Story # 8 Moles with Hair (Class Workshop)

Danielle Orner
Story # 8
03/12/07
Mole with Hair
I have moles on the side of my face that sprout long curly hairs. These moles are dark and protrude out of the skin like misshapen little mountains on otherwise smooth terrain. My brother says that that side of my face (the side with the moles) looks like it got splashed with mud while I was riding my bike through a puddle or something. My mom always inspects the moles whenever we are in public waiting for something. She tries to pluck the long dark hairs out with just her fingertips while scolding me for letting witches’ hairs grow out of my face. The scolding is just playful because what would she do for entertainment while we are waiting in public if she couldn’t challenge herself by attempting to pluck all the hairs from my moles with just her fingertips.
Can you see the moles? They are nestled just below my jaw line and down my neck close to my hair. Usually, I hide them behind my hair, just incase they are not plucked and someone reacts like my mom always warns they will. But today I am drawing your attention to them because they are important to my story.
Don’t get too excited. This is not an interesting story about how my moles turned out to be cancerous or taught me to love my quirky unique self or one day developed magical powers or harbored some miraculous cure for aids or somehow saved me from a nuclear holocaust. No this is a very ordinary story like the kind girls send in to those fashion magazines to be featured in the most embarrassing moments section. You know the ones about some chick who gets her period while riding her boyfriend’s mom’s favorite white horse on their first family outing. And like all those lame little stories this one of course involves a boy. A stupid boy really. One I don’t even really like. You know, the goofy kind with cloths that are just short of being stylish and the inability to just have a normal conversation. Well, this particular boy’s name is Kyle and he gets this glazed look on his face whenever anyone tells even the most obvious joke. He’s a nice boy who wears fade middle school PE shirts and has a hint of dandruff. You know the kind of boy who is smart but wastes his intelligence on things like The Lord of the Rings Trilogy and online gaming.
Despite all his faults, Kyle has one thing going for him; he has a huge crush on me. Not the creepy stalker kind of crush but the love-you-from-afar-while-humbly-realizing-that-I-will-never-be-good-enough-for-you kind of crush. He not like the other freaky guys who demand some kind of recognition because they like you and then decide to hate you because you snubbed their undying nerd love. Like this really fat one guy who had an obsession with the Ebola virus and loved me all through middle school. He got skinny the summer between 8th and 9th grade by switching his fascination with a deadly disease to idol worship of Lance Armstrong and biked every day. He got really pissed when I still wouldn’t date him. Or this other guy who was captain of the sci-fi club and asked me to go to the Rod Run. No Kyle was great because he knew better than to even ask. He just occasionally gave me these shy complements about how much he loved my laugh or thought that I looked like a movie star. So, naturally, I didn’t want to give Kyle any reason to stop adoring me. It’s flattering to know someone feels that way about you and it’s worth making sure you have a fresh coat of lip gloss shinning on your untouchable lips each time you see them to keep that going.
Anyway, the two characters we have here then are love-struck nerd Kyle and my hairy moles. And the setting is onboard a city bus in the sweltering heat of an urban summer afternoon. Not a very romantic or interesting setting I know. I have to take the city bus with Kyle on Wednesday because my stupid mom has this all-important yoga class to go to and can’t pick me up and the regular school bus only goes like five miles away from the school, which is so stupid just like everything else having to do with Washington High. So anyway, Kyle and my moles are riding along in the sticky plastic orange seats and breathing in hot smog that will surely kill us one day (then won’t Mom be sorry). This old lady gets on the bus and I watch her because she is far more interesting than what Kyle is saying about getting a tattoo in Elvish. This lady looks like a gypsy with an ankle-length multi-color skirt and this crocheted shawl thing. She even has a head-kerchief holding in her wiry grey hair. Her face is nothing but wrinkles and the hairiest upper lip I have ever seen on a woman. It is practically a black mustache. She is halfway to being the bearded lady in the circus. I shudder thinking about whether or not she has grandchildren to kiss on the cheek.
The hairy gypsy lady plops down in the seat right across from ours and adjusts her paper grocery bags on her lap. Now there are three characters: infatuated nerd hoping for a tattoo, movie-star-look-alike with hairy moles, and aspiring bearded lady. I must have been staring at the gypsy lady too long because she leaned over to start talking to me.
“You know sweetheart some Charleston Smooth Wax would take care of those hairs for you.” With one hand she reached into her grocery bag and with the other she pointed to my moles almost touching them with her wrinkly fingertip. She produced a yellow tube smaller than a toothpaste tube from her bag. Kyle stopped talking. The lady smiled in a way that made me think she had an ulterior motive besides being helpful. My first thought was to tell her I wasn’t going to take tips on hair removal from a lady who had more facial hair than my father but the words wouldn’t come out.
“Just use it once a week and put on ice cube on the spot before you use it to numb the pain,” she lectured maternally in her gravely voice while pressing the vomit yellow tube into my palm.
“Uh. Thanks.” I turned away and concentrated on staring out the window. The old lady smiled that same smile again and then got off the bus at the next stop. My face felt like it had burning hot wax smeared all over it without any ice cube preparation. Kyle didn’t say anything. We rode in silence for the next three stops before we reached his. He mumbled his good-byes and I thought about telling him he had dandruff. So much for being a movie-star-look-alike with a beautiful laugh.
I threw the tube in the gutter the minute I stepped off the bus and watched it get squished under the bus wheels. When I got home, I attacked the moles with tweezers.