While most 12 year-olds were getting braces off their teeth, I was getting them put on mine. Blessed with teeth that didn't want to park in their designated spaces, I was an orthodontist's dream. Heck, one adult tooth decided it didn't even want to come to the party. X-rays showed it was sitting somewhere in my gums way up near my nose. One two-hour surgery where they drilled into my gums and attached a bracket and wire to slowly move it down into place later, and that problem would be solved. During those few years with braces, I actually trained my upper lip to cover them whenever I talked or smiled. In essence, I looked like Stanley Roper whenever I laughed. This process continued for more than three years. Finally, on September 21, 1992, the braces came off. Elated, I remember the day like it was yesterday: perfect weather, enough time to talk a stroll down the railroad tracks by my house followed by a White Sox game with friends that evening (they lost to the Oakland A's). During my final orthodontist appointment, one of the assistants completed the "before and after" photo shoot with the "after" photo of me and my smile.
"Smile," she said.
I pushed forth a smile.
"No, really, smile!" she shot back.
"I am smiling," I said defensively.
She handed me the picture which again showed my Stanley Roper smile. I quietly wondered if this what I looked like for the past three-and-a-half years? Yikes! Having a guy from the neighborhood call you "The Fang" and my own grandfather tell me my smile made him sick...well, those comments certainly left their mark on my fragile ego, so I wasn't exactly smiling even before I had braces. With this new smile, I could easily overcome this, right?
Sensing I was more confident in my skin, my hormones would have none of this and sprung into action. Within a few days of getting my braces off, the dreaded teenage acne made its way into my daily life. Not just a pimple here and there, but countless whiteheads, blackheads and large zits. Over-the-counter medications like Clearasil helped treat these pesky pimples, but did nothing to prevent new ones from moving into the neighborhood known as my face. By the end of 1992, my confidence was back into the toilet. My grandfather followed up on his "Your smile makes me sick" comment with this gem: "Have you been eating a lot of chocolate? Your face is all broken out". Thanks, grandpa. I hadn't noticed.
Again, I withdrew. reluctantly, I went to school and then came home and stayed home. Applying Clearasil to my face my was after-school activity. I even ordered some bullshit product from a late-night TV infomercial called Acne Statin. This proved to be my first foray into the world of snake oil. The product promised clear skin in 60 days. Following all the instructions, I religiously steamed my pores and applied this crap-tastic product every night only for my skin to look red and shiny (and pimply). It's okay, the product said, that's just your skin clearing out its pores. Religiously, I forged on with a goal of August 12th as day 60 -- just in time for high school picture day. Everything would be fine by then! My desk calendar counted down the days during the summer of 1993 and, as you might expect, my complexion didn't clear up -- if anything, it looked worse than ever. I skipped high school picture day.
As my junior year of school unfolded, I continued to withdraw. I made up excuses not to go to school. Thankfully, my mother was full of empathy. She also went through years of acne as a teenager and even into her adult years. She tried a powerful pharmaceutical drug called Accutane twice -- she gave up the first time because of her wild mood swings (a side effect) but, during her second trip, she finally knocked out her adult acne.
One cold autumn morning in 1993, I woke up and walked into the bathroom. As I looked into the mirror, I reached my breaking point. I slipped a note under my mom's door that she claims she still has, "Mom, my self-esteem is lower than the temperature today. I don't want to go to school."
That afternoon, my grandfather took me to the dermatologist, Dr. Gordon. Thankfully, my grandpa kept his chocolate comments to himself, but I'll never forget my initial conversation with Dr. Gordon. He kept peppering me with the question: "Why are you here?" and I replied in turn that my mom wanted me to come blah blah blah. After a few more rounds of the question, he finally said, "You're here because you think you're ugly." I swallowed hard. "You're ugly and I'm going to change that." Perhaps my grandpa and Dr. Gordon both attended the same school of compassion. Having started that day suffering from the lowest self-esteem ever, the good Doctor certainly wasn't helping.
