MAC

Today I went out, mostly shopping. I checked out an area with a bunch of art galleries that's not far from where I live, and I had lunch, but I was still feeling pretty off my game from having been sick, plus I had tried my hair curly which was a bad mistake (awkward haircut last week that I'm still coming to terms with - too high on top, too flat on the sides). It was good to check out the neighborhood, but mainly it was full of pretentious wankers, the lunch wasn't that good and was really expensive, and all in all I think if you wanted that kind of experience Woolahra would be a better bet.

Then I went into town - walked to Central and then took the train. I meant to get off at St James, but was reading a book and the first station I was in any way aware of was Circular Quay. I'm not sure how I missed two entire stops, except maybe it was the cute but too young guy who got on the train all in a fluster and was sighing a lot - perfect opportunity to strike up a conversation but because I was having a bad hair day I just buried myself in my book. I got off at Circular Quay anyway and thought, must be some reason I was brought here. But I still haven't worked out what it was.

I used the loo, went over to see where you can buy opera tickets because I thought they might have cd's, but no, walked past a crowd watching some African musicians and thought how Ok Go was just so much more into their music and so much more powerful than these guys were, even though rock and roll drumming originates in African drumming. It was loud, and all, but the drummer guy was letting the machine do all the work for him, he looked completely slackened and was grinning boredly and lazily. Did not rock. Then I hopped a bus up the hill and actually got to where I was going.

My mission was to buy a Barber of Seville highlights CD and a full black skirt for wearing to work. No success. My main supplier HMV was having a closing down sale, of all things! And Fish records down by Martin Place had just, just closed when I got to the door, so I'll have to try tomorrow. The black skirt mission - looked through a whole entire floor of clothing at Myer but apparently we ladies are not allowed to wear full black skirts this season, only incredibly idiotic looking grey smocks with black leggings. I saw old, old women wearing this outfit, and one girl whose body filled out the loose grey smock - honey, we can tell! So I started just meandering aimlessly, thought of how I could use a new lipstick colour and thought of hitting the Revlon section at the Soul Pattinson chemist at the end of Pitt St Mall (probably not a Soul Pattinson - Sydney trainspotters, include all corrections in the comments below).

But ended up in David Jones. Went by the Clinique counter thinking I would get some Clinique stuff, but they wouldn't help me, three of them were clustered around a table talking, and another was gripping two lip pencil boxes for dear life and saying to a customer, "I'm SO sorry, I'm really sorry." Don't know what that was about but it looked like the start of a bad scene. So I just drifted off. To see if someone else cared about my custom, and would serve me and take some interest. Guess what? One did.

At the Mac counter, a handsome man with an apron full of brushes smiled at me immediately upon my walking up, and then directed a saleswoman my way. She was just gorgeous, one of those small, dark-haired, big-eyed pixie women who usually have some Lebanese ancestry in their background. And very business-like and nice. I explained that I had been buying grocery-store make-up, but was ready to upgrade, and was after some powder but with more coverage than my current one has.

Turns out powder was not really what I needed. Since we were going to experiment, she sat me down in a chair and started bringing things over to try. This was exactly the right thing for her to do, because I was in a mood to seriously reward whoever paid me a bit of attention and gave me good service. She had such patience that we not only tried two different lipsticks with two different lip liners, we went back and tried the first one a second time because she liked it but I wasn't convinced.

Under her expert hand, while I was staring into her very blue beautiful eyes (I was sitting so close to her that it looked like she had five or six blue beautiful eyes), my black circles went away. My wrinkles around my eyes became non-accentuated. The redness at the end of my nose and above my lip, remnants from the cold and blowing my nose so much, simply disappeared and became a landscape of contoured glimmeringness. She even powerdered on some blush to finish the look so I could continue shopping and not have to duck into a ladies' room to make repairs. I bought everything. Even the moisturiser with which she began. Not the blush, actually, but everything else, including the lippy that she didn't think was the right colour but I still liked, maybe for evening.

Department-store make-up is one of those things that only comes into my life when I have money. I have been both rich and poor, and I know from the ups and downs that I always buy books, no matter what; I buy CDs when I start to feel comfortable; and I buy department-store expensive make-up and skin care products when I feel very rich indeed. I know it's all the same as the grocery-store stuff, I know a moisturiser is a moisturiser, I know you don't need two different foundation products (one for skin, one for eyes), I know all this very well because I used to work in the industry having once developed a web site for Amway's cosmetic line. I don't care. Being sat in a chair for 45 minutes experimenting with lip colour is wonderful. Feeling confident about my skin and my face is wonderful. Being treated like I had as much right to beauty products as Cate Blanchet (face staring at me throughout from a poster for SKII) is wonderful, and very uplifting.

Throughout the day, and particularly before and after the make-over, I was reflecting on how very much I think about my physical appearance. Pretty much all, all the time. This is very sick and damaging, and a sad reflection on what it is to be a middle-aged woman in the modern world today, and I'm sure is still left over from the blow to self-esteem that was my breakup. But still. I'm always measuring - hair, face, overall thinness, outfit, type of shoes - always, every day, in comparison with every woman I see everywhere. I think this is typical - I wish guys did it too, but clearly they must not or they wouldn't let themselves go like so many of them do. But still, I'm sure I could use all that mental energy for better purpose. So, having X hundred dollars worth of Mac stuff makes me feel better about my face, and its beauty, and its level of acceptability for someone who wants to walk around the world and maybe even strike up conversations with sighing handsome young men on trains.

Now if I could only sort out my hair...