I peel off my face, slap on a fresh one, and press out the air bubbles with my thumbs. A length of tubing sprouts from the nozzle, and I feed its end into a hole in the side of the pump. The hole puckers itself to grip the tubing tight. Tossing the old face into the bucket, I unhook the safety and start turning the crank on the pump. It makes a satisfying ratcheting sound and the machine begins its cycle of wheezing inflation and constriction. Fluid is sucked through the tube into the machine, where it gets sterilized and aerated and pumped back into my face. After turning the crank for ten minutes, my arm starts to ache, but the instructions say to keep going for at least twice that time, that any interruption can cause air to accumulate in the tube, which will force the machine to shut itself off, in which case the process will have to start from the beginning. After twenty minutes I finally stop, shake out my arm, and press the button to spit out the tube. The end whips around wildly, though it's not supposed to, and no one has yet been able to explain to me why this keeps happening. Experts and fellow sufferers alike give me blank looks and tell me I must be doing something wrong. Because everything's always my fault; the lights swirling beneath the surface, the syrup seeping through the plaster, the carpet of skin flakes I shuffle through each morning. This entire situation is my fault, I have no one to blame but myself and no number of new faces can mask my chagrin.
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