I walked out with two prescriptions that gave me some immediate relief. My cheeks were constantly rosy, but the acne recessed. I went back to school. Seeing that every step forward resulted in two back, my weird habit of uncontrollable vomiting also flared up. What? Yep, every couple months my body decided to vomit for about 3-4 hours straight. Hours before it would happen, I could sense it. Twinges of pain which I lovingly called "contractions" began and continued for hours until finally: uncontrollable vomiting. I'd lose about 5-10 pounds and then gain the weight back only for the process to repeat itself. While my friends were at prom in 1994, I was in the Emergency Room with another vomiting attack. The night of my high school graduation -- I was hugging a toilet bowl barfing my brains out. Doctors scratched their heads and suggested it was psychological. Maybe stress is to blame, they surmised. Maybe I was calling it on myself others suggested. Great, now they think I'm crazy. Thinking it was stress, I started working out and jogging hoping that I could channel away any stress. In 1996, I finally learned the vomiting all stemmed from my appendix being wound around my small intestine -- one surgery later, the problem was fixed. I wasn't crazy!
With a lovely combination of acne and uncontrollable vomiting, you can deduce that I was quite the catch in high school. My only real "escapes" during these "dark years" were the railroad tracks near my house where I could walk without worry of how I looked. Aside from that, I took refuge at my fake radio station I created in my bedroom called "C-103". While most teenagers spent those years dating, partying, socializing, and playing sports, I talked into a tiny microphone in my bedroom. Of course I did this when I wasn't walking a four-mile stretch of nearly-abandoned railroad tracks.
In early-1994, my dermatologist weaned me off my acne medication and put me on something else with disastrous results. The new medicine did nothing to ward off the lovely zits. My doctor doubled my dosage. Still nothing. The next step up for medication was the infamous Accutane which my father blamed for my parent's divorce. Despite his protests, my mother advocated for a prescription. Called by many as the last-resort acne drug, my dermatologist (and father) eventually agreed.
My parents signed a legal waiver acknowledging Accutane's lengthy list of side effects (liver problems, vision problems, mood swings, depression, suicidal thoughts, birth defects, seizures, chapped lips, bloody nose, among others). Each pill contained the ominous warning symbol: a pregnant woman with a line through it. It was a scary reminder of the dangers of Accutane, but one that didn't phase a 16 year-old boy with plenty of zits, but zero self-esteem.
Dr. Gordon's four-month treatment process started with a bang: I had a frequent bloody nose, constant chapped lips and bloodshot eyes. On top of that, I spent one Saturday morning each month getting my blood drawn at our doctor's office so he could monitor my cholesterol and liver enzymes. Drinking alcohol while on Accutane was another big no-no and my blood work likely checked for that as well. To my credit, all my blood work came back well -- my cholesterol actually decreased (perhaps a side-effect of over-fasting in advance of my blood work). What also became routine was my moodiness. It would be disrespectful to say I was in a bad mood because I generally was in a piss-poor mood complete with a huge side dish of anger. If my friend Matt would slam on his brakes while driving us to school, I could feel the rage envelope my body. At times, I thought I could actually see red...I was that angry. I withdrew further from my friends and day-to-day life. Watching television, walking on the nearby railroad tracks and firing up my fake radio station continued to occupy my abundance of free time. My model train set in my basement even became too much for me -- whenever the train would fall off the tracks, I wanted to throw these expensive plastic model trains across the room. I steered clear of that. On the positive side, I should mention my skin became soft -- almost baby soft and anyone who touched my hands always expressed shock at how soft my skin was. That side effect was actually a blessing. People always grabbed my hands in disbelief. What lotion do you use? Embarrassed, I kept any info about Accutane to myself.
