A few years ago, I made a special playlist. It’s poignant, introspective, pensive, and a ton of other adjectives that I don’t feel like sifting through the thesaurus for. It encapsulates my joy, my laughter, my sadness… It’s me, except, musicafied. If there were a movie about me, this playlist would be its soundtrack. Heavy bass lines would highlight my constant struggles, John Lennon’s eerie proclamation of happiness and warm guns would fill the awkward silences. And there will be tons of awkward silences, because it’s about me, and that’s kind of my thing. Uppity little numbers would bounce along as I toddle down the street, reveling in the wonder that is life. I revel and toddle a lot, and I’m almost always humming something Jack Johnson-ish whilst doing so.
As for the title of this movie all about me? I don’t know. A Beautiful Mind was at the top of my list, until I heard wind of some scientist or something stealing it right out from under me. Forrest Gump, or what I usually call myself, was also taken.
So, after racking my brain and bothering my friends for unique, moving suggestions (two things they evidently know nothing of), I’ve settled upon, Is That Pen On Your Lip?
To me, the phrase, "Is that pen on your lip?" encompasses the general public's ignorance, their complete incompetence in understanding anything about me, and their constant desire to find faults in anyone and everything. It’s also very catchy.
All my life, well, since like second grade or something, I’ve had a beauty mark on my lip. I don’t know the precise date of its appearance; I can’t seem to find record of it before my squinty-eyed second grade Christmas portrait, in which it is featured prominently.
I was penless in first grade, wearing a striped purple cardigan, my hair in a modified bob. I was very trendy, even as a seven year old. For some reason, I haven’t an actual second grade portrait from school. As far as Lincoln Elementary is concerned, I went from kindergartner in a kicky red tie/vest/skirt ensemble, that as I recall I had to rip off in fury after recess, to bob-wearing purple cardigan girl, to nothing... I guess by the time I hit second grade, Mother was disillusioned by school portraits and decided to take her business elsewhere. Elsewhere, in this case, was Sears. I’d always idealized those faux fireplace photos, jealous of my peers with their ivory carpet and perfectly trimmed tree poised in the background. In second grade I found out there was no such thing as Santa, and more devastatingly, that all those pretty living rooms were just figments of Sears’ imagination.
As of second grade, my school picture outfits went from unfortunate to downright sad. There was the lace leotard and green embroidered vest from third grade, the purple, blue and striped velvet atrocity from fifth, and my über-trendy Abercrombie shirt from ninth. In that instance it wasn’t the shirt that was unfortunate- a reversible tee that was navy on one side and bright green on the other. I’d paid $39.95 for it, and convinced myself its worth as two shirts, because of the reversibility. When I got the pictures back, I was pleased to see that my shoulder length hair was doing as I’d asked- making itself as normal and none frizzy as possible, and my shirt looked fantastic. I was a cool kid.
“Why do you look like that?” Jared asked, a boy I’d known since third grade, who was sitting near me in Honors Biology.
“Look like what?”
“Your face…” He smiled hugely, in what was evidently an absolutely hideous rendition of my grin. His eyes were squinty, his gums highly visible, his nose crinkled in a most unflattering way.
I looked at my picture again. “I think that’s just how I smile.”
“Pretty,” he laughed, turning back to his own flawless 8x10s.
It was then that I realized I’d been smiling incorrectly for 14 years. So lame.
When people point out ‘the pen’, I generally blush and look away. In addition to unseemly birthmarks (or second grade marks, rather) I suffer from high pigmentation. I turn ruby red at the drop of a hat. Fortunately, my high school colors were scarlet and gold, and at college we wore crimson and gray. I just looked especially spirited most of the time. “There’s that girl with the face paint again. And it’s not even game day, this is just Shakespeare class?! She’s so hardcore… GO COUGS!”
And just for the record, not one, single gorgeous member of the undead has ever found it endearing. No love for the tomato face, I guess.
