Facial

I think we were touring Sydney when I met a woman who turned out to be a new member of the A party (which always includes the artist, her security and, more importantly, her chiropractor/masseuse). When this new woman explained she was my boss’s esthetician I nodded and smiled as broadly as one can without showing teeth.

Behind my lips loomed the thought, “a what?”

And when I found out what an esthetician does I began to wonder if perhaps I needed one too. Don’t we all need someone to fix our faces? Keeping the battery charged on facial filters to moderate our expressions when folks display their ignorance or arrogance or chauvinism or depravity is hard enough as it is. So if we could have professionals around twenty-four seven to at least keep our complexions together we’d be set.

We would need some money to pay for these people.

At least this is what I thought until earlier this year when, fast-forward, a good friend and colleague explained that it’s not so expensive. She sat before me with her immaculate Brazilian complexion (genetics) and revealed that after asking herself, “What’s a sistah to do when my historically black NY ballet company folds,” she went to study esthetics. She is now doing microdermabrasion and a whole lot of other techniques I can barely pronounce at a…clinic? Spa? University science lab?

I’ll find out eventually when I go get my microwhoozeewhatsit.

But I did make it to her apartment in Harlem to get my first facial. It was miraculous. The table impressed me right off because I had decided in error long ago that the only services that required payment to be horizontal involved massage and Red Light District stuff. And maybe yoga. But no, no. Rejane put me on the table and shined on my face the strong light that reminded me of the dentist. Then she dipped her fingertips into some kind of almost ephemeral lotion and decorated my face with it.

I don’t want to use the word rub. It’s not accurate. Lovers and people who might just get run over by a car to save me have not touched my face this way. I mean, I really didn’t know it was possible to square the effect of “caress” but that’s what Rejane managed. After she made me aware of the power of fingertips, she wrecked my nerve by adding a scrub massage. It was relaxing. Careful. Poignant. I dreamt. This was also supposed to be a visit so I fought sleep to catch up with her but she took me right down.

The pimple removal woke me a little. There was no popping and pain and squeezing. She somehow worked the fingertips and poof, pimple gone. Right when I was about to ask her if I could try this at home she left the room. I was angry. Confused. Where was she going? Why hast thou abandoned me?

When she came back I felt a warm soothing towel damp across my entire face. Then spread across my clavicle. The fellahs at the upscale barber shops believe with all their might that they are doing something when they approximate the hot towel effect after a haircut. Clearly they had not been to see Rejane to grasp the science of it. She rinsed, she fingered my face some more. She diagnosed my areas of “pigmentation” (a word which sounded divine wafting on that Brazilian accent). She dragged me up to vertical and then showed me my new face.

I took one look and decided I’d hire her ass for a tour too. My boss was not being extra after all.

“So do I exfoliate on a regular basis?” I asked, trying to participate in what had become for me a celebration of her new field.

“Once a week,” she said. “More than that will disrupt the natural tendency of your skin cells and pull too much moisture out.”

“And then do I still wash my face, I mean with Dove or something like that?”

She exhaled at once. Tilted her head to the side and struggled.

“You use Dove?”

She may as well have asked “You comb your goatee with a shovel?” Uh oh, I was not an evolved homosexual. I believed that Dove isn’t soap, that it really is one-quarter moisturizing cream. And her face told me I was wrong.

“I’m sure you have something I’m supposed to apply right?”

“Of course.”

She grabbed two small unlabeled containers one with white cream and one with a brownish substance. She explained that one was a cleanser and one was a moisturizer. I asked for clarification only once, afraid to admit after my Dove bamboozlement that I would also not be able to tell cleanser and moisturizer apart when I got home. Her boyfriend had already qualified me nicely as a non-metrosexual gay man, but now I was going to gay hell.

(Later, I asked Krisha about Dove and she was horrified to find out that I believed in the propaganda of advertising. She couldn’t believe that with two degrees and experience traveling the world that Dove being soap was a shock.)

If I’m going to gay hell though, I’m going as a pretty man, thanks to my new esthetician.

I’ve now started a crusade encouraging everyone to use one. Which reminds me, I need to call Rejane and ask her for more brown and white facial stuff…



P.S. Everyone should also go to www.thegymnastfilm.com to buy Dreya’s and Addie’s award-winning movie, “The Gymnast.” It’s good. I don’t say that because I had Dreya’s life in my hands 321 times in three years on tour with Cher (and that’s not counting rig checks and rehearsals), or because Addie’s ass is so phenomenal at everything that she’s always working. It’s a good movie. Please go on line and buy it. Check out the trailer. Feel free to call and curse me out if you see it and don’t like it.