Holy crap if you think about it you’ll understand immediately that is amazing wordplay because this post is about makeup and even though it has nothing to do with relationships or the termination of them you have to at least admire that “makeup” shit I did up there. I feel strangely refreshed.
I was summoned upstate to aid in the production of my nephew’s fifth birthday party. Most of the friends I made post-high school don’t know this about me but as a young man I was a bit of an artist. (read: faggot) I drew and painted and did little else when I had some free time alone. In grade school, classmates would beg me – absolutely beg me – to draw Garfield and Odie, and I would oblige. I could draw just about anything, except girls. I could never draw girls. Isn’t that odd? I drew Sinead O’Connor once, but there was a time when she could be mistaken for a boy. (read: faggot)
Now, the only people who remember my passion for art are my own immediate family. As such, they’re always trying to get me to push my boundaries as an artist. In this case, they asked me to travel to Albany and do face-paintings. Mais, Oui.
I’ve never painted faces before and when I arrived I found the tools provided for me to be, in a word, UNACCEPTABLE. For one thing, there was no yellow makeup and, besides being the color of friendship and valor, yellow is also the color of Spongebob Squarepants. And without yellow, these kids would be without Spongebob. Face painters have been hobbled for less.
My brushes were crude. I specifically requested a range of brushes, all different gauges, including a very expensive ($5,000.00) single-hair paintbrush for the application of finer details, such as the veins in the feathers of a chorus of seraphim I had hoped to paint on one of the youngster’s cheeks. Instead, I was provided with a couple of Revlon eyeshadow applicators and a piece of sponge. I made do. (read: I kicked over a bridge table and punched a hole in my nephew’s birthday cake…for art!)
I must confess I wasn’t really familiar with children’s most beloved comptemporary characters. The Ziggys, the Snuffy Smiths, the Dagwoods, the Shoe’s, etc. So, instead, I just went with my instincts. I painted each child up like an expensive (read: $200 francs) French courtesan. I streaked fiery color across their lids, applied beauty marks by the dozen and, truthfully, these kids looked sexy. Much too sexy to be eating pizza and sitting in filth, anyway.
Sadly, around mid-party the skies opened up and it began to rain. With the makeup streaking down the party-goers faces in thick wet tendrils, the kids all looked like someone just broke up with them. It was really quite beautiful, and I didn’t mind that I wasn’t able to paint my seraphim. Perhaps for my nephew’s sixth birthday, when he’s old enough to appreciate chiaroscuro.
