Jennie Smash

Cuz: (Somewhat drunkenly.) I just wanted to call to tell you that you’re my favorite Jennie and that I love you so much.

Me: Aw, thanks, man. I love you, too. I really appreciate the call. I needed it tonight.

Cuz: Are you blue?

Me: No, not really. It’s more like my face is collapsing and covered with wrinkles and fine lines and that I have no ideas and not much talent and I’m a fraud.

Cuz: (Pause.) Are you blue?

The wrinkles and fine lines obsession is a new one, or relatively so, and has gotten worse in the last day or two because I decided to go get my eyebrows threaded on Friday.

“You want your lip, too?” The lady asked.

“What? No. I don’t — do I need my lip, too?”

She looked at me with great pity. And then, because I always want fries with that, I allowed myself to be upsold.

Here is the problem with getting your whole face threaded and then going back to work: You wind up sitting at your desk with a swollen face. I informed my coworkers that I would be facing the window for the rest of the day, and not to take offense: I just didn’t want them to have nightmares.

The problem with threading or plucking of any kind, of course, is that once your face is all swollen and bare, you can feel free to visualize the teensy beginnings of wrinkles that you’ll probably get in about ten years. By the time I finished my makeup at the gym that afternoon, I was nearly in tears.

All this to say that I am terribly vain, but you all knew that already. However, I am fun at parties. And now I am virtually hair-free. Really, you can’t ask for much more than that.