I was wholly unprepared. No one had warned me. I hadn’t even imagined it. One day, however, I looked in the mirror and I saw the cheeky bastard: A vertical lip line.
Where did that slick devil come from? He arrived out of nowhere. He had clearly been preparing his gruesome appearance for sometime, just ready to materialize on the left side of my upper lip.
He wasn’t horribly prominent — except when I pursed my lips. But he was still there. Undeniable and distinct, like some sort of lip antenna.
I had been moisturizing for years but had always focused on the areas known to wrinkle: forehead, corners of the eyes, neck, etc. Nobody told me to pay any care to my upper lip. I still occasionally got pimples there; how could it be the first part of my face to wrinkle?
I googled wrinkles on upper lip and learned the term “vertical lip lines,” which are also called “smokers lines.” A dark photo of a leathery face, lips scowling from the center of a web of wrinkles, accosted me. I shuddered.
I comforted myself with the thought that the photo was merely a scare tactic used by sellers of cosmetics. But why, when I searched for vertical lip lines, did I see so much attribution to smoking? I never smoked; why am I getting smoker’s lines?
I thought back. My mom never had vertical lip lines. Maybe I got them from my father? I didn’t remember ever seeing them on him.
I thought of a woman I knew, just a few years older than I, who has them very distinctly. I wondered when hers first appeared. Had she battled them, or simply just accepted their arrival?
Then I thought, I am being silly. What is this, vanity? George Sand said that “Vanity is the quicksand of reason.” Three constants in life are sickness, aging, and death. Aging is part of life. I should just accept this new sign of aging.
But I don’t have to like it.
What to do now? No matter how many serums and moisturizers I saturate my upper lip with, that bastard is here to stay. And he’s undoubtedly already invited his friends.
Perhaps I should name him.
How about a dastardly name like Mortimer or Vincent? Or a droll name, like Dudley?
No. This may be the first time I’m seeing my Vertical Lip Line, but certainly won’t be the last. I may try to hide him or even squash him with a dermal filler, but he will never truly disappear. He is a part of me and shall forever be.
I shall name him . . . Ernest. As in Ernest Hemingway. As in Oscar Wilde’s The Important of Being Earnest, but without the a. Earnest means “grave, important; a serious and intent mental state.” It’s an intellectual name. A writer’s name. It’s perfect. Meet my Vertical Lip Line, Ernest.
