Yo' Momma

Your mother is so greasy…

that her doctor has been treating her for a disorder of the sebaceous glands for over 20 years. Like most teenagers she suffered from acne, but her pimples didn’t clear up as she reached the end of adolescence. Instead, the patchy colonies of acne became more pronounced and, in places, developed into painful chronic sebaceous cysts. This condition was especially bad on her upper back, shoulders, and neck, and although her face was mostly free from the cysts, she was plagued by an increasingly severe and oily acne that would eventually leave her severely pockmarked. Try as he might, your mother’s doctor could do nothing to cure her condition. Every sort of ointment, astringent, and poultice was used to no avail (this being the 1970s, oral antibiotics for acne treatment were not yet an option). So while by day at her doctor’s office your mother allowed herself to be smeared with creams, each night at home, locked in the bathroom of her parents’ house (and later, secretly late at night, in the shared bathrooms of her college dormitory) she would spend hours regarding herself in the mirror, equally repulsed and fascinated by her condition. She arranged two mirrors so that she could have an unobstructed view of the boils and cysts that dotted her back and shoulders, and when the cysts grew big and painful enough, when they became whitecapped and taut, she would arrange them between two knuckles and squeeze them, milking the hot and smelly pus from them slowly and thoroughly. Painful as it was, she was compelled to do this almost each night.

Nowadays, her acne is mostly under control. She takes Accutane twice daily and has had a series of chemical facial peels to diminish the appearance of her pockmarks. Though she’s no great beauty, now in middle age your mother has finally developed a measure of self-confidence that has been sorely lacking her entire life.