My face has begun to exfoliate. It’s not the peeling of large pieces of skin that I imagine. Only tiny, dark color pin point dots of skin begin to rub off when I wash or touch my face. I begin the day with certainty that I won’t attend the night’s parties. My face is still inflamed and splotchy. I take the service elevator at my condo rather than run into people in the building. In the afternoon, I venture to the hair salon for the appointment I rescheduled from yesterday, hoping I’d present a better public face today.

In the hours that I’m at the salon (yes, hours!), the redness in my face begins to look amazingly less abnormal. The remarkable transformation in a matter of hours makes me think someone upstairs knows how much I hate to miss anything. My stylist who tells me “Your face looks so different” says there is no reason to miss the night’s parties. When I protest that I can’t put make-up on my face to hide the effects of the laser, she says “You look better now than you did with make-up.” Wow, I’m starting to think I used to look even worse than I thought. Apparently, Dr. Mondello works wonders.

I decide to attend at least one of the two parties to which I was invited – the one which will be less of a singles event. No one mentions anything about my inflamed face. And while I’m worrying about my face, the veneer the dentist put on my tooth this week falls out as I’m eating—go figure. Even though I’ve decided against it, a call from the second party leads me to show my face there, too. Again, no one looks at me as if I’m a freak or burn victim. While I don’t think the repeated comments of “Amy, you look hot tonight” had anything to do with the inflammation in my face, from the inflection of surprise in people’s voices, I do think the positive changes in my face were largely responsible for the comments. I think I like it!