There was a tinge of green, right around where gills would be if the Teahead had been a fish. But of course, the Teahead of the August Moon was a fully mammalian human, and the concoction on his face was the latest attempt to correct an unfortunate complexion that periodically oozed zits.
His beauty advisor on all things dermal was his girlfriend Andrea. She got the gook at the Filene’s beauty department, and it was, of course, the very best. The Teahead felt conflicted; he loved and trusted Andrea, but going about the house in green face seemed too much like wearing make-up. The other roommates’ snickering and me composing a song about a giant green frog were almost too much to take.
Looking in the mirror, he sighed and asked, “why me?”
When the phone rang, it was work, “Get in here pronto. The Sargent account is about to blow up any minute.” So into his suit and out the door in a flash, he had one thing and one thing on his mind only: the Sargent account, his first big account at Harpoole, Amstel, and Marston. So ignoring the pleas of roomies and Andrea, he slipped down the street.
He only paused to reflect when he noticed the snorts, wheezes, and funny faces on the platform at the Park Street Station—reaching up; he began to wipe away the green mask covering his face. “Why me,” he asked again.
A stop on the way to work at the Harvard Coop provided a new shirt, but after putting the Sargent account to rights, his boss sent him home, insisting that he looked a bit ill and greenish.
That evening the Monk, our chef and culinary forager extraordinaire, provided a green pea soup and Key Lime pie. All the jokes were off-color. The Teahead swore off cosmetics, scrubs, masks, and all flimflammery, “it’s better to put up with a few zits, damn it!”