Mane Event

Somehow, during the commercial break, a good-sized chunk of mascara fell from the guest commentator’s eyelashes and landed on her upper cheek. It wasn’t enormous but it was noticeable, about the size of dwarf Tic-Tac.

The interviewer pretended not to notice, looking straight into her eyes, never for a second letting his gaze wander to the brown-black speck on her cheek. Oh, I know that trick. I’ve ignored really preposterous things going on with people I was talking to in the interest of what? I’m not sure. Avoidance of embarrassment? Whose embarrassment? Am I embarrassed to point out things that should embarrass other people?

When the guest commentator goes home and watches the tape of her experience, she will wonder why the interviewer didn’t brush his cheek in a secret signal to get rid of the mascara lump. She will curse her mascara and wonder why she has bought the same kind since she was 16. After all, a woman of her position should really have moved up on the make-up front by now.

If she is like me, she will remember the humiliation of this event until she is on her deathbed. She will say to her devoted daughter, “Please, get the make-up remover from the bathroom and take off my mascara lest it clump and litter itself all over my dead face.”

But, alas, no one is like me. Other people are not bothered by these things; they see these tiny accidents as inconsequential in the larger order of things. Laughable. They consider a mascara clump on one’s cheek during a national broadcast as just the cost of doing business. This is what happens to heavily made-up, important people.

Once at a big meeting, a staff person came up to me and said, making rubbing motions on her cheeks, “Go like this.” I looked at her, baffled. “Your blush or whatever it is is kind of in streaks.” I laughed heartily and thanked her. Ho, ho, ho! So humorous! And then started dying what would turn out to be a thousand deaths reliving my speech given just moments before. All that time that I thought people were so rapt, they were just looking at my stripes.

Writing about it gives me chills, even now.

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Photo by Lisa H on Unsplash