I’m super excited to be introducing you to my first guest writer!

We used to be small town alterna-teens at a dark riverbed, and we turned out great.

I don’t know about him, but I hardly ever go to dark riverbeds anymore… 

He always compliments me on the way I do my corn….

I think he’s awfully good….

Jono Nelson, COME ON DOWN!!!!

I hesitate to reveal my deepest darkest secret because I know it’ll horrify the Editor-in-chief here at Lab Bunny, but I must be honest and admit my faults if I hope to grow as a writer and a person.

I don’t moisturize.

…

It’s a commonly held belief that gay men hold the key to everything beautiful, glamorous and creative. Historically we have been innovators and taste-makers. Leonardo da Vinci, Oscar Wilde and Andy Warhol were all gay men that changed the course of human evolution in innumerable ways.

While I may have possessed this key at one point, I lost it probably around the time I started buying drugs from a Mexican gangbanger that I was never allowed to talk to. Basically, I’m bad at being gay.

Sure, in my youth I was running around southern California in skin-tight designer jeans and vintage band shirts worn to hell but then shit got real. In my mid-twenties, as a survival mechanism, I was forced to get sober. The good thing about early sobriety was that I was free of drugs and booze and no longer hurting the people I loved. The bad part was I realized how much I fucking hated my life, especially my day job.

After being clean for about a year I decided to finish up my BA in journalism. The more I focused on school and other things, the less energy I had to put forth in the aesthetics department.

Cut to today: I’ve relocated from Bakersfield to Los Angeles for school and academics have taken over my life. I pretty much wear the same four band shirts on a loop. My teenage, punk rock self would be happy to report that I couldn’t pinpoint the last time I washed my only pair of jeans that fit.This isn’t necessarily what I wanted, it’s just a byproduct of trying to make my dreams come true. I would love to be shopping for vintage leather but paying the bills and getting an internship are higher on the list at the moment.

My beauty regimen has also deteriorated to almost nothing. I put on sunscreen before I go to work but that’s about it. If I’m feeling fancy or have the time and energy to spare, I might put on a squirt of Lush’s Dirty body spray or slather on one of the zillion Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab oils I own (another addiction I should go to rehab for).

It’s not that I’m against moisturizing or even that I don’t own moisturizer (I have a pot of Lush’s Cosmetic Lad staring me in the face as I type this). My main problem is that I can never seem to make it a habit. I’ll apply it every morning for a few days and then forget about it or be too busy for it and then the cycle is broken. Cthulhu help us all if I don’t make coffee every morning but I can’t seem to find an extra thirty seconds to put something on my face to make it look better.

The other problem I have with moisturizing is that my skin is insanely temperamental. I’m not talking the occasional blemish during finals week. My skin routinely breaks out when the weather changes, when I try a new product or any time I leave my apartment. This situation is understandable in your teens and maybe even early twenties but I just turned 30 and shit has gotten embarrassing. I’m always anxious that if I use the wrong moisturizer, it’ll somehow make my condition worse.

I know that I’m not getting any younger. I’m also at a slight disadvantage seeing as how I spent a decade chain smoking. I need to start moisturizing and I need to start today, otherwise I’m going to end up with patchy skin and crow’s feet six inches deep.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the genetics I cannot change, the courage to change the skin I can, and the wisdom to moisturize on the daily.

Amen.

…

I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.

(Ed. note: AMEN.)