In between numerous sessions of karaoking throughout chicago this weekend, all attended with my dear friend inna, she and i took a walk and some throat regeneration time and watched a band play live at one of the 8 gazillion or so lovely summer street fests. while there, in the early evening light, inna noticed something she might not have during hazy nights in darkened bars - a physical anomaly on the right corner of my lip. The music was loud enough that we were barely able to hear 1 word from each other, let alone a string of them, so i said i'd tell her what's what later. After my 2 taco dinner (ohhh chorizo - thanks for returning to my life!), I began a story that was quickly put down. But, how long can you really squash a good story?
if you answered "forever" to that last question, you are right. in one sense.
note - this may not be a good story. but it is a story, and a story i'm telling :)
I was extremely sociable this past weekend. Chances are, people noticed my anomalistic growth and likely decided it was a cold sore. that darned lesser herpes virus. and chances are that's what inna was wondering, too, when she asked her question. the way i began answering probably told her a minimum of two things. one - that she may throw up if i talk for much longer. two, that it wasn't a herpes type cold sore that would make things start to fall off of victor maitland.
like many people, probably, i notice changes to my body. especially the face. within the last few years, maybe decade at most, there have been 2 very minor facial changes that i've noted, and noted, and continued to note. one recent facial entrant is on my lower lip, where once there was a uniform color of lip skin, there is now an oval shape that's much darker than the surrounding tissue. it's maybe 2 millimeters in diameter. i believe i had bit my lip open at some point and this is how it healed - perhaps there's old blood near the surface, or maybe a foreign particle now resides there. i dunno.
the other newish growth happened in an arc just off of and alongside my right lip. the lip border area has been a tried and true spot for blackheads for years, and i've enjoyed many an evening in front of various bathroom mirrors expelling that glorious keratin and sebum by squeezing, pinching, using my fingers as primal tools. When the goo spirals in mid air because of an enormous presence of oily material inside of me, i feel like a proud mama. i'd mostly given up the proud mama feeling in relation to my lip corner growth, but i also hadn't much reason to notice said growth for quite some time.
in the last few years, facial hair has come in abundance, and i've reveled in it. when i wasn't rocking a beard or chops, i was keeping a rather high shadow, mainly due to the razor i was using. well, that razor is gone, and in came a rather delightful razor i bought after researching for hours upon hours. my face hasn't been this bare since i shaved with a straight razor, a task i gave up on mainly because of the fragility of 2 moles that would bleed profusely from the slightest nick. if not for that, i'd probably still use the shaving cream and razor, cause it feels delightful.
well, with the advent of this new razor, i once again was brought face to face with my face in a bathroom mirror, noticing the lip area growth. it seemed for a long time that it must be a really deep blackhead or something like that, but no matter the amount i'd squeeze, it would not give up its oily fruit. so for years, there'd be 3 tiny blackheadish looking pits that half-mooned my lip. i was determined that my face had seen the last of the dark side of this moon, and went for it.
i squeezed. hard. i'm currently sporting my 3rd ever set of fake nails - a great crutch for nail biting, which it turns out is a call much stronger for me than nicotine. with my plastic fortified nails, i had extra strength and leverage. plus, i had nails, and not nubs, which i'd always had in the past when i went after this growth.
out it came. and out. there was goo, stringy white goo. and there was puss. and more puss. and blood. and i wanted it all gone. perhaps because i'd fantasized about how deep it lived, i kept going back, believing there'd be more. and maybe more came out - the problem of memory comes into play here. the skin was broken, and i kept squeezing. the skin was tearing away in an area that surrounded the growth, and i helped it along. then there was merely exposed flesh. here, at the new surface level, i saw no evidence of what may have been deeply embedded ingrown hair follicles or any other such bodily nuisance. just red blood and other rather normal looking membranous material.
mostly pleased, i dabbed on a bunch or peroxide. and for the next 2 days, i continued to use peroxide often. and therein lay the difficulty of the initial healing process - i'd get dried out often, and the opening of the mouth would crack the scab. i did a face to face mirror check-in - who else but me is gonna keep an eye on me? ;)
i didn't like how the healing was going, so i very consciously committed the cardinal no-no of scabs and ripped it off.
the flesh and the extension of flesh, that came off with this rip, was not contained within the initial scab area. it extended outward. and by outward, i mean inward towards my mouth. i didn't rip so much that i was virtually blinded to it unless i used 3 mirrors and aligned them just so while standing in tree position with my tongue pushing more powerfully against my inner lip than ever before. no, not that much. but i did tear a good bit away from the outside of the lip. and that's where much of the new scabbage jutted outward this last weekend.
