Abby Reese Asimos--Pizza Face

I had never eaten while walking before. I avoided eating in front of people up until this moment at all actually, but it seemed I had reached the end of the sidewalk. I wanted to fit in with the gaggle of fellow study-abroad girls I had just met. Ruby in her effortless coolness bought a beer with her sammy and offered everyone a sip despite our status as strangers.

She was trying to connect with you Abby, and you stiff-armed her! From now on you will accept whatever is extended. I mean it!

I lectured myself in my head as we walked, talked (well, they talked), and munched, and searched for a stoop to sit on. Some online magazine told me alcohol is to acne as gasoline is to fire. Moreover, I was still only 20, not even legal in America. So, I avoided, mostly. I decided then and there I’ll only drink what I’m given for free. No little money of mine will be spent on alcohol. Not when I look like this.

When we finally found a worthy stoop, the damage was done. I had eaten half the paper and only about 1/4th of the sandwich.

“How is that even possible?” Grace chuckled. She was my roommate there. Like Ruby, and almost all the others, she’s Midwestern, and porcelain, and beautiful. Not a zit in sight. Not even on their backs. They wear spaghetti-strap dresses like no one’s business. No bra, no trepidation. Sometimes no sunscreen. I would wear ‘em too if I could. Seems so breezy.

That sweltering night, I tearfully messaged my mother, though she was sound asleep, given the time difference.

I thought about how she persistently refused to take me to a dermatologist, then, and now. How she assured me that I’ll grow out of “it.” How she and Dad dealt with “it” and how “it” built their character and how they turned out just fine. How doctors of any kind are expensive. How Clean & Clear worked swell for my sister. How I should try witch-hazel again. How I should maybe eat less ice cream. Lactose is inflammatory, when push comes to shove.

But I don't text that. It’s not her fault, really. It’s probably mine if I’m being honest.

One June day I barely uttered a single word. We were sitting on our terrace decked out in string lights and bird-defecated stains, but the view of the Duomo and neighboring basilica counteracted any discomfort we might have felt due to the heat, and uneasiness we felt towards each other. There was wine and hard cookies to share, not bought by me. I only had some when Grace specifically presented me with a glass.

“How many people have you slept with?” Someone, probably Ruby, posed as a conversation starter.

Everyone held up and one or a two except me and some newcomer. I made the motion of a zero while she ran out of fingers, opting to whip out her phone instead, showing us a list she titled “dicks.” There was a total of 73, the last entry dating back to March.

“No, worse.” She takes a swig of the corner store rosé, straight out of the bottle. “I've fallen in love.”

She then described said love. It was gross. A theme with her. But who I am to judge?

Grace (one finger up) then told us about her first love, some loser frat boy who “deflowered” her at his family’s lake house. He was uncharacteristically tender during it, she explained. Afterward, they ate Doritos in the bed. She felt safe. She missed him still. Even though he has since gotten a new “overeating whore girlfriend with massive tits,” Grace would often announce the inevitability of their reunion.

“I just know we’re going to end up together again. I don’t know why, but I do.”

I tried to look at her, really look at her when she said this. She was usually so cerebral after all, and I wanted to revel in this newfound vulnerability and closeness surrounding our ragtag group due to Grace’s confession. But I couldn't look at her, not completely, not the way I wanted to, because that might prompt her to really look at me. And she would see me with my fists clenched and my face like Switzerland and she would know the reason I cannot hold up any fingers is because who wants to kiss Switzerland? The pimples everywhere, even around my lips, which are low-key plush and frequently glossed, but I never let anyone know. Who would want to cup a cheek so textured? Hold a chin so stony? Help me take my shirt off when my breasts are not the only humps?

That is a lie. People have wanted to kiss me. And I’m not trying to be cocky here, they’ve told me before. They’ve even asked. But at this point in my life, I had always said no, because I was scared, and because of the pimples. The sad thing is that I am writing this years after it has occurred and I am just as, if not more, pimpley. Pimples– a punchline and marker of some moral failing in the words of Chaucer and Milton. Maybe I am indeed a horrible person and this is some kind of punishment. Maybe unbeknownst to me I'm participating in some mortifying sin deserving of ignominy. Maybe I’m so scared of true connection that my flesh is somehow willfully producing the blemishes to morph me into a person who can barely look at anyone for more than a Mississippi, let alone joyfully share a meal, or a beverage, or a kiss, or a life.

