My Daily Skin Care Routine

by Maxwell Suzuki

martin bennie

In Ancient Egypt, it was believed that acne was created from the scattershot of leaded lies. Each one for the lilt of the boy’s tongue. And even a palm full of pustules would instill skepticism in everyone around him.

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Two Truths and a Lie:

1) I was prescribed a healthy dose of Clindamycin in my youth to cure acne vulgaris and prevent any future lies from warping my skin.

2) I find pleasure in the excessive popping of puss in the reflection of a tinted mirror.

3) In high school, when asked which girl I liked, I would say I liked all of them without needing a second to think.

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There is a white lie in the center of all my pimples, a speckling of dishonesty fortunate enough to be invisible. And so, when a friend asked if I was gay through text, I only replied “no.” The tone of my condescension breeding bacteria right below the skin. Soon, it would erupt on the eggshell canvas of my cheek, aching to be fished from beneath the blush. I cannot remember the first pimple to surface on my forehead, the same way that I cannot remember the first lie to ever drift from my oily face.

That night, to rid the one-word lie from my flip-phone, I washed my face three times. First, with the light goading of soap and water. Second, was the cotton pad inundated with salicylic acid—the sting a welcomed relief. Third, a thin layer of topical antibiotics meant to subtly work its medicinal daggers into pores lined with red clay and human stink.

My face, feeling sterile and taut, held the wash of twilight. I fell asleep to the silhouette of Hathor pouring liquid sun into the vessel of my forehead, forgetting to stop as I began to overflow.

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When I first consulted a dermatologist about my acne, he told me that too much scrubbing of the skin could cause more colonies to invade. As if to say one lie, if begged to be removed, would only breed more until a truth could never be trusted again.

So, as I woke the next day, my face began to flake off bits of itself. A fresh collection of welts prepared for war. The lie must’ve been tucked deeper than I expected.

To rid the body of acne, the Ancient Egyptians would apply honey to the infected areas. The idea was that the sweet nectar would be able to neutralize the negative energy below the skin. Thus, morphing the boy from a liar back into a child. There are mentions, however, of this treatment failing when the boy believed he wasn’t lying. In such a case, the only remedy was time and a submissive tongue.

I could smell the layer of honey on my chin when I asked a girl to a song at my eighth-grade dance. Somewhere within the excessive beat of the Cupid Shuffle, I had thought that my acne would disappear by the end of the night.

But when I checked in the gym’s bathroom, the echo of my shoes on stained tile, I noticed all the honey was gone. It was replaced by a golden hummingbird suckling the last bits of sugar from my temples.

As I tried to lightly shoo it away, my hand brushed up against a ridge of pimples that paralleled my jaw—soft, but soon to be disrupted.

A year from then, she would tell me in a private message that she was into girls. But by that time, the dance a far-flung moment, I had begun to understand why none of the treatments worked to clear my face.

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The thing we know about acne now is that it’s caused by a combination of make-up, hormones, and stress. That is to say, caused by a slow and unpleasant warping into adulthood. To ask for an unblemished body then, is to beg to be removed from time.

And so, when I invited the boy I liked in 11th grade over, my face was laden with stress. In the orange glow of a belated Halloween celebration, I had hoped the raging spots would be hidden.

A truth, told through a slit in my teeth, flittered about in the hesitant living room. I watched its wings, yellow and blurry, looking for the saccharine of a perennial. When none could be found, it gently perched on the cliff of his lips. I had wondered if the bird knew of the honey there. Though, he brushed the bird away, said nothing, and left in the spokes of a creaking bike.

After, on a call recounting that night to my friend, he suggested that I get rid of the acne by brewing myself a cup of chamomile. And a dollop of honey to ease the bitterness of over-steeping.

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Truth or Dare?

Truth: Did you love him? Yes. Then why didn’t you look him in the eyes when you said so?

Dare—I choose dare, instead.

Dare: On a night when you have drunk yourself raw, the soundtrack of Daft Punk removing your self-awareness, his number still labeled in your phone, text him. Ask him if he could taste his own honey then. And pray that he doesn’t respond.

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Months later, upon visiting my friend three towns over, my acne had become docile. The peaks an eroded vestige. Preparing myself in front of his bathroom mirror, irritation removed, I could hear the pleasant wind of a hummingbird.

And on his bed, a bask of our naked bodies, he playfully remarked how smooth my skin had become. I smiled then, happy to tell him a truth I had been holding onto for years.

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Maxwell Suzuki is a Japanese American writer who recently graduated from USC and lives in Los Angeles. Maxwell’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Anti-Heroin Chic, Kissing Dynamite Poetry, The Hellebore, The Woven Tale Press, and his personal website www.lindenandbuckskin.com. He is currently writing a novel on the generational disconnect of Japanese American immigrants and their children.