After my complexion returns to its pasty pallor, I joke, “Whoops, got a little carried away with the BIC. Ha, ha, ha.”
What I really want to say, is, “It's not pen, actually, but thank you for noticing something about my face, thinking that it is most definitely not attractive and is probably accidental, and then pointing it out to me.”
I didn’t hear much about ‘the pen’ through grade school, or middle school, and even into high school it was only mentioned once, to my recollection. A friend’s boyfriend told her that he thought it was cute, and once she relayed this to me, I found myself praying at night that he’d break up with her and give me a shot- if only for a closer look at ‘the pen’. I’ve since been made aware that it’s frowned upon to pray for the infliction of pain upon others. Beginner’s mistake, I suppose.
It wasn’t until college, that ‘the pen’ really started to get on my nerves, and evidently the nerves of those around me, as every other person I met advised me to wipe the ink off my face.
“What’s that you got there?” My grandma asked, at least 12 years after ‘the pen’ appeared. I cast my eyes down to the kitchen counter, muttered something unintelligible, and shrugged. What was the use?
Acquaintances of high school friends would be introduced, and then, during games of beer pong and flip cup, they’d pull me aside in their drunken haze, telling me, “You got somethin’, right there. Right on your lip.” My friends would then laugh, shouting merrily about ‘the pen’ and then go back to their chugging or shooting or whatever. The acquaintance would be left confused, without answers, still wondering why I drew on my face in the first place?
It was a sunny Monday afternoon in Kennewick, Washington, when some old lady walked into The UPS Store. I happened to be behind the counter checking in packages, as I worked there, and my boss didn’t like it when I sat in the lobby texting my friends.
And, to be truthful, it probably wasn’t a Monday. It was a day of the week, of that I’m sure. And it wasn’t a Sunday, because God wouldn’t allow something so deplorable to happen on his day. Also, we weren’t open on Sundays.
So yeah, I was working. It wasn't a particularly eventful day- there wasn't a 124 lb. package of ‘herbs’ being sent to Brazil, there were no skunk heads expedited to Eugene to be tested for rabies, or anything that would be considered of consequence.
The woman ambled up to the counter, her arms weighed down by a large box filled with hand knitted sweaters and homemade fudge, no doubt.
We chatted for a moment while I measured her shipment, plugging in the dimensions to the computer and quizzing her on the ‘to’ address.
"Ma'am, that'll be $34.95." I smiled politely, as always. I found that a fake smile went so much further than a sincere look of indifference. My eyes raked over her blue-hued hair and her absolutely perfect teeth. Dentures, I suspected. I wondered what kind of horrid dental hygiene one would have to succumb to in order to warrant fake chompers. Were all her teeth gone? Maybe just the front ones?
Did she pull the remaining stumps in order to create a symmetrical appearance, and a more comfortable fit?
"Alright," she grinned, her face crinkling in lines that were probably cultivated during Johnny Carson’s reign. As she handed over her debit card, her eyes narrowed while she leaned forward, over the computer and into my personal space.
Hi, hello, lean the fuck back..., I thought. I quickly swiped her card, trying not to let my immense panic reach my expression. I did not like having the ability to smell a stranger’s rattled, reeking-of-Polident-and-sherry breath.
"Honey, I think you have some pen on your lip," she croaked.
"Oh, no, I don't," I said firmly, handing her card back.
"Yes, you do. It's right there." She pointed to her own lip. If it's where you're saying it is... isn't it you with the pen on your lip? HA! If only she could’ve heard my thoughts.
"No, I really don't."
"It's right there!" She sighed, reaching for me. As her twig-like arm jabbed at me, I deflected it, snapping the limb in half. Yeah. Not really, but I totally could have.
"No, it's really not." I assured her. "It's a freckle? Like a birthmark or something? It's not pen."
She looked embarrassed, clapping her brown spotted hands to her face and laughing nervously.