One thing that I made sure to do during these months: avoid mirrors. Believe it or not, I avoided looking into a mirror from mid-January 1994 until one fateful late night in May 1994. It was not easy and took great skill to avoid seeing my reflection. It started when I couldn't get our bathroom medicine cabinet to close. After some hunting, I discovered the cause (the chain around a pair of nail clippers prevented the medicine chest from closing) and made sure this happened daily. Trips to the bathroom often involved not turning on the light -- the light from our bathroom skylight was all I used. Hot showers guaranteed the mirror would be full of steam when I exited. This process was actually quite simple. Since I lacked much facial hair, it was easy to postpone shaving and, when I did shave, I did so with the glow from the skylight. I even combed my hair happened with the lights off thanks to the skylight. Somehow I managed to exist without having any clear idea how my face and overall appearance looked. My brother started questioning why our medicine chest was always open, but I continued on my quest. "I don't know," I would tell him. The only way I could tell there was any progress was when my mom would join me for breakfast before school. As I finished my bowl of sugary cereal, I would catch her staring at me -- in particular, my complexion. After I angrily called her on it one morning, she moved into stealth mode. Whenever she visibly took inventory of the pimple farm on my face, she made sure I didn't know about it. The urge to look into a mirror heightened one day when my mom announced how she could see the medicine was working. Still, I resisted. All the while, I juggled wild mood swings and suicidal thoughts with trying to be a teenager.
It's fitting that the Friday night before Memorial Day weekend, I decided to play radio in my bedroom late that evening. My friend Matt let me borrow his new CD: Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers Greatest Hits, so I had the perfect excuse to play radio. After starting the show with "Mary Jane's Last Dance", I ended the 90-minute cassette/radio show with "Learning to Fly". While ejecting the Petty CD my from five-disc changer, I carefully worked to keep from my putting my fingerprints on the disc. I slid my index finger into the hole in the center of the CD while removing it. While doing this, I flipped over the disc and exposed the reflective side. In all, I saw my reflection for the first time in five months. After all these orchestrated moves to avoid seeing myself, I finally and unexpectedly saw my reflection. It was the equivalent to avoiding gluten and then mistakenly biting into a rogue crouton hidden in a Cobb salad. Shocked, I immediately pulled the CD away from my line of sight. Almost as quickly, I pulled it back and then stared back into the cylinder. I could not believe what I saw -- rather what I didn't see. My complexion completely cleared up. No more red spots, whiteheads or scars from popped pimples sat on my face. None. I was stunned. Absolutely stunned. I continued to stare into this Tom Petty CD like a detective looking for evidence of acne. Having found none, I quickly opened my bedroom door and made a trek into the bathroom. Without hesitation, I turned on the lights. To my surprise, that same mirror I avoided for the previous few months confirmed what Tom Petty's CD revealed: clear skin. It was a solid couple of years since I was pimple-free, so I just continued staring and studying my face. For the first time in years, I felt a sense of calm about my appearance.
Having shed the proverbial "face for radio", I entered my final year of high school without a fear of how I looked. I went to senior picture day without hesitation. At this time, I noticed a change in the behavior of one of my friends who also battled acne. On the daily drive to school, he routinely mentioned his suicidal thoughts. It scared me, but I was flattered he shared the dark place he was in with me -- I didn't share that with anyone. One night at a Taco Bell parking lot, he continued to tell me about how thought of ending his life and that he thinks his medicine might be to blame. I confided in him that I had similar thoughts and that Accutane was the likely cause. He turned to me and almost burst into tears. "That's what I'm taking!" It was the first time I admitted to a friend of the storms that raged within me. While I don't think I saved my friend's life, I feel like I gave him permission to be okay with where he was and reminded him of the light at the end of this dark and ugly tunnel.
Being pimple-free didn't translate into an immediate self-esteem boost, but it was a start. Slowly, I emerged from my shell where I hid for the previous three-plus years. Sitting in a room and talking while playing music in my bedroom (at my fake radio station) provided me the comfort blanket I needed during my awkward teen years. Truly, I don't know what I would have done to fill those months of self-induced seclusion. Playing radio didn't save my life, but it certainly helped.
After high school, I managed to turn something that was a refuge and then parlayed that into a career. I talked my way into a radio internship in 1995, got hired a year later and remain working in radio today...some 27 years after having those braces removed and 25 years after throwing away my bottle of Clearasil. So, yeah...that's how I got started in radio....