Day off

The sun beats down into my room. I lay shirtless, rolled up in a catlike curl, basking in the warmth. It is the first day in weeks that I have nowhere to be and the first day in three days I can sleep past 6:00 a.m. I am just coming off the set of a two-day Citibank commercial, and although it was an exhilarating experience, I desperately need the rest.

I shift my position slightly, a shooting pain in my head and a flash of recognition. I drank too much last night. The peaceful rest interrupted, I pull myself to my feet and shuffle into the kitchen to fetch a glass of water. It goes down smooth, refreshing.

I continue into the bathroom to wash my face. The water is cool. And as my eyes meet their own reflection, I am struck by the darkness of the circles beneath them.

And then I see it. Red, large, and embarrassing high on my neck, no mistaking its cause, and nothing much to do about it. A giant hickey.

The night comes back to me in pieces. Out with my friend Matt, I had run into an old friend, a girl. We had drank together and smoked cigarettes in the back patio of the bar. She had come over. We had made out. She had gone home. And somewhere along the way, I had received a terrible reminder of what otherwise was a very enjoyable evening.

Normally, I wouldn’t care. I work from home. See the same three people daily-all of whom I could simply explain the situation to and then deal with their ridicule.

“You look like you got hit with a lead pipe,” I could hear them say.

But this was different.

This week, I had meetings with people I had never met. Important people. People who I didn’t exactly want to know that I had a giant middle-school hickey on my neck. Panic.

I try on a collared shirt, desperately hoping that it will cover it. It doesn’t. The best I can muster is by popping the collar up.

No longer am I interested in spending the morning sleeping. I race to my computer. I type in “How to get rid of hickies” and google it. (What did people do before the internet?)

“A hickey is actually broken blood vessels beneath the skin.”

I scroll down.

“It's sort of like a bruise, like if you got hit with a baseball and the impact broke the blood vessels. But instead of being caused by a foul ball, it's caused by the other person's mouth.”

Who writes this stuff?

“Getting rid of them.” Aha!

“Ice is important but only for 20 minutes at a time.” That’s easy. I grab some ice cubes, wrap them in a towel and go back to my computer. “Some people say you should use a comb to spread out the blood vessels. Some say a tooth brush.” I’ll try anything.

Back in front of the mirror, I rinse out my toothbrush and begin to rub it violently against the large red lip shape bruise on my neck. The pain is excruciating but the website warned me about that. I go back to the ice.

I venture out to get a bagel, hiding beneath the popped collar of a blue short-sleeved shirt. I am certain that everyone is staring at me as I order a bagel and bring it back to my house to eat it.

Matt comes over. He is wearing the same clothes as the night before.

“I lost my keys last night,” he says, through the window into my first-floor apartment. “I slept on the stoop in front of my house.”

His misfortune makes mine non-existent. “We have to find them because I need to move Mark’s car by tomorrow or it’s going to get towed.”

Long pause.

“What happened to your neck?”

We joke about whose problem will be solved first.

We have no immediate luck finding his keys so we venture up to the New York Public Library to see a Thomas Jefferson handwritten copy of the Declaration of Independence basically on a whim; me in my popped collar and him calling every car service in the area, asking for lost keys. The friends we meet don’t seem to notice.

Mark’s car now sits collecting its second parking ticket on an adjacent street. I do the toothbrush thing a few more times and by my meeting on Monday morning, the hickey has faded into a shadow. No one notices.

Matt still hasn’t found his keys. I win.

- Zachary Stuart-Pontier