Sadness holds my hand, but it is quickly swatted away by shame. Because I’m being egotistical at the end of the day. Always thinking about myself. And that, that is something to be ashamed of. I hate my acne, but what I hate more is how self-centered acne makes me. I am so uber aware of how I look and how I look eating and how people are probably perceiving me because of how I look and because of what I’m eating. I wish I could always be wearing a T-shirt that says, “IT’S GENETIC.” I want the people to know I’m trying my best. You have to believe me! I wash my face and put on the medicines and eat my veggies and ingest the supplements and attempt to sleep but it’s hard to sleep when you despise yourself. I have a lot to ruminate on. I have a whole other life to imagine! Who I would be, what I could be, if any treatment or home remedy or life hack out of the dozens I’ve tried ever actually did anything.

I shower at night so that it’s too dark to see myself. Grace interrogated this. I feigned a recurring headache.

I never bought a pizza the whole time I was in Italy. When questioned on my lack of authentic consumption, which occurred almost daily considering how often everyone else was eating some form of pizza, I told the others I simply didn't like it. Unfortunately, the whole truth was something much more sinister. I couldn't dare set myself up for the joke. You know the joke. Not that they would say it, but they would think it. Ruby especially. And just that mere thought makes me want to crumble into nothingness and be tossed out with the uneaten, powdery flatbread crust. We would be eating in front of a mirror wall at a restaurant, so popular in Florence for some reason, and the sight of my face would make me lose my appetite. No seconds for me, no, never, but sometimes my friends would order dish after dish after dish. “The dolce vita way.” I would look down on their flimsy margheritas and try to convince myself they probably taste just as sad as I felt.

In the children’s chapter book Because of Winn Dixie, a certain candy is described as tasting "melancholy" because the confectioner was always crying into his batches in a sort of, more digestible, Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake kind of thing. I, too, have tasted melancholy. It occurred on our overnight field trip to Venice, eating gnocchi for the first and the last time. Unlike the candy, I didn't make the little lumps with melancholy, since I was not the chef. No, I just slowly injected it with my feelings as I ate it with my nose held. I, too, made food melancholy with my tears, the salty eye water acting like an unfounded drizzle of cheap Kraft-manufactured parmesan. We all cried that Italian lunch, sitting so close to one another we could smell the armpit sweat not even the extra-strength, dermatologist-prescribed-antiperspirant one of the other girls wore could ward off. We were homesick, and some of the group were fighting, and everyone couldn’t stop talking about their exes, which was revolting. Plus, it was over 95 degrees, and we had walked miles and miles to get to our destination, "LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA." We were so hungry after we decided to eat at the first restaurant we found that could seat all 15 of us. We should have just split up. And I shouldn’t have ordered a hot dish in the AC-less terrain. But everyone else did too, and this mysterious pasta shape came with a Caio e Pepe sauce, my favorite, and at 13 euros, it was the cheapest thing on the menu. So, I took the risk. It took everything in me not to gag on the doughy, pepper-flaked mounds of goop. They looked up at me from the plate like beached mole crabs, taunting my burnt tongue and singing stomach. What was I thinking trying something new at a dire moment like this? After the second, flour-filled bite, when it became apparent I could not force myself into one more chew, I started swallowing the little creature-like things whole, my hands gripping the rattan chair as I guzzled them down with water with “gas.”

Hours later, I would taste the stinky sticky soggy gnocchi all over again, my arms hugging the porcelain hotel toilet I could tell had not been properly cleaned. I never drank too much before this moment. The spew was horrible and acidic and sad, reminding me not of just one or two of the trip’s bad decisions, but of every bad decision I had ever made, and will make, and how stupid I am, and how I'm throwing up 26 euros (the mojito I bought myself that evening was also priced at 13. I broke my no money on alcohol rule. Serves me right.) Do better. Idiot. Just because someone buys you a shot doesn't mean you have to take it. Just because you're lonely doesn't mean you have to dance like you're not. Just because gnocchi is a cute name does not mean it will be appetizing to you. Think Abby, think!

I threw up again. Then again. With my guts empty and my throat raw and rosy, I fell asleep on the tiled floor next to a glass of water one of my friends must have gotten for me. No gas this time.

I woke some unknowable time later to vomit a fourth time and drag myself to the royal-themed, full-sized bed I was sharing with Grace. I texted some contacts some very normal not weird not at all suspicious things, and drifted back to a clammy sleep. I’m sure I dreamed. If only I could remember what about.

As much as I wish I could have kept snoozing, never again to rub my eyes and wash my face and have to glare at my mocking reflection in various looking glasses forever and ever amen, the morning came, and not without its fair share of horrors. Number one, a hangover. My first time, baby. Can't say I recommend it, especially when it’s about a hundred degrees outside, (37 Celsius if I was trying to be properly European), and I have to walk endlessly through the heat. Even though I don't tuck my hair behind my ears this day and my kind, selectively thoughtful, angel baby roomie Grace gives me her Ray-Bans to wear, or rather, hide behind, every person and professor in our cohort said some semblance of, “Bella, you don't look so good…” or even better with its natural head pat and simultaneous accusation, “Rough night mio bambino?”

