn’t be funny anymore.”
    Laura had a much more normal reason why she wanted the treatment. “I want to get rid of some of these wrinkles, but I don’t ever want to get Botox.”
    â€œWell, Botox can be very helpful,” explained the nurse.
    â€œI don’t need Botox,” Laura countered. “I got Bangtox . It’s when you decide to get bangs to cover your forehead wrinkles. It totally works and no one injects poison in your face.”
    I nodded in agreement. “Yes. I would also like to avoid getting poison shot near my brain.”
    Laura concurred: “I need my brain. It’s where I keep all my best stuff.”
    The nurse looked a little lost and did our treatments quickly. It was much like getting your teeth cleaned, but for your whole face.
    The nurse reluctantly gave me the filter after she was done but there was hardly any face in it and pretty much no diamond dust. It wasn’t even enough to pan for. So in the end I was left with a small vial of face dust filled with now-homeless Whos, an expensive face toothbrush, and hundreds of dollars’ worth of what I assume is Vaseline.
    I also ended up with a newfound appreciation of what my dermatillomania was doing to my face and I went an entire month without scratching it open. Mostly because I didn’t want to disturb the “poor friends” who were probably valiantly trying to rebuild after the tragic act of God they’d just encountered.
    Still, my face does feel very clean.
    Clean and terribly, terribly lonely.

 
    It’s Like Your Pants Are Bragging at Me
    There are few things in the world that make me angrier than poverty, the lack of basic human civil rights, and the fact that most women’s clothes don’t have pockets. Obviously the first two are more pressing, but the pockets thing is pretty irritating too.
    Victor claims girls don’t need pockets because they have purses, so I had to explain, “No. We are forced into purses because we don’t have pockets. Imagine if I ripped all of your pockets off of your sweet pocket-pants right now and you had to carry them around with you everywhere. You have like … seven pockets in