My Lipstick is Bleeding
It is not as if my lips are on fire or anything extraordinary is happening. It’s not as if I need to be rushed to some emergency room for immediate lip surgery because some collagen injection caused an extreme allergic reaction threatening to blow off my face. It is not as if I’ve had an injection of botox that has frozen my lips making it impossible to display any kind of emotion. It is simply that now when I apply lip color, there is a spot where a trace of rose bleeds outside my lip line. This is not a tragedy, yet considering I need glasses to see the details of any make-up application, it can be aggravating. When I put on my reading glasses, the kind I only needed after forty, I see small hairs under my brows that need to be tweezed and the small line at the top of my lip where the rose bleeds. I see other things I chose not to report that remind me of inevitable and unforgiving time. My outsides have changed and my insides, too.
One thing I notice is when a certain man calls me to have lunch, I cringe. I decline, saying I have other plans even though I may not. I don’t feel like making small talk with someone new. I don’t feel like trying to look a certain way. I don’t want to be forced to look down at my midriff and regret the scones I have consumed on days when I was convinced I would never have to look down at my midriff and consider a guy looking at the roll that shows under my tee shirt. In other words, I don’t have the energy to market myself. The hormones that once drove me like some completely mad, mindless woman have diminished. I once did sit ups so my midriff would be taught under a tee shirt, and thought a great deal about what I looked like first in the morning.
I believed lip gloss should look like I had not actually put anything on my lips, when in actuality, I had spent quite a bit of time choosing a gloss that would look like I had not spent any time at all on making my lips look pale peach. The goal was to appear not to have spent much time on making myself look attractive. The reality was, like many women, my life was filled with such enhancements as: perms to achieve that naturally wavy look, blush and face powder to make my face appear naturally smooth and glowing, and trips to the tanning booth (in the early 80's before learning about the dangers) to achieve a naturally, sun-kissed glow. I considered undergarments very carefully, and embarked on a program of daily Jane Fonda (she has since resorted to surgery) exercises.
The question is, at fifty seven, has laziness made me overweight and am I simply making excuses for not caring so much, or have I reached some exulted state of wisdom, where I have transcended superficiality and the trivial concerns of youth? Or could I be rapidly vacillating between the two states at the speed of light and thus, am caught between laziness and enlightenment. Am I declining lunch because of disinterest, or because of fear the man will notice my midriff? When I encountered a man the other day with whom I had had a brief romance ten years ago, I noticed he looked old. He had a belly and his hair had lots of gray. The skin on his face looked looser. I turned to him and said, “A blast from the past,” and we talked and I remembered how slim I was and how fit he was when we lay together on my bed, not actually making love but kissing until six in the morning. As we stood in the art gallery, we talked as if we didn’t notice each other’s changes. It happens to them, too, I thought.
When a woman my age and her husband enter I restaurant where I am having lunch with a friend, and she is thin and in great shape, and her husband looks happy and they are smiling, am I being cynical concluding that she swallows. I imagine she lives for him the way I could never live for the men I believed I loved. She smiles, serves, and swallows as naturally as she breathes; she doesn’t mind that he always gets the channel changer. I wonder, is she naturally a good listener who finds her man genuinely interesting, perhaps more interesting than she finds herself?
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