It’s Not Getting Any Better — One Angry Waitress

I think I’m at that point in my life where adding more makeup actually makes me look older, and I’m long past the age where this is a good thing. Perhaps I’m just hyper-aware of this now because my last job had a lot of clientele with so much Botox that they looked frozen, as if the time in the room had stopped when all of them spotted the same horrendous thing: salad dressing that had not been placed on the side.

I have since learned what “elevens” are those little marks that occur between your eyebrows. And now that I can name them they seem to get worse with each passing day.

Every time I try to put on a dark colour on my lips, particularly a brown, I can’t help but think back to a former co-worker whom I shall call Susan. Susan had such haunting turns of phrase that I still remember many of them a full decade later.

One customer used to come in with thick dark brown lipstick painted in approximation an “o” all around her mouth. Susan, upon noticing this, once commented, “Hmm, looks like she got the wrong end.” And now these are the words in my head when I sit in front of a mirror wondering if I’ve gone a shade too far.

I know that things can be done to stop the house from falling down, but I suspect that they don’t really do that much good. I’ve gone into those fancy make-up stores in search of something simple, only to come out an hour later with a bushel of samples, having forgotten to grab the thing I went in for in the first place. Those cosmetics women, in their smocks, with their condescendingly-painted eyebrow arches, seem to know how to get you where it hurts.

Here you were hoping to replace the same eyeliner you’ve been using for years, and they say, “You know I bet you we could find something to fix that skin.” And you’re left to ask what exactly is wrong with your skin. And boy, are they ever going to tell you.

Most of these women would be better suited to work on the police force as those artists that alter photos to show what a missing person might look like ten years from now. They’re more than proficient at painting a picture of you in which your eyes have sunken into your skull, where those creases by your nose—that you hadn’t even noticed until now—and the ones by your mouth become one and thus your lips begin to resemble a gunshot wound in your face.

All of this can be alleviated though, but only if you spend such a colossal amount of money that within hours your credit card will be shut off due to suspicious activity. I often end up fleeing, promising myself that all later purchases are best made online.

I go home thinking about facial exercises and that I have to find a way to live without showing emotion because it’s giving me wrinkles. I lie awake and ping-pong between insane thoughts like how nuns must have fewer wrinkles because they spend so much time in prayer and meditation, and then I remember that I’m not Catholic and have no desire to become one.

So I guess I’ve reached an impasse. I can either run past the mirrors in my house, convinced that if I don’t actually see the lines for myself then they can’t possibly exist (this works surprisingly well), or that sometimes, when I put too much effort in, it’s just best to wash my face and go without.