Snotty is the New Sexy
For the first time since I turned 21, I declined an invitation to a beer festival last weekend. Despite my love of hand sanitizer and vaccinations, last week’s email dumper had left me a parting gift: the flu. Ten days later, I found myself still aching and exhausted, and also stir crazy. So when I was asked to a Beer Week event last night, I dragged my diseased ass out of bed to go.
I pulled on a hat to hide my dirty hair (washing it sounded like more effort than my post-fever body could handle), hitched a ride with a friend and found myself in the middle of a crowded bar holding a beer I didn’t actually want to drink.
And like so many nights in my life, I was trying to act like I felt confident and pretty when in reality I felt hideous and disease infested. Normally, I try to hide my insecurities in these situations. There was no hiding this. Every time I smiled I wondered if my nose would drip onto my upper lip. Laughter gave me a fear of choking on my own phlegm. And my nose was so chapped that I worried it would crack and bleed mid-sentence. All around me there were girls without hats, girls their clean hair and their snot free noses. And it genuinely pissed me off.
I wasn’t mad at these girls, I was mad at me. I was mad that I could barely keep my eyes open at 8 o’clock at night. I was mad that my head felt five times bigger than its normal size. I was mad that I was completely incapable of a coherent thought beyond “do I have enough tissue with me to last the night or am I going to have to start blowing my nose into cocktail napkins.”
At the end of the night, I came close to resting my head on the filthy looking bar just to keep the room from spinning. I could rally no more. My beer week was over.
As my ride collected his credit card from the bar, I saw an attractive man leaning against the wall talking to a girl he had clearly just met. She flicked her hair. I coughed up something. She reached out to seductively touch his arm. I pulled a wad of Kleenex out of my sleeve.
I envied her. She felt pretty.
Clearly this was not my night to be enchanting and engaging.
Lesson learned: First impressions last a long time. So do flu germs.