I am all about helping people advance themselves. Why, just last week I missed the final challenge of Project Runway to see Brooklyn pour at The Room in San Francisco. That is true support. To the right you’ll see an old friend of mine being reincarnated from his college days. They call him the Incredible Hulk. (Worry not about “You won’t like me when I’m angry” jokes. Despite my first shot ever being of 151, I have never been an angry drunk.) Hpnotiq, one of the Hulk’s parents, and I used to know each other real well. A classic scene from a past when we smuggled some Hpno into a USC Welcome Weekend concert:

mayka: [yelling at the concert] HPNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
white girl: [standing near mayka] is that what that is?
mayka: yeah, i mean, it’s not aquafina. wanna try some?
white girl: [after taking a sip] whoa! that’s really good!
mayka: yeah, it’s like fruity cognac. it tastes hella good.
white girl: that’s like what the black people drink!
mayka: [a bit caught off guard] yes. & you’re in compton now.
white girl: oh my gosh, that’s so good, thank you!
mayka: oh, you’re welcome. would you like a cookie?
white girl: no, but thanks!
mayka: yeah, enjoy the concert.

Coincidentally, that was from the same weekend in 2005 when I found the name for theMaykazine.

"The 2nd Amendment: The original homeland security act."

The next day, I drove to Fairfield, the 707, AKA: Hick Town, California. I was scheduled for a free facial, to be performed by Dubya as she acquired her esthetician license for the state of California. The whole experience was surreal. For one, I was about half an hour late because I am that much of a candidate for a GPS console. Sitting down in the room with seven other candidates and their “models,” I was totally tripped out by the ashtray installed in the righthand arm of the vintage beauty parlor chairs. This was not a time where I could have caused a disturbance by retrieving my camera from my bag, however. Models were not allowed to talk. At all. The CA board of estheticians was paranoid of us somehow helping the candidates cheat. Yeah, right, like I’m going to tell Dubya “Don’t forget to not burn my face with the wax!” We were literally there to just lend our faces to the cause of our candidates’ pursuits. And they made us totally hot. Or, more like bothered-looking.

So something funny about being the face model for a person testing to be an esthetician is that you do not get a pretty facial, a pretty makeover, a pretty waxing, a pretty anything. It’s all by the book, and it’s like if The College Board were to kindly supply you with #2 yellow pencils for your SATs. Everything is cheap. Colors are not matched to your face. The wax is gummy, and only sticky enough so that the candidate can strip the minimum seven hairs from your face. The makeup is La Femme. Not even Wet N Wild. La Femme. Have you heard of La Femme until now? Neither had I.

When I got the chance to see my face after the two hour-plus process, I looked a hot mess. Like I was a drunk and haggard lady of the night tripping from side to side on the streets of Reno. Super classy. I resembled something of a geisha. The foundation Dubya had to use was…salmon-y? The blush made me straight-up pink because she had to try ever so hard not to oversaturate my face with the cake of red they supplied. Dubya had to apply this really trashy shimmery gold shadow to my eyelids, but with cotton swabs. And finally, on one eye she applied a ridiculously long band lash. It looked plastic and fake enough to belong on the bust of a wig mannequin. To the other, she applied four sets of single lashes. So no, I didn’t match. And I kept that shit on for the rest of the day! I had to let Bongo see my pretty face. And he still gave me flowers. Aww. Or maybe he was just trying to block my face…

Dubya passed, by the way. And Brooklyn made a very successful Incredible Hulk.