Never Let Anyone Curl Your Eyelashes

There's an old song that says you always hurt the one you love. If that's true, my friends Marta and Patricia love me a lot. An awful lot.

Marta and Patricia are sisters; they are about four or five years older than me. They were first friends with my eldest sister, during their high school years. When my sister married and moved out of state, well, I was very close to her and in her absence I began clinging to her friends. I spent enough time at Marta's and Patricia's house over the years, they ought to have been sick of the sight of me. But Marta listened patiently to my dreams, while Patricia entertained me by showing me her hundreds of pairs of earrings and colors of nail polish. I always felt welcome in their home. No, more than that. I felt treasured, a welcome friend.

But true friendship often comes with a steep price tag.

See, there I was: a young woman, and my ears were not pierced. And I was so vocal in my admiration of Patricia's splendiferous collection of ear-bobs that Marta generously offered to pierce my ears herself. Patricia was very enthusiastic about the idea, and that enthusiasm was contagious. Both of them together persuaded me that home ear-piercing was the way to go, but I was a collaborator in my own victimization.

I sat down and prepared to be pierced. But first Marta had to ice my ear lobes to numb them. That took a long time, and if you've ever spent much time outdoors in an Ohio blizzard then you have some idea of how painful that process was. But that was merely pain. Pain in pursuit of beauty is always bearable, right? How else can you explain so many botched and unnecessary plastic surgeries or the existence of spike heels? 

The sterilized needle then had to be passed through my ear lobe, with thread attached. The thread would be tied into a loop and would be my “earrings” until my ears healed. No one said anything about the noise created by a sliver of steel passing through the cartilage of my ear. It's a kind of grisly, crunching sound. Something like the sound a mammal hears while being run over by a car, I suspect. Most unpleasant. I was a little faint but I hung in there. I was a little fainter as the second lobe was punctured, might have even swayed a little, but still I stayed upright.

Over the next couple of weeks I turned the threads to keep the piercings open and the thread from sticking as my ears healed.. Some infection set in and I was daily applying an antibiotic ointment to my tender ears. When the day came – finally – that I was to remove the thread and put in real earrings, I removed the thread without incident. But I was unable to get the earrings in. Every time I tried to put the post in the piercing, I met an unpleasant resistance. I became nauseous and faint, so I asked my mother to put the earrings in for me. No go. The posts still did not want to pass through my ear lobes. There was that grisly sound again of metal attempting to displace cartilage. This mammal had been run over and the driver of the car was now shifting into reverse. I was on the verge of passing out when I told my mom to just stop. After all I'd been through to that point, I wimped out, deciding that I would just let the holes close, and that I would not be wearing earrings. More than a decade passed before I worked up the courage to have my ears professionally pierced. No problems. None. The lesson:

Always have your ears (or any other body piercings) done professionally.

On another occasion the sisters showed me their love, Patricia had taken a job as a Kirby vacuum-cleaner saleswoman. She told me in detail about what a wonderful job this vacuum did and offered me a demonstration of her sales pitch. The object of the demonstration was to show how powerful the suction was on this vacuum. The tools for the demo were the vacuum and a giant heavy-duty plastic bag. The bag was big enough for a person to fit into, and in fact that's what it was for.

Obliging soul that I am, I climbed into the bag. Patricia placed the hose in the bag with me and then had me hold the bag tightly closed around my neck. Then she turned on the vacuum. In a mere fraction of a second I became a Saran-wrapped mummy, unable to move a muscle below my neck. A human sweater in a space-saver bag.

That's right. I could not even loosen my grip on the bag which would have destroyed the vacuum. Struggling to do anything led only to a loss of balance. Like the tower of Pisa I slowly leaned, then toppled face first onto the floor. The sisters were laughing so hard they were unable to help me. I'm not sure they understood that I really needed help, that I was slowly being crushed by a giant, transparent garbage bag. That's a really unpleasant feeling, that kind of helplessness. I've been in a straitjacket on three occasions (don't ask) and I've been in a Kirby demonstration once. I'd undergo the former again but never the latter. Marta and Patricia

finally turned the vacuum off before any permanent damage was done. But I never bought a Kirby vac. For some reason I thought it might be dangerous. The lesson:

Never volunteer for a demonstration.

One last anecdote about the love these good friends bore me. On an evening when we planned to go to a dance, Patricia encouraged me to wear make-up, something I rarely did then and even more rarely do now. I demurred at wearing mascara, as it has a tendency to streak my glasses, without which I am beyond legally blind. Ah, but those streaks would not happen, she claimed, if I curled my eyelashes.

Now I had seen the tool used for the purpose of curling one's eyelashes: It looks like a pair of scissors with a curved vise on one end. I had a pretty good idea of how to use it, but I wasn't comfortable putting something like that near my eyes. As I mentioned, without my specs I'm like Schultz: "I see nozzing!" So messing about with a metal object near my eyes wasn't anything I was willing to try on my own.

The sisters persuaded me to let one of them curl my eyelashes. Patricia was very eager to do so and won the brief debate about which of them would show me how easy it was to obtain gorgeous, curly, fluffy eyelashes. I removed my glasses and allowed her free rein. I confess I was a little surprised at the pain that ensued.

"I think you're pulling my eyelashes out," I told her. I was probably whining. I know my eyes were watering.

"Oh, no," she said, in what I am sure was the same blithe tone Genghis Khan used at all his really fun parties. Patricia said that according to Liz Taylor, the key to beautiful lashes was to tightly squeeze the curler for 30 seconds, release, and squeeze again. How clearly I remember her squeezing and squeezing and squeezing. Extreme pain has a way of causing the mind to focus, doesn't it? But again, pain in pursuit of beauty is always bearable, yes? And if other women could stand this temporary pain then I supposed I could, too. The human ability to suck it up in order to save face should never, ever be underestimated. Although 'saving face' is perhaps not an apt expression in this instance.

After 15 or 20 years, Patricia at last surrendered her death grip on the eyelash curler, and even without my glasses I could see an expression on her face that easily qualified as one of horrified dismay. Then she burst into laughter, joined by her sister in sidesplitting gales of glee. I don't think they could wait until I saw myself in the mirror. Patricia had curled my eyelid. That's right, my eyelid. With a nice upsweep, just like Liz Taylor's false eyelashes. And the lid stayed curled. And crinkled. I stared at the horror that was once a perfectly good eyelid, and I was certain I had been permanently disfigured. In a couple of minutes that felt much longer, the eyelid did right itself. What blessed resilience! The lesson:

Never let anyone curl your eyelashes.

A recitation of any one of these events still has the power to send Marta into paroxysms of laughter. And you might read of my trials at their hands and wonder how I could still claim these ladies as my friends. Well, it's as I noted in the beginning: if you always hurt the one you love, then Marta and Patricia are tremendously fond of me. What can I do but I love them right back? 

Yes, I suppose I really ought to give some thought to how best to show them my affection.