Faces are greenest when people are children. In this world, as you grow older, the richness fades to a paler, lime-like green. There's an awkward stage when it becomes vomit green, and a heartbreaking stage when you become so pale your face is almost translucent.
If you smile a lot, the lines on either side of your eyes become super pale. If you worry, the lines between your brows do the same. It's very easy to tell what people are like, or, rather, how they've acted in the past.
It's not only these small expressions of emotion that change the colour of your face. What most people don't know is that there's another very important reason for the quickening of a face's under-saturation. It happens subtly to the nicest of people. Most believe it's out of their control, but that's not true. The thing is, nice people are always polite. Or over-enthusiastic. Many are afraid of criticism. Or they want it more than anything, but are too busy being nice, so nobody dares say a cruel word to them, because they're afraid of being the bad guy. The thing about fear is that it's the last thing anybody admits to. Well except for love, but of course I'm too afraid to talk about that.
Unlike all the other emotions, fear is not quite so attatched to one's facial colour palette. It comes in the form of little flying fear fish. They swim behind cheekbones and eyeballs, between all the other emotions, bobbing to the front of your face and sucking colours out to feed themselves. And of course nobody talks about this, because we're too busy being afraid of these little tiny fish. As they bite the colour away, there's a fuzzy buzz kind of feeling, like when you drink too much coffee and all your brain cells are jumping about sporadically but not really holding one another together into real thoughts. Actually, coffee fuels these fish. And so many people drink far too much coffee. This means everyone stays half awake, half tired, very very casual, too cool, carefully not seeming very excited about anything, but secretly dying of anticipation and unleashing this in small incredible bursts, on the rare occasions when they feel comfortable enough to say completely and utterly what you really think. This is when the fish fall out of your tongue. It doesn't hurt, and you can't see them, but you can feel something very vulnerable in the air in front of you. It's just the fish. They like it out there. Public air is so much clearer and more comfortable to swim in than the murky air in people's heads. Children unleash hundreds of fish per day. When they're waiting by the supermarket, afraid of that dog off it's leash, yelling 'MUMMY I'M SCARED HELP ME' and hugging the nearest leg, fish are flying all over the carpark. When a scooter flies past an unassuming toddler on the grass, and it screams and carries on like there's no tomorrow (which is true, tomorrow never happens, man. Ask Janis Joplin when you finish this life), fish are flooding out like rain. But then their heads are clear, and they go on being alert and all jolly and dandy and things of that nature for the rest of the day.
Adults don't let this happen so much, they're too polite. Mutually polite, though, so perhaps it's ok. Is it? They sip their coffee and smile and compliment one another, though everybody knows Sally's got just as much green face paint on as Alex does whiskey in his teacup. Very late at night, Alex and Sally get very drunk together, and they let fish fly all over the joint. It's a relatively rare and liberating moment, and they wander why they're not like this all the time. They come very close to admitting their fears of commitement and intimacy, but instead opt for casual sex and scutter away quickly the following morning.
For the rest of the week, Sally takes extra care to apply lots of very thick face paint between her eyebrows. She's been sitting on the couch watching Dr.Phill and pretending not to wait for Alex to text her, or phone her, or telepathically contact her, or send her a message somehow through her daughter's baby monitor. Yes, she's young to be a mother, but she's mostly sensible, except when it comes to relationships. She gets bored of Dr.Phill, because it's a little bit shit, and turns her stereo up very loud, singing along to the White Stripes' 'I've been thinkin' bout my doorbell, when you gonna ring it, when you gonna ring it?'. Fish fly out every so often, because some
For the rest of the week, Sally takes extra care to apply lots of very thick face paint between her eyebrows. She's been sitting on the couch watching Dr.Phill and pretending not to wait for Alex to text her, or phone her, or telepathically contact her, or send her a message somehow through her daughter's baby monitor. Yes, she's young to be a mother, but she's mostly sensible, except when it comes to relationships. She gets bored of Dr.Phill, because it's a little bit shit, and turns her stereo up very loud, singing along to the White Stripes' 'I've been thinkin' bout my doorbell, when you gonna ring it, when you gonna ring it?'. Fish fly out every so often, because some
of these lines are the things she's been thinking, but has been too afraid to admit to herself, let alone say out loud. She tears up a little when the words to 'Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground' come on, as Jack sings about how 'every breath that is in your lungs is a tiny little gift to me'. She looks over at the tiny child on the other side of the room, and thinks about Alex, and how she wishes all sorts of love could be as simple as the love for a child.
