The Hot Ninja Slips Her Mask Off

It took me forever to find it, but I had a favorite reusable mask.

It was made of a breathable cotton fabric with a pocket into which you could insert a supplemental disposable mask. The ear loops were a soft elastic with an adjustable toggle so that I didn’t have to double the loops for my apparently child-sized face and ears. The fabric was a deep green and it had a few tiny autumn leaves scattered across it. The way it was cut, high on the nose, but kind of swooping down under the eyes was giving hot ninja vibes. I loved it.

It really brought emphasis to my eyes and eyebrows and covered up what I’ve always perceived as a flaw, my nose. It’s really the weak link on the facial features team. If elements of my countenance were all working on a classroom project, my eyes and mouth would be doing the research and taking all the notes and presenting to the class while my nose fucks off doodling in a notebook or surreptitiously texts under the table. In a work setting my nose would be stuck on a personal improvement plan while the other features get promoted. At home my nose would weaponize incompetence to get out of doing the chores.

It's an indecisive facial feature. It starts off trying to be a Greek beak, but becomes a bulbous little snoot at the bottom. Like if someone stuck a wad of gum on a statue of Athena.  

Anyway, the mask erased my nose from public viewing…at the cost of my mouth, true. But I’d take it.

I’d finally found a mask that not only left me feeling safe, but that put all the emphasis on my best feature.

And I could curse under my breath at people and they’d never know.

So, I ordered a bunch of ninja masks from the Etsy designer in other colors that I felt would complement my skin tone and eye color.

And of course, before the shipment could arrive, the CDC revised its guidelines to say that really reusable masks were no longer a safe option. We were advised to go disposable.

I tucked my Hot Ninja persona into a drawer and started googling what the hell a KN95 was.

You see, wearing different masks in public wasn’t new to me. Wearing a literal physical mask was.

My mom blames it on my being an only child. She thinks that spending so much time one-on-one with two highly-literate grownups gave me the ability to chat comfortably with my elders and create imaginative worlds based on the books I’d read, but left me bored and vulnerable around other children. I was caught off guard by what was then called teasing, but what would now definitely be called bullying.

Not every day, but most elementary school days, I’d be hit with rulers, stabbed by pencils, locked in coat closets, called nerdy for reading books marketed to adults, or mocked for some aspect of my physical appearance (nose, thick glasses, early-sprouting breasts). In the neighborhood, I was regularly chased and knocked into the dirt, kids broke my toys, one time I was hung upside down in a tree, there was some light sexual assault. I did have a few neighborhood friends. But one was only my friend in secret and would turn on me and call me names if anyone else was around. After a while, my parents decided that I needed practice in dealing with teasing so they’d try it out on me at home. To get me used to it.

Eventually, I developed night terrors.

I don’t know what exactly inspired it, but I remember one day I decided I’d try being someone else. So, I stood outside my classroom, pulled my shoulders back, took a few deep breaths, and repeated, “I’m strong. I’m a cool kid. Everyone likes me,” over and over in my head before forcing my tears down, ignoring the urge to vomit, and stepping over the classroom threshold.

I started studying other people. What made the popular kids so successful? I analyzed their clothes and their hair, and their facial expressions, how they responded to teasing, what movies and tv shows they mentioned, what their hobbies were, how they laughed. Books were useful, too. Movies and tv were great inspiration for one liners and for quotes to throw out in conversation to prove that I was part of the group and had seen the right things. And then, in junior high, I got to switch schools and start from scratch.

On the first day, I put on my best cool kid outfit and tugged on my invisible mask—neutral eyebrows instead of eyebrows drawn together in thought, and engaged gaze instead of a vacant one lazily floating down a stream of thought, a smile that hurt my cheeks instead of a resting frown.

It worked. I acquired friends and studied them. In novel situations I’d ask myself how a specific  friend who was strong in social skills would handle whatever had come my way and I would do an impression of them. The mask was a bit of a shapeshifter and would alter based on the friend group I happened to be with at the time—boisterous and silly in drama club, serious and sharp-witted when with the trivia team, sarcastic and dripping ennui when smoking with the alternative kids after school. It was problematic when groups of friends came together. I remember having house parties and inviting several friends only to disappear into my dark back yard to watch them interact through the lit windows, fascinated at how they mingled, trying to figure out how to be. What performance to give.

For the most part it worked…for a while. Alcohol helped. The dopamine it dumped into my bloodstream helped me keep up the bubbly façade. It gave me the energy to be social so I could absorb more socially-effective character traits. My speech patterns became a patchwork quilt of the way other people spoke, movie quotes, and dialogue from tv. Some of it has gotten so thoroughly absorbed that I can’t remember where a certain phrase came from until I rewatch a movie and experience a thunderbolt of recognition, “So that’s where that’s from!” But some of the things I regularly say I can still remember the source of, like referring to random object as “that little guy over there” instead of “that thing over there” (college boyfriend).

I modified the mask for a professional setting. I analyzed the often passive-voiced jargony way things were worded in business English where, “Let’s put a pin in that and circle back to that offline,” replaced, “Yes, but we aren’t talking about that right now. Shut up.” 

I scripted conversations in advance and practiced them in the shower. I looked up information on body language and replaced crossed arms with crossed legs, making sure to angle my knees and upper torso towards the person I was engaging with to communicate openness. I mirrored their body language. My coffee mug came with me everywhere so that I could fidget under the socially acceptable cover of caffeinating. When presenting in front of people, I’d place one or two hands on my hips to communicate strength, openness, and to hide the visible trembling of my hands. After one focus group I led at a conference in Philadelphia, my face ached for two days straight from trying to hold a Mona Lisa smile.

