August 22, 2003
face nipple
Those of you who have seen me in person already know that, in addition to the disfigurations of a short, flat nose that renders my face two-dimensional, a pair of bushy eyebrows that yearn incestuously for each other, a pair of Asian eyes that, snake-like, avoided the extra development of eyelids and yet somehow manage to close anyway, and a mouth that was originally engineered for someone with a head four sizes smaller, I also happen to have on my left, marshmallowy plump cheek, an extra nipple.
No, really. I swear. An extra nipple.
It's an odd growth that started when I was two years old or so, a small, raised, pink bump that grew larger and larger until it was about a centimeter across. The skin there is different than the stuff that pooches across the rest of the ugly mug. It's much, much darker, much redder, and much less soft. If you run your fingers across it, it feels like someone pasted a small block of velvet on a piece of cardboard, glued it all to my face, then shaved it.
It's always been there. I've stopped thinking about it. When I was younger, I was acutely self-conscious; now that I'm older I realize there are a lot of other things about my face that don't make any sense either, and that taken as a whole, there's an odd kind of harmony about the entire "random nipple on left cheek" phenomenon. When it first grew in, my parents -- being first time parents -- were anxious, and took me in to a plastic surgeon to have it removed.
"She were so brave," Mom says proudly to all who ask. "She sitting on the tabur," (table) "I think, oh, so hurt, she will cry, but she sitting up so straight and looking so serious, and she never cry or complaining." She always emphasizes that I sat straight, as though this is a vitally important insight into my character.
In all the years, it never seems to have occurred to her that the plastic surgeon, operating on a 3 year old, might have had the common sense to apply a local anaesthetic. And that the straightness and seriousness might have been the glassy, inattentive stare of an intellectually negligible child, attempting to count to four with pauses in between to stare at air molecules.
I've never disillusioned her. And anyway, the growth grew back. My parents, being pragmatic philosophists and oblivious to the oxymoron, decided that it was meant to be there, and let it be.
Of course, that didn't mean that other people did. In grade school and middle school, children have a refreshing bluntness with their curiosity. When a person heaves into view with something different about them -- a differently colored eye; a disability; poor dress sense -- a child will stare fixedly and make a straight-forward comment. "You look stupid," for instance. "Your eyes are squinty." "Are you pregnant?" "You have a bug on your face." This, I can deal with. Children are small. They can be squished.
Once children become high schoolers however, social niceties begin to take a fell and terrible hand in their behavior. Gone are the direct stares and the forthright remarks about your personal appearance. In their place are sidelong glances, giggles, and carefully coy questions that miss being subtle like a brick misses being tender.
The one benefit to this new tactic is that the question, "What the hell is that blob on your face?" becomes a thing of the past. Until, that is, college. Recall that I went to a music conservatory for my degrees. In the main, music students who actually go as far as to enter a music conservatory generally have the social skills of your more ferocious Pomeranians, and tend to treat their objects of curiosity with the lusty, animal directness used by that same Pomeranian towards particularly shag-worthy legs.
So college, and my first encounter with a freshman, who stared at my face and demanded, "What's that red splotch on your cheek? Is it a birthmark? Can I touch it?"
And, taken aback, I blurted the first thing that came to mind. "It's a nipple."
Clear your mind of any impression that this answer dissuaded him from wanting to touch my facial bumps. Quite the contrary. However, it did give me a new, succinct answer to give people who asked -- and many asked, those first few days -- until my schoolmates had grown accustomed enough to my face that it no longer even registered on their awareness.
It has been years since college, and out in the real world, few people are so tactless as to ask directly about facial flaws. Most grown-ups know that for every remark they make, there's an equally blistering home truth about their own faces that can be shared in turn. If they know me well enough, they also know that I'll have no compunctions in sharing it with the world.
A few months ago, I glanced in the mirror and actually noticed the nipple for the first time in weeks. I inspected it. It was different. It was redder, for one thing, and the shape of the damn thing had changed. It was puffier, like it was infected.
I forgot about it and went on with life.
A few weeks after that, I noticed it again. This time it was redder still. It was getting marginally bigger. And, odd, it was getting bumpier and harder.
Out of sheer curiosity, I scheduled an appointment with my doctor, who referred me to a dermatologist. The dermatologist, a pleasant, charming man, did a three millimeter punch biopsy. I bled copiously, stuck a bandage over the new hole in my cheek, and ambled happily to Aikido.
For the period of a month, I had no word.
Today, word.
"The lab was confused," the doctor explained, in the middle of apologizing for the delay. "They weren't quite sure what to make of it. The sample was abnormal, but not abnormal enough to be melanoma -- you don't have melanoma, we think -- but it wasn't normal, either. It was ... unusual."
"Yay!" I chirped. I'm unusual. I have a nipple on my cheek, and that's unusual too. I'm all-around unusual. I felt a warm glow of pride.
"So they sent it to Stanford to get a second opinion, and their opinion was that it was also strange. You've had this since childhood, you said?"
"Since I was two. Or three." My nipple wasn't only unusual, it was strange. I patted it affectionately.
"Hm. And the last time you had it removed?"
"It grew back," I supplied, helpfully. "We just left it. It seemed emotionally attached to me."
"Well, anyway, Stanford agrees that it's probably not melanoma, but they strongly recommend that it be removed immediately, so we'd like to set up a plastic surgery appointment for you in Santa Clara."
"They're going to just ... remove it?" the Guy asked dubiously when I told him about it, a few minutes later. "They're just going to make a hole in your face?"
"I already have holes in my face. There's just going to be one more. Besides, it's plastic surgery. It's not like they're just going to hoe it out and leave it."
There was a small, thoughtful silence. "Plastic surgery? Are you going to have something else done while you're at it?"
Another small silence, this time on my end. It wasn't as pleasant as the one that had just taken place. "Are you saying I should have some other plastic surgery done?"
"Er...no!" This was the sound of a belatedly smart man, scrambling for cover. "I just thought...."
"Because if you are, I should warn you that you're walking out on dangerous territory right now."
"I wasn't--" The Guy giggled nervously. "I should, um, go. I have to get back to work."
"Very dangerous territory," I said ominously.
The Guy backpedaled and hung up. Behind me, one of my coworkers was attempting to smother mirth in his computer screen.
It occurs to me that breasts are to women what balls are to men. I mean, think about it. The shape is about the same. Each gender has a pair each. And if breasts are the feminine equivalent to balls, the nipple must be the distilled essence of breastness. Balls-ness. "He has balls the size of Texas." "She has breasts the size of Canada." It could be an entirely new wave in the popular culture of language.
Asian chick, two o'clock. And check it out: she has nipples.