Let it Gush

My mother.

The dermatologist she drags me to every month.

Every slack-jawed idiot I share a sophomore year of high school with.

All of them are on some sort of personal vendetta to prove to me that pimples are ugly, having them makes me ugly, and that being ugly makes me a bad person. All of that is a crock of shit spun up by losers who want to bring me down to their level.

There’s nothing wrong with having pimples.

It’s completely natural to have acne growing up. Anyone with a face can tell you that. Having zits means your skin’s natural defense system works. Do you want all that dirt and grime and grease and shit to stay in your skin? I know I don’t. That’s why I’m thankful for my pimples. But because one asshole in the beauty industry said pimples are bad, we’re raised to believe so. Girls my age are taught to think that one little pimple can ruin your day. Or in my case, a face full of them can ruin your life.

That’s why my classmates gave me the oh so original name Pizzaface Penny. I don’t let it get to me since I know it comes from a place of insecurity. They see me, face covered in red boils, some popping through the skin and others still emerging, and get angry. Being unbothered bothers them for some reason. Almost like they need me to feel small.

And why should I? I like my pimples more than I ever liked people. My pimples are a literal part of me. I like them. Maybe a little too much.

***

One doctor described my face as a leaking honeycomb since it was so full of oozing holes. Despite being “experts” in this field, they could never figure out why it only showed on my face. They thought it was a skin condition or a freak mutation or even an ancient curse. None of them could conceive the idea that maybe, just maybe, my face looked the way it did because I wanted it to.

All it took was a paper towel and some grease. I simply soaked the towel until translucent. Once in the shower, I laid the towel on my face until it was so stuck to my skin that I had to peel it off slowly like a Band-Aid. This caused the zits to grow nice and plump. The way I liked them. Big enough for the next stage.

Once my mom was fast asleep, I was in the downstairs bathroom for the only part of the day I enjoyed, all alone but with my three best friends. A candle, my pimples, and a needle. The only ones who’ve had my back all this time. It didn’t take long to find the perfect candidate growing on my face. More boil than pimple, it stuck out from my cheek, the whitehead translucent in the candle flame. I saw the prize inside this bubble. Goop and blood, building up on my skin, begging to be released.

I held the needle through the flame of the candle until it was hot to the touch. The sting of the needle by itself didn’t do it for me anymore. I needed it to burn. The flame was like adding seasoning to a piece of meat.

A light poke was all it took to break the pimple open. A sharp sensation sent a wave of ecstasy through my body; I shivered, holding my hand over my mouth to hide my moans. Once the shaking in my legs subsided, I placed my index fingers onto the open wound on my face. One above, one below, and both fingers squeezed with all my might.

I couldn’t watch with my eyes rolling into the back of my head, but I could feel the pimple burst in half. I could feel blood rushing to my face and out of the wound, squirting onto the mirror. It squelched as I kept pressing, letting out all the juice hidden inside my skin and pouring all over the rest of my face in yellow, clumpy material. The pimple gave out, destroyed completely by my fingertips.

One last squeeze for good measure, just to make sure I got every last drop out of the wound. This pain was the single greatest feeling in the world. It hurt so brilliantly in a way that only I could control. Like taking myself to the edge of a cliff, testing the limits of how far I could look over without getting scared, only to realize there’s nothing to fear.

This pain was something I brought to myself nightly. I controlled it, inflicted it on myself as a reminder that if I could handle this, I could handle anything. SATs didn’t scare me; college exams didn’t stress me out. There was nothing this piece of shit world threw at me that I couldn’t handle. I knew that for a fact because of the gaping gash on my face, dripping blood, telling me this pain is mine.

Washing my hands free of residue, I felt the cold water tingle down and into my eye, causing it to twitch. Without thinking, I placed my soaked knuckle into my eye, rubbing it until the twitch went away.

An all too familiar feeling flared, making my face itch. The signal. A whitehead ready to go, one too small for the needle but too irritated to let live. All it needed was a little squeeze and a kiss goodbye. I placed my fingers onto the source of the irritation and gave it a good squeeze before realizing what I was about to pop.

My right eye.

It throbbed the same way so many of my other pimples did before they met their end. My brain was telling me this was another zit ready to go. It itched, it burned, it screamed at me to pop it.

My hand on the sink counter, I took a deep breath, trying to focus on the running tap.

Stay calm. It’s all good. There is no way my bony fingers could pop a human eyeball. It was an accident—a slight error in judgment. The first time in a long time, I made a simple mistake. That must be the real reason why I was so scared.

Reason gave way to instinct every time. For underneath my reasoning was a habit, a burning so bad that restraining myself hurt more than any pimple ever did.

I could imagine how good this would feel. Bigger than any of the others on my face and so full of pus that it would flood the bathroom. The pain would be so excruciating, so indulging, so wonderful that I wouldn’t be able to handle it.

