No Lee-Way

Much against her better judgment, Amanda has become a fellow fanatic of Dr Sandra Lee, aka Dr Pimple Popper. “It was just a matter of time,” Saffy said with grim satisfaction. Which means that in our little flat, at any given time, one or all three of us can be found glued to a computer screen watching a particularly graphic excision of everything from an epidermoid cyst to a pore of winer.

            “What I don’t get,” Amanda said recently at lunch, “ is how you would ever let something get that big! By the time it gets to the size of pea, you’d be rushing to the dermatologist, no? Or is that just me?

            “No,” Saffy said. “I am totally with you on this.”

            “Me, too,” I mumbled into my rojak.

Amanda shook her head. “I mean, did you see the recent YouTube clip of the Alaskan girl with that ginormous lipoma in her arm?”

            Saffy dropped her fork of mee rebus back into the bowl. A few drops of red gravy splashed onto the table. “Oh. My. God. The one that just popped out of the arm like a skinless chicken breast?”

            Amanda reached across the table to grasp Saffy’s hand. “Wasn’t that just amazing?”

            “Ay, hallo!” Sharyn moaned. “I’m eating. Can we please not talk about pimple?”

            “It wasn’t a pimple, Shaz,” Saffy explained patiently. “It was a lipoma. They’re different dermatological conditions.”

            “Aiyoh, next time you talk about Dr Lee, I am not coming to lunch with you all!”

            A few days later, during her bi-weekly facial, Amanda remembered the conversation and brought up the topic with her facialist.

            “Oh yah, my cousin told me about Dr Pimple Popper and I’ve been addicted ever since!” Jeanette said as she carefully aimed the steamer on Amanda’s tee-zone. “I think I’ve seen every single clip. She’s amazing! Such a nice bedside manner!”
            “Doesn’t she just?” Amanda murmured. “Sometimes when I can’t sleep, I just watch the clips of the Masked Man, where all she does is extract his black heads and they’re just chatting away. It’s so incredibly soothing. It’s better than a cup of hot milk!”

            “Oh, I love that old man. And she’s so gentle with him. After watching that, I tweaked my extraction technique and my clients all tell me they love my extractions.”
            “Oooh,” Amanda sighed. “Really? You’re extracting me, right?”

            “Sure, but, to be honest, there’s really no point because you have such tight, clean pores – there’s just nothing to extract.”

            Amanda later said that of all the disappointments she’s faced in her life, being told that she has no blackheads to extract ranked way up there. “I was so looking forward to it!” she reported.

            Saffy’s bosom inflated like a life raft. “This afternoon, during the board meeting? I was sitting next to the CFO and all I could do was stare at the huge blackheads on his nose. I just kept thinking why doesn’t his wife say something? How do you let the man you swore to honour and cherish and love to step out of the house with all that gunk embedded in his nose?” Saffy paused and shook her head at the feckless infidelity of spouses. “And the more I stared at his blackheads, the more I could almost see myself using a comdeone extractor to press down on every single one of those blackheads and have the stuff just ribbon out of the pore! It was such an out of body experience!”

            Amanda hesitated and then, unable to contain herself, blurted out. “OK, this was going to be a surprise to all of you, but if I don’t tell you now, I’m going to burst. I just ordered a set of those extractors for us from Dr Pimple Popper!”

            “Shut. Up!” Saffy told her.

            My eyes widened. “The ones that have the Dr Pimple Popper logo stamped on the edge?”

            “Shut. Up!” Saffy repeated.

            Amanda blushed. “No, really. She only delivers within America, but I got it all sent to our New York office, so it’s on its way to Singapore!”

            Saffy clapped her hands, practically bouncing in her seat.

            Who knew that Marilyn Monroe had it wrong all along? As it turns out, it’s not diamonds that are a girl’s best friend, but rather, a metal instrument with a loop at the end of it for pushing out blackheads.

            Sharyn says she’s never been more disturbed in her life.

            “You’re going to be the first person I use my comedone extractor on,” Saffy told her. “I’m seeing some huge blackheads on your nose!”

            “Eeeee! You so sick, one!”