Coming to Terms with Facial Scarring in Beirut

I’ve spent the last few days bar reviewing in Beirut, solo, single, footloose and free of both fancy and child. And, while I fear Z may have been right when he said, “If you don’t watch out, you’re actually going to make a loss on this job,” (he gets it from his father), I do not regret a second of it.

I’ve written before about how much I love Beirut. And I defy anyone in possession of a pulse and an appetite for fun not to have a phenomenally good time here, particularly during the summer when the rooftop bars open up.

Now, I had absolutely no anxieties about travelling as a single, solo female in Beirut.

But I was a little anxious about bar reviewing.

You see, Beirut does not have any really tough doors.

It’s like Sydney or Singapore, not London or New York. There’s only four million people in the entire country.

But Beirut does have a strong beauty aesthetic, a focus on the bling, a love of glitter and glitz – and a love of a seriously good party – and, well, we had a car crash a month ago, and I’m now coming to terms with facial scarring.

Now, I don’t want to oversell the facial scarring thing. I’m not like those brave folk in plastic masks with half their faces destroyed, and I’m not going to go comparing it to cancer.

But, I made two bloody great holes in my forehead when I took out a window with it at 70kph, and they’re, both of them, basically still there.

I didn’t get stitches, because we were in Siwa, and I’d have been looking at Frankenstein stitch scars at best and infected facial wounds at worst. (General advice from locals: “Don’t go to the hospital! It’s dirty.”)

And, following advice from my crack team of Twitter, Facebook and Skype medical professionals – particular thank yous to nurse aunties Helen and Celia, paramedic Talon and casualty doctor Fiona – I’ve been massaging the wounds twice daily for five minutes with vaseline.

So far, the results aren’t bad. They don’t distort my expression. They’re on my forehead, so I can cover them with hair some of the time – unfortunately, fringes make me look like Woody Harrelson – and they’re clean scars.

The kind of scars that one can, in time, grow to love. In fact, I might start telling people I got them duelling in Heidelberg, although a car crash in an oasis with a Bedouin smuggler is pretty exotic too.

But, they’re there.

And they’re going to be there for a while. Maybe four years. Maybe five. Maybe the rest of my life.

And, when going out in a city as style-conscious, if not dressy, as Beirut, a lady feels sensitive about that sh*t. Even if said lady has cut her hair with nail scissors to fall over the scars.

I’m less sanguine, in fact, about my scars’ companions on my forehead, the frown lines.

I’m a big frowner. Always have been. Always will be (barring Botox, which Z doesn’t want me to get).

Also, I smoke, I drink and I stay out in the sun without sun protection.

So I have deep, deep lines across my forehead. Not good in a town full of pumped lips and lipoed tummies.

Plus, something’s up with the dental work. Too tedious to go into, and I’ll get it fixed in Egypt, but my teeth are looking especially British at the moment.

Let’s add to the mix that I’ve also been feeling rather sensitive about my body.

In (most of) both Egypt and Jordan, I’ve been dressing conservatively, which is to say covering from wrist to ankle whenever I hit the streets, and swimming in, normally, at least a singlet and shorts.

That means…

Well, tan lines.

Tan lines to the hilt.

Further, when your body is undercover, and under loose cover, for almost all of the day, the depilation routine goes out of the window, since nobody’s going to be seeing any of it anyway.

So add in a little fur.

Make that a lot of fur.

I don’t know why the pubic hair begins to extend its satanic realm around the moment the ovaries go on crutches but it’s a particularly unkind coincidence and proof that if there is a god, she isn’t corporeal.

Further, I’ve always kept good muscle tone despite doing sodall exercise (with the odd savage climb or trek thrown in), so much so that folk who don’t know me have amused folk who do by describing my physique as “athletic”. But, under two years away from forty, my tummy looks like a vanilla blancmange, I’m pretty sure I’m getting bingo wings and there’s something unpleasant happening around the knee zone, too.

Now, I’m a feminist. And, as a feminist, I know I should embrace the changes that ageing has brought to my face and to my body. But I can’t.

I can cope with some. I don’t mind the crowsfeet or the smile lines. I don’t mind that everything’s a little softer than it was. I’ve accepted that I’ve added a stone for each decade since I turned 18.

But the frown lines? I don’t like them at all.

Then there’s the wardrobe. Z and I carry our lives in two backpacks, mine a 60-litre, his a 20-litre.

Now, I have been travelling with a rather fabulous Paul Smith silk frock, some wedge heels and makeup for special occasions, bar reviewing and posh restaurants – because one needs a nice get dressed outfit – but my daywear style could be broadly, if uncharitably, summarised as “tent”.

