The Layover Trilogy: Lift This

The chin at rest.

My strategy for combating wrinkles, to the degree I have one, is to harness the face-plumping power of ice cream. Even the enormous Estee Lauder wrinkle lifting serum ads that I studied for seven hours in LAX did nothing to persuade me to set aside any of my beer money for a potion. But in the eighth hour, the wrinkle between where my eyebrows used to be had deepened enough to be in danger of silting up. By the time we had trudged off to go sit stark upright in an airborne can for the next twelve hours, I could slip my boarding pass in there and keep both hands free for the carry-on.

But efforts to turn back the spotted hands of time are never successful. Most of them manage to emphasize the very signs of age we're trying to hide. Worse, people who wear makeup are doomed to wear it always, because without it they look drawn and sick and there will be no shortage of people to point it out. Whereas I, who have not worn makeup since age 16, look like shit all the time and everyone's good and used to it. Plus, I've gotten an extra fifteen minutes of sleep my whole life.

It's when people try to combat something as inevitable as wrinkling that they really start to get into trouble. Lipstick begins to migrate up the wrinkles until your upper lip looks like a river delta. By the second face-lift, everything you need to smile with is behind your ears. By the fifth, all your former faces need to be done up in a snood behind your head. People, this is silly. What we need to understand is that we need wrinkles. Wrinkles are our friends.

Because, honey? Your skin is retired. You may still have to put on a PowerPoint presentation but your skin is down at the Legion Hall swapping tall tales. Your skin can't remember if it's Tuesday or Saturday and it's not planning to get out of its pajamas all day. Your chin is now lying in its own hammock and it's never been more comfortable. Your skin used to cling to your skeleton and follow its every move, but now it's free. It's going places. Your bones are only there to offer suggestions.

No longer are you at the mercy of overbearing collagen. If someone taped your elbow skin to the bathroom sink, you could still take a shower and use the toity and be halfway down the hall before having to turn back. Your skin is free, and so are you.

But this is why you need your wrinkles. You're lying there on your side, relaxed, nearly asleep, and your upper lip has just begun to mosey over the pillow. You begin to register the idea that you can actually feel your upper lip wrinkles folding in place. Yes: your lip is pleating up like an accordion. It is. Don't be a hater. Your skin is retired. If you didn't have wrinkles to tuck it in place, your lip would puddle over the pillow and head for the edge of the mattress. Without your gathering stitches, you would have to hoist your upper lip every time you wanted to poke in a Cheeto. Without your wrinkles, your face would billow in the wind. Your ass would flap. Your upper arms would take out a whole row during a standing ovation.

You don't need a serum to lift your wrinkles. You need to lift your attitude. Before it's fallen, and it can't get up.