Botox Follies

Maybe it's because my birthday (Holy shit I'm going to be 49!!!!!! How did THAT happen?) is around the corner, but I seem to be succumbing to stupider stuff than usual.  The stupidest of the bunch?  My recent flirtation with botulism - ok,  Botox.  Now I have always said that there was no way I would let anyone shoot botulism in my head, because, you know...botulism. So how did I find myself one Wednesday evening, in a chair at my hairdressers, meeting a new doctor (it's OK he was just on the Today show!) and then letting him shoot poison in my head?

It all started (as so many things do) on facebook.  The hair salon I go to put up something on their page about a free Botox party.  Never being able to resist the word free, I let my curiosity about medical grade beauty products get the better of me and RSVP'd yes - then promptly forgot about it, as it was over a month away.  I figured I could always cancel if I came to my senses.  Two weeks later I'm at The Salon (really it's called The Salon, it's in Scarsdale and it's fabulous!) getting my hair done and someone asks if I'm still coming to the "Event." (wasn't that a really bad TV show from a couple years back?)  Oh yeah, I forgot to cancel.  Now I'm on the spot, and I think, "what the hell. If it's really free and there isn't some weird gimmick - FREE (with $500 purchase) - I may as well see what all the fuss is about.  I'm one of last of the women I know to bite the Botox bullet.  Everyone loves it.  Maybe I will too." So I say, "Is it really, truly, free?" And,"I'm definitely coming." What kind of crazy woman passes up free Botox?

I check it out and it is 100% free, the doctor is opening up an office in Westchester, in addition to his one in the City.  He's looking for local clients and hoping to spread some good will - and botulism.  So the day comes and P says to me, "Are you really going through with this?  I thought for sure you would have chickened out by now." (ahhhh, he knows me so well.) I would have, but for one little hitch - I told a friend about it and she thought it was a grand idea, so she RSVP'd too, and now I was driving the both of us.  If I was going to be a sniveling free toxin coward, I'd have to admit it out loud to my friend and make her brave the Hutchinson River Parkway at rush hour all alone.  Pride beat out cowardice, as it so often does.

So gentle reader, shaking in my boots (really cute turquoise blue, Frye boots), I climb up into the chair and let the oddly lineless Doctor (who was lovely and quite professional and I have no complaints at all about) shoot me with four shots, right between the eyes. He assured me I was going to become addicted.  I immediately felt as dumb as I have ever felt in my whole life.  I got out of the chair shaken and unstirred.

Now in terms of dumb things, was it as dumb as buying acid in Central Park from some random guy, or dating actors? Well, no... but as I was waiting for the doctor and reading all the possible side effects, I had to contemplate the (very, very, very remote) possibility that I could die from trying to make my forehead look less wrinkley. And I had to fervently hope that my children would make fun of me forever for leaving them motherless in such a stupid way.  Even the minor side effects were alarming, droopy lids, random numbness (I got that one - the tip of my tongue was numb for three days afterwards). My shakiness was more from being scared that I had let my self get sucked in to something so stupid than from the effects of the poison.  I lay awake all night - propped up on pillows so the Botox wouldn't migrate, hoping not to die from my own stupidity and vowing never to participate in this form of stupid American beauty follies again.

It's been two weeks and honestly I don't see that much of a difference. (I think I scared most of the toxin right out of my system by sheer will.) My forehead is a little smoother and I can't quite glare as effectively as before, but if I really concentrate I can still make the mommy evil eye.  I can't imagine paying five hundred bucks for this privilege though.  Once it wears off I think I'll keep my well earned wrinkles where they belong.

Of course later this month my yoga class is doing a group cleanse, so there is always more ridiculousness to come.