Why should this be any different? I had two eyeballs. I’m sure I can live with just one, I told myself as I lifted my hands, index fingers pointing.

No.

What I had to do was escape. Get out of this place for good. This room was a graveyard for pimples, and if I stayed in it for too long, my eye would soon join the dead. I had to climb into bed and forget this ever happened. That had to be the solution.

I hate being wrong.

That night was spent tossing and turning.

In a frenzy, I lay in bed, worried I would somehow carve out my eye in my sleep, confusing it for another pimple.

My alarm went off, jolting me out of bed. Morning fog clouded my mind as I ran downstairs and into my mom. She let out a shriek.

“Your face! Penny, your face it’s…” Her smile, something was wrong. A glint of hope in her eyes I was not used to seeing when she looked at me.

Not knowing what to expect, I rushed back into the bathroom, dreading what awaited me in that reflection.

To my surprise, it was nothing. My eye was fine, right where I left it the day before. But my face.

It was spotless. No blackheads or blemishes to be seen. All the dots had vanished, the redness in my skin completely gone, and for the first time since I could remember, I could see my bare face. But it wasn’t just me in that mirror. It was a truth. One I had struggled to accept for so long.

That, even without pimples, I was still ugly. I would always hate the way I look, no matter what. At least the pimples covered up what was really wrong with me. My eyes watered, either from the pain of looking at myself for so long or the stinging feeling of it. Fluid dripped from my eye to the floor, pouring over the inner lip of my eyelid.

I could tell it wasn’t water or tears flowing out of my eye. Tears aren’t lumpy. This wasn’t water. It was the same goop that filled my pimples, pouring from my eye, causing it to sting with immense pain, the kind I didn’t like. As if something was pressing from the inside of my eyeball, trying to get out.

That’s when I saw it. Lingering deep in the back of my eye. A whitehead. The kind that once occupied my face.

This had to be a nightmare. Pimples can’t grow inside my face—they’re supposed to grow on the outside. Before I could rationalize what I was looking at, another appeared next to it. Then another, this time on top of the other two. A cluster of white dots formed inside my eye, making the pressure worse with each passing millisecond. They stacked on top of one another, unable to fit, pressing against my cornea and causing my eye to swell out of my socket. I couldn’t close it. I had too much eye and not enough lid.

Screaming, I covered my eye with my hand.

I grabbed the needle, crusted in blood and pus from the night before. I let it hover over my swelling, bright yellow eye. It was a poke like any other one. A little sting. It hurt more watching the needle go through my cornea. I let it slowly slip out despite my shaking hand. Juice leaked from my eyeball, pouring from my face and directly onto the mirror, seeping down to the counter and filling the sink.

It was clear as water. The complete opposite of the yellow lumpy goop from one of my pimples. The poke did little to ease the swelling. I was still about to burst. Either my eye or my entire head at that point. A faint speck lingered in my vision where I had stabbed myself, a piece of dust made from pure light. Dealing with the pain, I knew what had to come next.

Like every other day before this, I placed my index fingers above and below the open wound on my face. One deep breath, and I squeezed with all the might in my fingers. My eye gave little fight, popping faster than any pimple. With a wetting gush, my eye gave out, bursting down the middle, shooting a clear egg yolk out of my face and splattering all over the mirror, splashing fluid every which way.

Gagging, I took a breath, looking into the mirror. The zits made their way out of my eye, emerging from the empty hole in my face and spreading. White dots clogged the inside of my eye socket. I had no choice but to keep pressing until I had gotten rid of every single one of them. A dozen or a thousand. I couldn’t tell anymore, but it didn’t matter. I kept pressing, screaming as I did so, unleashing a torrent of yellow lumpy goop and bright red blood, from my eye socket. A flood of fluids rushed out of my face, splattering onto my bare feet and pooling onto the floor.

I used to pride myself on how I handled pain, thinking nothing could ever be too much. Each pimple was a test to see what I was made of. That I could get to the edge of my limits and skirt past them with each puncture.

But this.

This was too much. The room spun around me, my body felt weightless, and my legs gave out. I fell right into the blood and goop combo on the bathroom floor. My eye socket still spewing, blood cascading over my face and seeping into my open mouth.

My vision was blurry from shock or the fluid in it.

Blood and goop and eyeball juice fountaining from the hole in my face, soaking me as gravity brought it down. If only I could see myself in the mirror now.

My mother pounded on the door.

“Honey, are you okay? I thought I heard a scream,” she said, her voice fuzzy.

My grip on this world was coming loose. I could feel myself slipping. I closed my good eye and let the darkness take me to wherever I was going.

I couldn’t help but think of what my mom always told me whenever I was feeling bad about myself.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

So gouge it out and let it gush.