"Oh! Oh my, I'm so sorry, honey." It's okay... this time, I thought, smiling again. She’d probably feel terrible about it all day. She’d come back in the next week with a bag of homemade goodies as she continued to repent, ‘sorry this, sorry that, here have a cookie.’
As she reached the door, she turned one last time to offer her condolences.
"I'm so sorry, again! I just didn't want you walking around all day with it there!" She grinned one last time and left the store.
I nodded. Yeah bitch, I guess. It would be embarrassing if it were there all the time... wait a minute...
I like to think she’s the type of completely clueless, senile old person that goes up to children who are missing appendages, calls their lack of limbs to their attention, and then, noticing her mistake, says some other ridiculous, offensive remark.
"Timmy, you seem to be missing your right arm!"
"Yes ma'am, an alligator ate it when I was three."
"Oh, well, hopefully you won't always have to be a lefty? They really suck at everything. Like writing legibly. And wrestling alligators."
My second brush with self-loathing stemming from the imperfect pigmentation on my lip was during my post-college run at Starbucks. A girl came in, probably in her mid-twenties, and ordered an Americano, or espresso, or something else skinny 25-year-women order.
After I took her money, I gestured toward the end of the counter, where her bland, kind of gross low calorie beverage would appear once my coworker got around to making it.
She said thanks, and then paused for a moment, staring at me.
“You have something, some pen, maybe? Right on your lip.”
“Oh, no. It’s a birthmark. Been there awhile. I’ve tried to get it off with Neutrogena… but no such luck,” I laughed. I’m so goddamn witty, sometimes I impress myself.
Her meticulously groomed eyebrows raised, and she looked as if she wanted to strangle herself with the fashionable scarf she’d spent hours getting just right before she left the house.
“Oh my gosh! My brother, he had this mole on his cheek, and we always used to tease him about it when he was little, and then he got it removed… I was so sad. Because, you know, it was him.”
“Right,” I nodded, no longer feeling sorry for the blithering idiot standing before me. She likened my beauty mark to her brother’s hairy, probably cancerous, used-to-be-mole, but is now nothing but a pockmark!?
Cindy Crawford would never have stood for such abuse.
“Your drink is ready,” I finished flatly, my eyes narrowed as she shuffled sheepishly out of my sight.
My friends think that I should play along and watch the nosy imperfection-picker-outer squirm as I try to wipe off my ‘pen’ in vain. “Did I get it?” I’ll ask, rubbing my lip to no avail. “God, I hope I didn’t use that Sharpie for lip liner, again.”
I have a friend, Red, who has gingery hair and freckled skin. Once we were getting our nails done, and the technician asked, “What wrong with your skin?”
“Nothing,” she said flatly.
“It dirty,” he assured her, trying to rub away the marks from her forearm.
“They’re freckles,” she spat, already bearing a complex about her dotted skin originating from a water park incident gone awry...
Nine-year-old Red stood in line for the family slide at Oasis Waterworks, her ears pricking at the mention of her complexion. “Oh my God, I hope my freckles don’t look like that!” She heard a teen girl groan from a few feet back.
“God, ew, no. They don’t.” Her friend assured her, laughing at poor, pasty, freckly little Red.
Red slid down the four-person slide by herself and lurked underwater, most likely teary eyed (though she was underwater, you know, so it's not like you could tell), until the mean girls had vacated the pool, silently vowing to never wear a shoulder-bearing frock again.
Back in the present, Red glared at the man gripping her freckled limb.
“They don’t leave?” He asked, eyes widening. I couldn’t believe that in his 30+ years, he’d never seen a freckled person. He must’ve thought terrible things about American hygiene…
“No. They never go away.”
“Oh,” he nodded, chattering to his coworker in words we could no longer understand.
I’ve met others with ‘pen’ on their face, generally the cheek. I’d like to start a club, a support group of sorts, where people with faces devoid of things like freckles and moles are not allowed. They can go flaunt their creamy skin on the pages of Vogue, where they belong.
