Relieving Extraction

The esthetician had warned her against using her fingernails to squeeze. Because she had stopped biting her nails recently they were extremely accurate, yet deadly in terms of scarring. The acne wasn’t a new thing for her, but she had seen it clear up significantly before she started college and did not understand why during her senior year it had popped up again. The $135 spa facial didn’t do anything for her, despite their complicated explanations behind the zit-zapping laser she had endured. Now it was back to infomercial acne systems accompanied by 60-day money back guarantees.

She felt it developing all day today, was unable to prevent herself brushing her fingers lightly against it. She felt the pressure of that zit building up inside her, the pressure reached down deep below the surface, all the way back to her skull. Both of her presentations were given yesterday, luckily, because she would have been touching her face constantly throughout them. One of her TA’s always seemed to have a new crop of acne whenever he did review sessions and she always found it difficult to concentrate on the material he was presenting while he constantly touched his chin.

There it was, just below the hairline on her right temple. It had developed into a white top-hat sitting on an angry red mountain. She pressed against it with the tip of her index finger and felt the pimple press back with exacerbated resistance. She thought about the latest pamphlet she had picked up from yet another company claiming to know the answer to her acne dilemma. Glaring up at her was a cross section of a giant pimple, this one as big as her hand laid flat against the paper. The pimples pictured weren’t ever sporting a white-domed peak like hers, but looked just as pissed off.

She had learned from this pamphlet that deep down below the angry red mountain there sat a collection of sebum. The word actually made her shudder, it was so disgusting. She could not bear the thought of leaving something with a name so repulsive to sit inside of her. No one could deny it would eventually explode with the right amount of pressure. This giant mountain sitting on her temple would put on a magnificent show of discharging discharge.

In high school she had learned from a friend that the secret to drawing out everything with minimal scarring was using the hooked end of a bobby pin. The bobby pin was her primary method of eradication until she discovered “The Extractor”. One end of The Extractor has a basket that forms a perfect circle around the pustule, forcing everything out and catching all of the slimy pus in one quick motion; the other as sharp as a lance.

She relished the thought of the tip breaking through the barrier of her skin. Sometimes at night, she and the roommates lift up their shirts exposing their backs to one another. They proceed to go to work searching out any blackheads or pimples to pop. Sometimes the pressure is so great that someone invariably cries out against the pain, but rarely does anyone ask to stop.

She pressed her finger against the tip of the lance, and then flipped The Extractor over and sized up the basket. She reached up and touched the zit once more, feeling the hard center blocked up with sebum and smiled at the thought of the way it would feel after it was all over. Her temple would throb a little bit, and if she squeezed too hard some blood would escape. Sometimes she squeezes too hard so that the pimple becomes a scab that scars over and takes weeks to heal, no matter how many times Vitamin E was applied to sink in overnight.

She lined up the basket of The Extractor carefully, making sure that the dull outer rim didn’t block the pore she was attempting to open. She pressed down firmly and didn’t stop until the pimple erupted open, shooting out pus hard enough that it hit the mirror. She smiled because it was over. The scar would be worth the release of the pressure that she felt.