The Laser's Edge

Liesl is such a trouper. "It feels like that jet of water the dentist squirts in your mouth, only you're squirting electricity into my face," she says as Gross makes his way across her forehead. "It's not so bad." Her undereye area and nose are another story. With every laser pulse she white-knuckle grips the ball, her legs go stiff, and her toes curl. I know this is evil, but I have to keep myself from giggling. After a decade of testing some pretty ouchy procedures, I can't tell you how great it feels to have someone else feeling the pain for once—twice, including Emily. Ken holds Liesl's head steady so Gross can stay on exact track as he does one inch, next to another inch, and another....

When it's over, Liesl removes her metal shields, gets up, and looks in the mirror. "Oh my God," she says, staring at the ashen, dotted landscape of her face. She's both fascinated and freaked out. "Holly," she says, eyes imploring, face swelling, "You're doing it too, right?" Misery loves company.

Covered in the numbing cream and metal goggles, I recline, press "Enya" on my iPod, and tell Gross to wake me when it's over. What felt like snapping rubber bands to Em and a dental irrigator to Liesl feels like a Fourth of July sparkler to me. It's a hot, prickly, tickly blast of energy in three-second bursts. My eyes do not water, my feet do not flinch, my fingers do not clench the blue ball. Pain is, after all, in my contract.

Being the true beauty adventuress, I have to outdo the others and take the MiXto to its outer frontier. Gross warns me that the neck area is much more sensitive than the face and takes longer to heal. Are we mice or are we men? I give Dr. G the thumbs-up. But funnily enough, the neck—mine, anyway—hurts less. And the farther down he goes, the easier it gets, because he lightens the amount of energy to "feather" the burning so that there won't be a visible demarcation between the resurfaced skin and the old-surfaced skin.

While he's at it, Gross narrows the beam width and does a second pass over a few acne scars and a chicken pockmark to generate extra collagen growth in the depressions.

As Pam greases me down with the Catrix, Gross hands me postprocedure instructions and says healing in my case will take seven to 10 days because "I lasered you at a 25 percent higher level of energy than Emily and 15 percent higher than Liesl, given the older condition of your skin and your scarring."
In the cab the burning begins. Like I'm holding my face over a gas flame. Liesl calls my cell phone. She's on fire too. "This is good that it's hurting, right?" she asks. "That means it will do something. No pain, no gain?" I tell her that tends to be the rule.

But I have no idea how this will turn out—we're all guinea pigs now. I think of my parents and all the times growing up I panicked over something and how they'd soothe me: "It's going to be okay," and "Everything will work out—I promise." The truth is, they couldn't actually promise anything, and beneath the comforting words they were scared too.

As I step out of my taxi, the May sunshine strikes me (literally and figuratively) as malevolent; this is a procedure that should be done in the gray, cloudy, cold dead of winter. Taking out my aftercare sheet, I shield my face from the rays that stoke what now feels like a flash fire.

This Is A Developing Story

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