Never trust a woman with a small dark moustache. I certainly don’t, if I’m being altogether honest, which I like to think I am. I mean on a man it’s bad enough but on a woman, well, that’s just…funny…and sad. By far the most interesting woman I ever met with a facial hair issue was my Aunt Camille. She was French but that’s not her fault.
She lived on the outskirts of Paris in a beautiful apartment situated directly behind an abattoir. I spent a lot of my school holidays there, forever scared by the unmistakable pong of pig. But long-timer Aunt Camille had accepted the whiff.
Aunt Camille always wore summer dresses that were far too big for her. From the front, she resembled a large house. She had quite a trendy haircut for a woman of her age but, you know and a tash. And I always used to think; funny combination, funny combination, as you would.
Once, in the middle of the night, I found her sitting on the back porch, perfectly framed by a square of moonlight, overlooking the slaughterhouse.
She was crying.
“Aunt Camille? Is this about your mustache?” I asked. “Look, I’ve got a roll of sticky tape at the bottom of my rucksack – how about we use that to whip that fella off your face and we’ll have you looking as smooth as the back of a spoon in no time.”
Tears were now coming out at quite a pace. They fired down her cheeks like wet pellets.
“Il n’est rien de réel que le rêve et l’amour.” She replied.
But before I had time to ask what she was on about, she promptly lifted up her dress to show me an enormous rash that went right across her belly.
“Oh my god” I say once out loud, once again in my head and then once again into a tissue.
(In a French accent.) “The doctors said it was the biggest they’d ever seen. The even took photos…I was humiliated”.
She looked at me properly, for the first time. Mascara everywhere. Her eyes now resembled two crows trying to embrace.
“Did they give you any cream for it?” I asked.
“Yes”, she mumbled. “They said it would go in a few days”.
“Great,” I said, “well, seeing as we’re both up now, shall we crack open some of the duty-free gin”?
And with that, she squealed in delight, pinched her own cheeks and flashed me a smile whilst inadvertently showing me one of her fillings. A tissue was quickly spat on and then dragged across the two black puddles on her face. Then we sat on the floor, drinking and smoking till the rattle of the early cattle trucks announced time for bed.
I never found out what she was crying about.