I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron Read Free Book Online

and the glycolic-acid era and the La Prairie period. One of my good friends once gave me a tiny jar of La Mer cream, which I think cost about a hundred dollars a teaspoon. I still have it, since it is way too valuable to use.
    The point is, I have cream for my face. I have lotions for my arms and legs. I have oil for my bath. I have Vaseline for my feet. I cannot begin to tell you how much time I spend rubbing these moisturizers into myself. But I still get pimples on my face and rough patches on my arms and legs. What’s more, the skin on my back is so dry that when I take off a black sweater it looks as if it’s been in a snowstorm, and the skin on my heels has the consistency of a loofah.
             
    I have no doubt omitted something where maintenance is concerned. The world of maintenance is changing every second, and I may not know about all sorts of things that women my age are up to. (The other day, for instance, I had lunch with a friend who assured me that I hadn’t lived until I had tried having some sort of facial that seems to include a mild form of electroshock.)
    What I know is that I spend a huge amount of time with my finger in the dike, and that doesn’t begin to include all the things I promised not to go into—the pathetic things. I have done any number of things that fall just short of plastic surgery. I even had all the fillings in my mouth replaced with white material, and I swear to God it took six months off my age. From time to time my dermatologist shoots a hypodermic needle full of something called Restylane into my chin, and it sort of fills in the saggy parts. I have had Botox twice, in a wrinkle in my forehead. Once I even had my lips plumped up with a fat injection, but I looked like a Ubangi, so I never did it again.
    But the other day, on the street, I passed a homeless woman. I have never understood the feminists who insisted they were terrified of becoming bag ladies, but as I watched this woman shuffle down the street, I finally understood at least my version of it. I don’t want to be melodramatic; I am never going to become a bag lady. But I am only about eight hours a week away from looking exactly like that woman on the street—with frizzled flyaway gray hair I would probably have if I stopped dyeing mine; with a potbelly I would definitely develop if I ate just half of what I think about eating every day; with the dirty nails and chapped lips and mustache and bushy eyebrows that would be my destiny if I ever spent two weeks on a desert island.
    Eight hours a week and counting. By the time I reach my seventies, I’m sure it will take at least twice as long. The only consolation I have in any of this is that when I’m very old and virtually unemployable, I will at least have something to do. Assuming, of course, that I haven’t spent all my money doing it.

Blind as a Bat
    I can’t read a word on the map. I know we’re on Route 110 heading east, because we just drove past a large sign that said so. Now we seem to be in Fort Salonga. I’m sure Fort Salonga is on the map, but I can’t find my reading glasses so I can’t read the map. One of the nicest things about being about to read a map, which I used to be able to do without reading glasses, is that you’re never really lost if you can find yourself on a map. But those days are over; we’re lost. We hate being lost. I hate being lost, he hates being lost, and our marriage hates being lost. On the other hand, I have to admit, we’re getting used to it. And because it’s my fault (and not my husband’s) that I can’t find my reading glasses, although it’s his fault (and not mine) that there’s no magnifying glass in the glove compartment, I say mellow things like “Well, at least we’re headed in the right direction.” My husband says mellow things too, like “Well, we’ve never come this way before, so it might be interesting.” And he’s right. It might be interesting. Except that it’s very dark