She's spent too long waiting for something to happen, sitting inside the door and eating biscuits instead of just bloody opening it. Everybody knows you can't sit around waiting for things to happen. You have to live a different way. She'd like to meet someone who lives that way. But mostly she'd like to be that way. But then it's five years later, at her daughter's birthday party. The kids are playing kiss chasey in the backyard. They squeal and yell, and again, fish are flying everywhere after each nervous brush on each soft little cheek, very red against such green young skin. Sally sits by the window and worries that she might be encouraging too many loose feelings. Too much inappropriate freedom. What a silly thought. But she still has it. Why? And when her daughter comes inside, her cheeks are tomatoes, but she fills them with apples and bananas and strawberries. Sally, on the other hand, hasn't eaten since breakfast. She's been too full of coffee, again.
She's spent too long waiting for something to happen, sitting inside the door and eating biscuits instead of just bloody opening it. Everybody knows you can't sit around waiting for things to happen. You have to live a different way. She'd like to meet someone who lives that way. But mostly she'd like to be that way. But then it's five years later, at her daughter's birthday party. The kids are playing kiss chasey in the backyard. They squeal and yell, and again, fish are flying everywhere after each nervous brush on each soft little cheek, very red against such green young skin. Sally sits by the window and worries that she might be encouraging too many loose feelings. Too much inappropriate freedom. What a silly thought. But she still has it. Why? And when her daughter comes inside, her cheeks are tomatoes, but she fills them with apples and bananas and strawberries. Sally, on the other hand, hasn't eaten since breakfast. She's been too full of coffee, again.
By the time Christmas comes around, Sally's face is so translucent that she has to wear a big green grinch mask, and pretend it's all part of a big Christmas joke. Well it kind of turns into one anyway, because she looks hilarious. But then she's too embarrassed of her face, her vulnerable, honestly embarrassingly pale, fading cheeks, that she keeps the ridiculous mask on. She looks on the Internet and finds a place where other adults like her keep their masks on and work in a big tall office building every day. She buys a grey, well ironed business suit and manages her way to the drab old city and up the elevator to the 32nd floor. Every day she goes downstairs to smoke her cigarettes with the other grinch-like busy big business people. The ones with the cleanest suits of all quietly stare at the adults with grouch masks, huddling around the rubbish bins on the other side of the street. The grouches sometimes ask grinchy old Sally if she'll bum them a dart before the more intimidating people get there. She looks at the ground and pretends she can't hear them. She feels a bit guilty but not enough.
Then on a strangely sunny day in February, she has one of the worst coughing fits of all time, there's blood, and she feels her body falling toward the ground. Siren sounds grow louder as the grouch quickly manages to steal the rest of her cigarettes. Her mask falls into the gutter, and her loose clear skin is exposed, full of thousands of tiny fish. The police arrive and take her to the hospital, then to the White Lady Funeral company, then the pier where each flake of her delicate skin flies off over the ocean, so clear and so thin it can hardly be seen in the wind. The priest tallies up each fish, and writes the humungous figure on a nice recycled piece of paper. He folds it in half three times and places it under her grave stone. Whatever happens, and whoever or whatever looks after her now, will know just how many fears she didn't let go of. Even the priests don't know what happens with all this, but that's why Ani DiFranco sung 'what if God's testing us? What if it's true? What are you going to do?'. The grouch doesn't listen to Ani DiFranco. He finishes Sally's pack of cigarettes, and pretends he's got no control over whether or not he stays green forever. He sews his grouch mask onto his face with his dirty shoelaces.
Then on a strangely sunny day in February, she has one of the worst coughing fits of all time, there's blood, and she feels her body falling toward the ground. Siren sounds grow louder as the grouch quickly manages to steal the rest of her cigarettes. Her mask falls into the gutter, and her loose clear skin is exposed, full of thousands of tiny fish. The police arrive and take her to the hospital, then to the White Lady Funeral company, then the pier where each flake of her delicate skin flies off over the ocean, so clear and so thin it can hardly be seen in the wind. The priest tallies up each fish, and writes the humungous figure on a nice recycled piece of paper. He folds it in half three times and places it under her grave stone. Whatever happens, and whoever or whatever looks after her now, will know just how many fears she didn't let go of. Even the priests don't know what happens with all this, but that's why Ani DiFranco sung 'what if God's testing us? What if it's true? What are you going to do?'. The grouch doesn't listen to Ani DiFranco. He finishes Sally's pack of cigarettes, and pretends he's got no control over whether or not he stays green forever. He sews his grouch mask onto his face with his dirty shoelaces.
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