wanna get paranoid (android) about communal interacting? from friday evening through saturday late night, i went to 6 different places to karaoke. yes, i'm a big ol' nerd. i would estimate i sang approximately 23 songs with a microphone and plenty more w/out. i dare say that's much more than any 1 performer at last weekend's lollapalloza. what if my anomaly was not an anomaly, but rather something pretty normative these days - the herpes virus that hides openly behind a cutesy and much more innocent name - cold sore?
i'm not one to lip up on the microphone, at least hardly ever. and yet, in the heat of things, contact might happen, if only from the removal of the mic from the mouth area when done lyricizing for a bit. or maybe the sore protrudes out further than all other mouth area parts and that and only that makes contact with the mic. 6 different karaoke bars. 100's of other people sharing said mic. those 100's perhaps licking their lips and maybe kissing a mate prior to washing up. and the washing up may not even matter when it comes to a virus like this. spread virus, spread.
granted, i don't have that virus, but plenty of people do. i've had other viruses, maybe still have 1 or 2 viruses running through me. 22% of adult americans are estimated to have type 2 herpes. type 1 - the cold sore type, that can spread from mouth to anywhere, even without signs and symptoms, is supposed to be more prevalant. i don't have a number stat, but it's probably out there. and again, there are other viruses. other more dangerous ones. other ones that currently have no public cure. with a higher morbidity rate. with, perhaps, a greater negative public stigma. and you may rub up on them on a mic, or a bathroom toilet handle or seat, on a glass that's passed around among a group of 5 friends (20% rate!), or from your lover, whether they know of a viral presence or not.
hey. it's all good. i'll eat and drink it all up like a milkshake. but maybe you're afraid now. you can stay in forever and do all you can to never encounter any foreign particles or foreign anything. me? i rocked out 2 duets of paranoid android last weekend - the first repeated song i've sang all summer. loved it. and i'm just about done with my nationalistic time. a somewhat patriotic ex-pat time rapidly approaches. i'll take the foreign particles without any immunization other than tetanus. and love what is and what's to come.
my look-alike cold sore is nearly healed. there remains some tissue that needs a bit more healing on my lip. as for the trifecta of somethings that arced around my lip? gone. non-doctor, heal thyself! now what to do about that blood blister on my lip?
addendum. if this story wasn't stomach churning enough for you, try this. last night, my dinner contained the following - milk that technically expired 1 day before, the last 2 eggs from a carton that had been around for awhile, and some packaged polenta that i opened up that night, but which came out a bit liquidy and frothy. there was also some tasty tj's andouille sausage. it didn't take long for the shits to come on. and they came. like, near dehydration stage diarrhea, likely because i ate some risky foods.
the kings of leon cancelled their american tour - perhaps their sex is really on fire now. me, it's just my ass that's aflame.
if you answered "forever" to that last question, you are right. in one sense.
note - this may not be a good story. but it is a story, and a story i'm telling :)
I was extremely sociable this past weekend. Chances are, people noticed my anomalistic growth and likely decided it was a cold sore. that darned lesser herpes virus. and chances are that's what inna was wondering, too, when she asked her question. the way i began answering probably told her a minimum of two things. one - that she may throw up if i talk for much longer. two, that it wasn't a herpes type cold sore that would make things start to fall off of victor maitland.
like many people, probably, i notice changes to my body. especially the face. within the last few years, maybe decade at most, there have been 2 very minor facial changes that i've noted, and noted, and continued to note. one recent facial entrant is on my lower lip, where once there was a uniform color of lip skin, there is now an oval shape that's much darker than the surrounding tissue. it's maybe 2 millimeters in diameter. i believe i had bit my lip open at some point and this is how it healed - perhaps there's old blood near the surface, or maybe a foreign particle now resides there. i dunno.
the other newish growth happened in an arc just off of and alongside my right lip. the lip border area has been a tried and true spot for blackheads for years, and i've enjoyed many an evening in front of various bathroom mirrors expelling that glorious keratin and sebum by squeezing, pinching, using my fingers as primal tools. When the goo spirals in mid air because of an enormous presence of oily material inside of me, i feel like a proud mama. i'd mostly given up the proud mama feeling in relation to my lip corner growth, but i also hadn't much reason to notice said growth for quite some time.
in the last few years, facial hair has come in abundance, and i've reveled in it. when i wasn't rocking a beard or chops, i was keeping a rather high shadow, mainly due to the razor i was using. well, that razor is gone, and in came a rather delightful razor i bought after researching for hours upon hours. my face hasn't been this bare since i shaved with a straight razor, a task i gave up on mainly because of the fragility of 2 moles that would bleed profusely from the slightest nick. if not for that, i'd probably still use the shaving cream and razor, cause it feels delightful.