No, not at all. Best night ever actually. Never felt better, thanks for asking. But please get that steaming dish of pesto tagliatelle out of my face before I puke again. Oh, and can I borrow some Dramamine for the bus ride back?

Number two, bed bugs. Or some bug, at least. We never fully figured out what bit me and Grace in the night, all we knew was that we were bit. There were itchy crimson splotches all over our bodies which slightly blended in on my already distraught viso, but looked like stamps of maraschino cherries on Grace’s Irish complexion. She couldn't stop talking about them all day, comparing the bites to “craters” and reminiscing on the time before she started Acutance when her face looked like this “24/7.”

“I’m having straight-up PTSD right now. I can’t even look at myself like this. It’s giving me flashbacks. It’s making me remember,” she said.

I felt queasy as it was, but Grace’s words made it worse. They haunted me all the way till we said “ciao” before we got on our planes. Perhaps they’re haunting me still, since I feel the need to write it down. She cried in my arms and I wasn't sure where the emotions were coming from. Don't I disgust you, Grace? Does my face not make you “remember?”

When the girls would all look in our apartment’s floor-length mirror together before setting out for class, or some dinner, or club, or museum, I never joined in. I would hate to ruin the mood. Self-pity is so unsexy.

In my last week in the Bel Paese, I watched my cousin, who happened to be vacationing in Firenze during the same period I was, elope. That is a whole other story, but I will say I got all weepy at the illicit wedding for a multitude of reasons. The bride’s brother photographed the whole thing and seemed to take a special interest in me. Every snap of the camera I wanted to scream. Delete that! Delete it! Let me mourn my cousin’s youth (married against his family's wishes at the ripe age of 19 aye ye ye) in peace! Let me eat this orecchiette post-wedding siesta undisturbed! I don't want to document myself. I've gone to extreme lengths not to document myself. And I’m lit-rally studying abroad so don't think the urge isn't there, okay? It’s there! And everyone else is capturing their every moment! I wish that could be me, I do, I do. I want to be silly and take selfies and be horribly awfully self-indulgent just for a second. But can’t you tell I’m hiding? Can’t you tell this is not what I want to look like at my 19-year-old rebellious gym rat cousin’s wedding, or in Italy, or in summer, or in general? Will my skin be clear for my own wedding? Will I lose my aforementioned virginity with blackheads still in my nose? Will I be in missionary with whatever poor soul who decided to take a chance on me and date me and wed me and bed me all with his eyes closed, but then finally, miraculously, regretfully, he’ll open his eyes and he’ll look down as he comes and he’ll realize I was never really that pretty? And like my cousin, I will get a divorce, but unlike my cousin, I will die before boot camp. I will mutilate my face– cut it up till every pimple is gone and all you see is blood and my eyes unable to be pimpled so them I will spare, and then go ahead and starve myself. I will slowly cut out everything I've been told to cut out (cheese, milk, sugar, wheat, gluten, chemicals, and more and more and more and more) till there is nothing left and my stomach starts to eat itself– my own inner leeched ouroboros. In big bolded loopy letters, I’ll sharpie on the un-bumpy side of my left arm a message to have my corpse cremated so no one will ever get to look at me again. I will pray that they listen, though they never have before. And, finally, I will die, brown paper in my stomach, some random topical acne treatment in my veins, never been kissed, never having visited a dermatologist.

There’s no reason for my acne to make me suicidal, but I somehow was undercurrently suicidal that otherwise idyllic summer. I won't say am. It’s not really that I want to kill myself, but that I want to kill my body, but somehow without removing all my bodily functions. I enjoy some of them, admittedly. Eating and laughing– I wish I could do that forever. I want to be a ghost, but I want to be a ghost who feasts and dines and giggles and gorges, all without pooping or burping and especially without breaking out. I want to saunter down the cobblestone Florentine streets and devour my three-scoop gelato (banana on the bottom, deepest dark in the middle, classic caffè e panna on top) and no passerbyer will see me and my open mouth and rutty face and think that I’m doing this to myself and that I should just cut out dairy or sweetener or chocolate or alcohol or go on Proactive or Curology or Tretinoin or switch my pillowcase every night or only use “nonclogging” sunscreen or make a point to swim in chlorine pools or lay in a tanning bed or stop using moisturizer or stop touching my face or stop doing anything or or or or or or or or or or.

They will only see a floating waffle cone getting smaller and smaller and smaller till it is gone, and I am almost full, and I am still and forever and always invisible. My face will not be blemished or clear or some disgruntled in between, it will simply just cease. I will lick the last taste of banana from my lips and I will smile. I will get in line for another.

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