Guilty Pleasure Number Whatever “Warning: Sensitivity Offender”

Squeezing pimples. There seems to be this morbid fascination with the dirty sickly off-white gob with a black head that comes out of holes of the face, arms, chest, back etc.  Often, whole important conversations fly by while attention is focused on nose pores with slightly protruding black heads, whitehead pimples, and ripe zits. Ah, how those sick beauties can be squeezed, sometimes spurting their contents almost immediately, sometimes wanting to be coaxed slowly and carefully so that the skin will not break, but the little worms will come out in full. There is nothing more satisfactory than a visible red dot where the raised pimple used to be. The unclean stuff is out of the body; the festering infection has come to a just end. And yes, a measure of sick pleasure has also been experienced.

It is surprising to see how many people are actually affected by it. Lovers make it part of their game, families discuss their issues over squeezing and studying the end result, and friends trust each-other with back-examination and nose black-head pickings. People stand still in submissive poses, bearing pinching pain that otherwise would send them reeling, only because they know their turn will come as well. And because they want to see how big the gob is, the unclean worm that should not be in their bodies.

(My friend once told me that she had found a very big pimple on her grandmother’s back, the likes of which she had never seen before. She had squeezed and squeezed it, heedless of her grandmother’s whimpers, until she was satisfied that there was no more off-white smelly stuff inside the grandmother’s otherwise pristine skin. My friend’s hang-up had always been the fact that she had not inherited that alabaster and wrinkle free wonder, but her mother’s oily mess prone to breakouts and thick blackheads. It had been a treat to find the pimple on that skin and furthermore squeeze it beyond any reasonable time and measure, until she had OD’d on the pleasure.

Listening to that story, I was torn between disgust and curiosity. That night I dreamt that I had found such a pimple upon my belly, and squeezed out the steady stream of thick and oily stuff, which I later realized was my own belly fat. In my dream, I finally saw myself slim. And when awake, I almost wished my unblemished skin to break out so that I may squeeze all fat and impurity out and away from my body.)

It is very easy, very human and very fascinating/disgusting to squeeze pimples. Possibly it is the same with combing hair, flossing or picking one’s nose. In all these cases, a dirty and possibly painful deed is performed, in order to cleanse and beautify the body, satisfying unknown urges in the process. It is very hard to bypass a mirror without wanting to pick at the skin, or not to run hands upon the shoulder and back surfaces hoping for slight bumps and telltale signs. So, embrace your inner squeezer, and be aware that it is lurking inside the surface, always coming out and giving pleasure at the most unexpected times, and connecting people through the most unexpected gestures. Oh well, to each his own.