Even if, in true Middle Eastern style, what’s underneath could be broadly, if uncharitably, summarised as “slutty”.

Yes! Hit the rooftop bars, two-tone, wobbly, tent-clad, middle-aged (according to my son, anyway) lady with the facial scarring

That’s going to work well. Real, real well.

Particularly in Beirut, where the men are up there with the men of Tel Aviv in the hotness stakes and the visiting lady is in danger of doing herself an injury on the catsclaws and anti-martyr blockades what with all the terribly distracting soldiers.

Yes, I know. Hot men. With guns.

And, yes, the guns do make them hotter.

I’m cheap. So shoot me. (Bad choice of words, I know.)

But it’s largely an aesthetic pleasure. I feel that about the girls as well as the boys.

Lebanese women are famously beautiful and it’s just so nice to see so many good-looking people around.

And so many women! On their own! Wearing whatever the f*ck they feel like wearing.

It would be form, I guess, at this point, to write about how much I’m missing young Z, who’s currently in Blighty with his dad.

Well, I am and I’m not. I love him dearly, I can’t wait to see him, and I’m enjoying his terse and emoticon-filled style on Skype.

On the other hand? Rooftop bars? Fancy-free? Bar reviewing?

That means, in case you hadn’t gathered, a legitimate excuse to go to every single one of the good places in town and drink in them. (And a lot of ones that aren’t, but, hey-ho.)

BRING IT!

And, further, the chance to wear, pretty much, what one wants.

Yep. Shoulders! Thighs! Cleavage!

I mean, I’ll settle for jeans and a vest top and a pair of heels, but my point is that I can wear that.

And that is fine.

I can walk on the street in that solo, flag a taxi in that solo, and still be fine.

Let’s face it, things haven’t perked up much on what I shall euphemistically call “the romance front” since that infamous Valentine’s Day post. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were cobwebs down there.

The last solid opportunity I had to get laid with someone I wanted to get laid by was back in Kunming.

And that was kiboshed by, god bless him, my little man.

Not in the way you’d think, either.

For, if you can imagine anything more disconcerting than getting on terribly well with a nice chap in a bar that you and your son had popped into to use the internet, then finding your son giving you the thumbs up under the table when he complimented you on your looks (chap having spent, like a decent chap, considerable time interacting with your son)…

….. Well, I’ll give you something more disconcerting than that, actually….

It’s when said nice chap grabs you outside the bar and starts kissing you, and over his shoulder you catch sight of, yes, your 11-year-old son, sitting patiently on a parked motorbike, and giving you a big grin and a big thumbs-up.

Where does one go with that?

Dear reader, where does one possibly go with that?

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, son. I’ll drop you home, stay at his and be back in the morning after he makes his flight, yeah?”

“You just sit there, son, I’ll be done with the frottage in about half an hour, he’ll promise to call me and then you can stay with me for 18 hours of adolescent neurosis about whether he’s going to call me from Hong Kong, ENJOY!”

Let’s face it, neither option is going to leave me in the running for parent of the year.

Anywise.

Night one goes OK.

My cheap foundation covers the scars just fine, I figure, with a bit of hair drapery thrown in. I may look a bit orange, but so do lots of the women here.

I meet some new people. None of them people I fancy, but new people, plus there’s this bartender that kinda reminds me of an ex-boyfriend from a long time ago, and, well, you never know.

I eat some damn fine salmon tartare, enjoy a couple of decent Negronis, and enjoy myself a lot.

But the frock’s too much for midweek (not to mention the security guard at the building by my hotel) and, while I’ve got a skirt that would hit the midweek point, I…

… Well, I need to buy some new clothes, basically.

And so, without my son along to compare the size of my arse with the 21-year-old Beiruti next to me, I invest in a pair of skinny jeans, some new slutty undies, and a top that cunningly drapes so as to emphasise the boobs and conceal the blancmange, plus a couple of functional vest tops and a bra that delivers the kind of uplift that should be banned as misleading advertising.

I enjoy a mani-pedi of such incalculable genius that I get approached by a foot fetishist on the street.

I read the Herald Trib cover-to-cover while dining on artichoke, ceviche and a glass of Lebanese rosé. (One of the wonders of Lebanon, unlike Singapore, is that by eating what I want, when I want, I have actually lost weight.)

And I head on out. And now I’m in the zone.

I am absolutely definite that Beirut, single, solo and (yes) female, is going to be a whole bunch of fun.

Facial scarring or no facial scarring. They have lighting for that sh*t, right?