Here Comes The Mirror Man

www.paulcoia.com

I often end up talking to myself and even though the company’s boring I always win any arguments. I don’t do this just because no one else wants to talk to me - well most of the time anyway - but I caught myself at it again this morning whilst looking in the mirror.

Now it would be pointless for me to get in to a bragging contest about my problems being greater than yours but, whatever your worries, at least you don’t have to see my reflection first thing in the morning. I have one of those faces that look fine in real life but wonky in the mirror, what maths teachers would call unsymmetrical but I like to call Shrek like as I always wanted to look like a movie star.

I did think that my Hollywood looks were getting the recognition they deserve on Wednesday when I took a window seat in Marble Arch and sat with a sandwich. The sandwich wasn’t a great conversationalist so I ate it and noticed a girl looking at me through the window and smiling.

Another two girls did the same and my ego started to inflate but was soon punctured as a hairy builder in a safety vest followed suit. I then realised that the window was tinted, acting as a mirror outside, and they’d been admiring themselves instead of me. Serves me right, but apart from rare occasions like this I’m no vainer than anyone else who looks at their reflection fifty times an hour. On Wednesday, however, I admit I went to see a plastic surgeon.

Before you make assumptions, this has nothing to do with my generous nose which made me hide away in my teens as it grew and now ensures my shoes never get wet in the rain. Nor was it to fix my ears which seem to be getting bigger each day and now receive Freeview and a couple of dodgy German porn channels. If we meet and my ears suddenly prick up you’ll know why.

But I did go for plastic surgery this week and the result of my visit has been a bit problematic as inwardly I still feel like James Bond but outwardly I look as if Oddjob walked all over my face wearing stiletto heels. Each time I look in the mirror at my face full of sticking plasters my wife tells me there aren’t enough of them as she can still just about see me. I think she secretly hopes that when the plasters come off, just like Claude Rains in The Invisible Man, I’ll disappear.

I’ve been stared at in the street and pointed at on tube trains, and to everyone who’s asked I’ve simply said, very quietly, “Face Lift!” That soon shut them up.

The truth is much more mundane of course as I simply had moles removed. Three of them have been sitting on my face since I was little so it was like seeing much loved family pets getting put down. I don’t know what I was expecting but the treatment was as painless and straightforward as life threatening, emergency, surgery can be. Unfortunately they didn’t remove my exaggeration gland at the same time.

I had sat in the waiting room with all sorts of people, some normal others barking mad, and there was the expected sprinkling of lilo lipped Wimbledon Wives dropping by for a bit of plumping, whilst the Botox fairy had obviously been drunk when visiting some. I spoke to a poor soul who was there for his first consult and had eye bags so large even British Airways couldn’t lose them. God help his patients!

Then, after ten minutes, I was shown in to a small room and asked to lay down on the bed. The surgeon, a nice straight talking South African named Fleming, arrived soon after. “Take off your shirt Mr Coia, we don’t want blood all over it and ruining the pattern.” What?

Blood? I hadn’t thought of that. This was starting to get serious. I imagined he’d have a magic rubber which would just erase the moles, but here he was getting scalpels ready. I noticed a crack on the wall above my head. “What about your ceiling?” I asked to change the subject. “Don’t worry”, he said, “it won’t spurt that high unless I make a real mess of it”. I think he was kidding.

After a few minutes with a marker pen, he gave me some local anaesthetic and then proceeded to scrape away. It was over in a few minutes, job done and patient survived, although patient nearly fainted when he was shown the removed moles. I don’t know what I was expecting but these things looked like large M&Ms and I’ll never eat another one again - that’s the M&Ms I mean, not the moles.

I left with instructions on how to change my plasters and smear stuff made from seaweed on my skin which speeds up the healing. So I’m fine till the tide goes out.

The reason I had the moles removed is that they were getting bigger every week and were headed for meeting somewhere around my chin leaving me looking like a chocolate button. So I like to think there were valid, medical, reasons for my visit to the surgeon rather than just my vanity.

But hang on. Writing about it in a blog? Now that really is vain. I must discuss this further. Just me and my mirror.