well, with the advent of this new razor, i once again was brought face to face with my face in a bathroom mirror, noticing the lip area growth. it seemed for a long time that it must be a really deep blackhead or something like that, but no matter the amount i'd squeeze, it would not give up its oily fruit. so for years, there'd be 3 tiny blackheadish looking pits that half-mooned my lip. i was determined that my face had seen the last of the dark side of this moon, and went for it.
i squeezed. hard. i'm currently sporting my 3rd ever set of fake nails - a great crutch for nail biting, which it turns out is a call much stronger for me than nicotine. with my plastic fortified nails, i had extra strength and leverage. plus, i had nails, and not nubs, which i'd always had in the past when i went after this growth.
out it came. and out. there was goo, stringy white goo. and there was puss. and more puss. and blood. and i wanted it all gone. perhaps because i'd fantasized about how deep it lived, i kept going back, believing there'd be more. and maybe more came out - the problem of memory comes into play here. the skin was broken, and i kept squeezing. the skin was tearing away in an area that surrounded the growth, and i helped it along. then there was merely exposed flesh. here, at the new surface level, i saw no evidence of what may have been deeply embedded ingrown hair follicles or any other such bodily nuisance. just red blood and other rather normal looking membranous material.
mostly pleased, i dabbed on a bunch or peroxide. and for the next 2 days, i continued to use peroxide often. and therein lay the difficulty of the initial healing process - i'd get dried out often, and the opening of the mouth would crack the scab. i did a face to face mirror check-in - who else but me is gonna keep an eye on me? ;)
i didn't like how the healing was going, so i very consciously committed the cardinal no-no of scabs and ripped it off.
the flesh and the extension of flesh, that came off with this rip, was not contained within the initial scab area. it extended outward. and by outward, i mean inward towards my mouth. i didn't rip so much that i was virtually blinded to it unless i used 3 mirrors and aligned them just so while standing in tree position with my tongue pushing more powerfully against my inner lip than ever before. no, not that much. but i did tear a good bit away from the outside of the lip. and that's where much of the new scabbage jutted outward this last weekend.
wanna get paranoid (android) about communal interacting? from friday evening through saturday late night, i went to 6 different places to karaoke. yes, i'm a big ol' nerd. i would estimate i sang approximately 23 songs with a microphone and plenty more w/out. i dare say that's much more than any 1 performer at last weekend's lollapalloza. what if my anomaly was not an anomaly, but rather something pretty normative these days - the herpes virus that hides openly behind a cutesy and much more innocent name - cold sore?
i'm not one to lip up on the microphone, at least hardly ever. and yet, in the heat of things, contact might happen, if only from the removal of the mic from the mouth area when done lyricizing for a bit. or maybe the sore protrudes out further than all other mouth area parts and that and only that makes contact with the mic. 6 different karaoke bars. 100's of other people sharing said mic. those 100's perhaps licking their lips and maybe kissing a mate prior to washing up. and the washing up may not even matter when it comes to a virus like this. spread virus, spread.
granted, i don't have that virus, but plenty of people do. i've had other viruses, maybe still have 1 or 2 viruses running through me. 22% of adult americans are estimated to have type 2 herpes. type 1 - the cold sore type, that can spread from mouth to anywhere, even without signs and symptoms, is supposed to be more prevalant. i don't have a number stat, but it's probably out there. and again, there are other viruses. other more dangerous ones. other ones that currently have no public cure. with a higher morbidity rate. with, perhaps, a greater negative public stigma. and you may rub up on them on a mic, or a bathroom toilet handle or seat, on a glass that's passed around among a group of 5 friends (20% rate!), or from your lover, whether they know of a viral presence or not.
hey. it's all good. i'll eat and drink it all up like a milkshake. but maybe you're afraid now. you can stay in forever and do all you can to never encounter any foreign particles or foreign anything. me? i rocked out 2 duets of paranoid android last weekend - the first repeated song i've sang all summer. loved it. and i'm just about done with my nationalistic time. a somewhat patriotic ex-pat time rapidly approaches. i'll take the foreign particles without any immunization other than tetanus. and love what is and what's to come.
my look-alike cold sore is nearly healed. there remains some tissue that needs a bit more healing on my lip. as for the trifecta of somethings that arced around my lip? gone. non-doctor, heal thyself! now what to do about that blood blister on my lip?
addendum. if this story wasn't stomach churning enough for you, try this. last night, my dinner contained the following - milk that technically expired 1 day before, the last 2 eggs from a carton that had been around for awhile, and some packaged polenta that i opened up that night, but which came out a bit liquidy and frothy. there was also some tasty tj's andouille sausage. it didn't take long for the shits to come on. and they came. like, near dehydration stage diarrhea, likely because i ate some risky foods.
the kings of leon cancelled their american tour - perhaps their sex is really on fire now. me, it's just my ass that's aflame.
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