There are few feelings as liberating as watching a particularly gnarly pimple at last die off. Calm down, reduce in redness, etc. However, that feeling can quickly dissipate when you realize that, in the same exact spot as where the “original” pimple has faded, a brand-new papule (or pustule, if that’s your skin’s game) has formed. Of course, it’s not just papules and pustules that are liable to attack one’s face. There’s also the “fun” potential for whiteheads, blackheads and even cystic acne. Ravenna was “lucky” enough, she supposed, to have avoided the latter category of pimple for most of her life, but not so lucky as to have avoided pimples in general past a certain age. For she assumed that, once she got into her twenties, the ferocity of the breakouts that plagued her during her teens would surely cease to exist. And for a while, they did ease up…if only a bit compared to what they had been at their worst, when she was enduring the awkward years between thirteen and sixteen.

But awkward years, it turned out, would never end for Ravenna, forever at the (non-)mercy of the vagaries of her skin’s composition. She was convinced that because of her “hairy” face (or hairier than most women had to deal with), she was more susceptible to the unfortunate caprices of pimple-forming. After all, the primary cause of a pimple was the “hospitable environment” that facial hair provided. And while, no, it’s not as though Ravenna had a full-on beard or anything, there was no denying that her Italian heritage was a factor in the increased amount of “peach fuzz” on her visage. Creating the perfect field day for pimples to form among the follicles that tended to trap bacteria, oil and dead skin cells, thereby making her facial landscape ripe for the clogged pores that would lead, inevitably, to yet another goddamn pimple.

A pimple, though, was one thing. A pimple she could take. What she couldn’t stand were those rare moments when, as mentioned, one pimple would form near (or practically right in) the same spot as one she was just getting rid of. The redness and scarring (from the gaping hole where pus had been squeezed out repeatedly) now subject to being ramped up yet again, just as it was finally starting to diminish. And it seemed as though no amount of “acid,” salicylic or glycolic (though, lately, Ravenna wasn’t opposed to seeing how LSD might affect her breakouts), could do anything to help the perennial situation.

So she kept doing what any girl would do: masking it with a slather of foundation. To the point where it seemed like she was using half a bottle a day to cover up this one pimple that kept reanimating in basically the same spot. In other words, it was a very expensive pimple—because, as most ought to know, foundation don’t come cheap. Especially the brand that Ravenna preferred: Estee Lauder. And since she refused to shop at a place like Wal-Mart (that’s right, Wal-Mart sells Estee Lauder products—oh how luxury brands have fallen) to buy it at its lowest price (a “mere” $37.25), Ravenna suffered the consequences of her bourgeois nature by buying it instead directly from the website, which sold the item for $52 a pop. They even had another kind of foundation for $140, but Ravenna wasn’t about to go that crazy. But still, buying about three bottles a week of the shit ever since The Pimple That Wouldn’t Die came to roost was really causing a dent in her monthly expenses.

It made her wonder why there wasn’t some special grant available to women with hairier faces to help accommodate their supply needs when it came to tending to greater pimple flare-ups than smooth-faced women. And then it dawned on her: why not get electrolysis? For all that she had been spending on facial products and concealer, she probably could have gotten the “procedure” done several times over by now. Yes, Ravenna was convinced that, with the absence of hair from her face, her pimple problems would become but a distant memory. And with that sudden burst of positivity, she booked the appointment. Little did she know, after completing the process, her phoenix of a pimple would be so much more preferable in hindsight…

***

At the medical spa she had dug up online, a place called (both generically and ominously) The New You, Ravenna was starting to question if this was really necessary. Looking around her at the types of women she was sharing the waiting room with, it was clear (unlike her skin) that she was fulfilling some requisite “which one of these is not like the other?” role. That alone made her want to get up and leave. But what was sketching her out perhaps most of all was the background music they had opted to play: the Challengers Soundtrack. While, sure, Ravenna could appreciate the idea that such a selection might seem “chic,” in actuality, it was completely nerve-racking in a setting such as this.

Worse still, the soundtrack could still be heard at full volume in the room where she was taken for the “procedure.” Her “electrologist” was an expectedly waifish woman with her dark brown hair slicked back so tightly in a bun that it was hard to tell if she had had plastic surgery or if it was just the tightness of her severe updo that made it appear as such. Either way, it made for an unsettling effect, particularly for a “first-timer” undergoing this experience. But, the way Ravenna saw it, she had already come too far to turn back now. She was getting this fucking thing done, no matter the metaphorical cost (in addition to the literal one). Even if that meant being subjected to incurring a forever bizarre association with Challengers (and its soundtrack).

So it was that she gritted her teeth and bore the strange burning sensation she was almost positive she probably shouldn’t be feeling. What in the actual fuck is happening?! Ravenna screamed internally, but did her best to keep a stoic expression so as not to offend ol’ Is It Just Slicked-Back Hair or Plastic Surgery? girl. This was probably normal, she figured. Especially for an electrolysis virgin—surely Ravenna’s skin was simply being hyper-sensitive because it had never been exposed to this so-called treatment before.

However, by the end, it was becoming clear to Ravenna that there couldn’t possibly be anything normal about how the session had gone at all. Because the instant she got up from the table—her face still throbbing and burning—and caught sight of herself in the mirror, she knew this was not how it was supposed to look. That stretched-temples bitch had practically burned her entire face off. Meanwhile, the sound of “Final Set” from the Challengers Soundtrack was making it all feel even more surreal. Doing her best not to scream, Ravenna demanded of the woman, “What did you do?”

Suddenly, the woman’s Russian accent started to come out more prominently as she grew increasingly nervous about coming up with a passable explanation. “I, uh, it always look like that immediately after.”

Who the fuck was she kidding? Ravenna seethed as she grabbed her purse from the chair she had set it down on and traipsed out of the office like Godzilla looking to stomp everything and everyone in his path. At the receptionist desk, she made a circular motion around her face and finally let the rage out in her voice as she shouted, “I’m not fuckin’ payin’ for this! But you’ll be after I fuckin’ sue you!”

As it turned out, Svetlana (as her name would be discovered later by Ravenna) had placed the “probe” of the “wand”—terms that sounded comically antithetical—on incorrectly, and the result was a particularly shoddy job. Though Ravenna was almost a hundred percent sure that Svetlana would have fucked it up even if she had correctly assembled the tool. In any case, what Ravenna was left with was skin that was permanently scarred. Worse still, after all of that effort and trauma, the pimples she had hoped to get rid of not only continued to attack her face, but she also kept having to endure that same damn phenomenon of one pimple beginning to go away just as another cropped up almost exactly in the same place. On the “bright side,” though, Ravenna did win a rather tidy sum of cash in the lawsuit.

Though not enough to ensure that she never had to leave the house again and risk the inevitable looks and snickers that would get cast her way due to the cocktail hat and attached veil she wore to mitigate the appearance of her permanent scarring. Yes, as it turned out, pimples seemed positively princely to Ravenna in comparison to the facial woes she had to contend with now…and for the rest of her life. Surely, if she had just put up with the breakouts a, er, hair longer, they would have at least stopped by the time she was in her sixties. But instead, these electrolysis scars would endure until her dying day.