And then, the masking seemed to work less well.

In the manner of the slowly creeping disease of alcoholism, I had to drink more and more to achieve the effects I wanted to fuel my social life. And as I aged the hangovers got worse. One day, I was trying to drive two hours down the road on the highway and had to pull off cause alcohol withdrawal was spiking my heart rate and I was afraid I was going to have a heart attack or pass out while driving. So, I pulled off to call my mom and ended up sobbing that I felt like my personality had a hole at the center. That I was all surface. Like a doughnut and my true self was missing. Like a doughnut hole that had been punched out and discarded.[1] That there was no real me and I was afraid I would disappear.

Like the Hot Ninja mask, my social mask had put a lot of emphasis on a few strengths, in this case my ability to analyze people and mimic them, but I had lost the rest—both the stuff I didn’t love, my awkwardness, as well other character traits and interests. I had lost me. But I didn’t even have a clear sense of who that was anymore. It would be years before I started to unpack the content of that phone call. To recognize that I had an issue with alcohol and give it up. To begin address the anxiety and depression and plain old exhaustion I was feeling. To even recognize the mask.

Then, COVID happened.

My first pandemic persona had been the Great Train Robber. In March of 2020, when news of the virus started circulating, but we hadn’t yet locked down, I did my grocery shopping wearing a blue cotton bandanna with a white paisley pattern. It was the bandanna I used to cover my hair when painting or cleaning out the shed the time we had a spider infestation. It was hot, always slipping down, and it made people nervous. Probably because they thought I was going to point a six-shooter at them and try to rustle their cattle.

Then came the Diaper Face era with its blue paper napkin surgical masks with ear loops that were too big and had to be doubled up, which cut into the back of my ears. Cloth designs modeled after the surgical masks had similar toddler-butt-face issues, but had better color options.

I had to replace Hot Ninja with a KN95 which came in a dark grey. It coordinated well enough with my largely white, black, and grey wardrobe, but was giving more of a Bane from Christopher Nolan’s Batman than I’d ideally like.

But while I was experimenting with different physical masks, I was also using the weird pandemic slowdown as an opportunity to explore that missing part of my personality. My inner self. What was behind the social masks. The secret hidden doughnut hole.

I’d gone on an increasingly lengthy sabbatical from work to help my daughter navigate her way through online Kindergarten. My husband could work from home so we isolated pretty successfully until we got vaccinated. This limited my regular social contact to two people. Although I had to put on my Patient Parent mask pretty often, I could drop most of the other masks.

I started thinking of how much easier it would be to be just one person no matter who I was interacting with. So, I slowly started to tell people about the alcoholism. I’d been trying to hide that one for years pretending I had a stomach bug at work, or that I just wanted a Bloody Mary that first morning of vacation not that I needed it to counter the effects of the first night of vacation. Once I had a few months of not drinking under my belt it felt safter to admit how bad it had been.

But, ok, not being a practicing alcoholic wasn’t enough to flesh out an entire doughnut hole. So, I was going to have to figure out what the hell else made me…me.

When my daughter asked me what was wrong, cause I was wearing my Resting Face not my Mary Poppins Mask, I explained that that’s just what my thinking face looks like and that it used to creep out my cousin so I got self-conscious. I told her that my mom has a similar Resting Face and that her mom used to yell at her to “get that look of your face,” but it was just her face. It’s ok to have a Resting Face. When my daughter asked me why I was responding in a weird tone sometimes, I told her that nothing was wrong, I just needed a rest from talking for a while cause I was talked out. It’s ok to feel talked out and to take a break.

Most of our usual hobbies and routines were upended by isolating. In brainstorming what we could do to fill the time, I rediscovered things I used to love and gave myself permission to invest in them and see if I still liked them. Some were cheap, like the library app Libby I downloaded so I could read myself silly. (It’s hard to truly enjoy a plot when your brain has been pickled in IPAs, Manhattans, and dirty vodka martinis.) YouTube videos and podcasts about history were similarly free and plentiful. As a kid I’d always played along with cooking shows, mixing along imaginary meals in empty bowls while Julia Child or whoever was demonstrating a recipe on PBS. The pandemic certainly provided an opportunity to make stuff from scratch. When I got restless, I went for a walk and realized that I’m kind of like a dog. You can tell when I haven’t been walked enough.

I like braiding hair. I like being able to sew, but I don’t enjoy troubleshooting the sewing machine. I like following art tutorials and combining elements from several, but rarely seem to get a good idea from scratch. I like planning a garden, but loathe the upkeep. Spiritualism, the occult, and magic fascinates me despite some of my family being highly spooked by the Satanic Panic when I was young and actively discouraging an interest in it. I’m a logical person, but damn if I wouldn’t be fine with just a touch of witchcraft. Yoga is great, but not if it’s yoga aerobics. Give me a pose and ask me to hold it for five minutes. Give me a guided medication. Give me breathwork. Give me a signing bowl. Do not ask me to do 25 sun salutations in a room heated to 120 degrees.

I talk to my animals and make odd sounds without really thinking about it. If I’m happy, I do little dance moves. I like wearing jewelry or hair accessories that can double as weapons in a pinch. Sometimes I like to wear a floor-length tule skirt to walk the dog. I have a really hard time with small talk. If I don’t get the laundry done on Monday I feel anxious.

It’s a small doughnut hole right now, but I no longer feel all surface with no center.

Eventually, like a lot of us, after I was vaccinated, I slowly dropped the physical mask for the most part. But on really cold winter days, I still pull out Hot Ninja to keep my face warm to walk the dog.

I’m still working on the dropping the other masks though and getting the doughnut hole to a respectable size.

 [1] I do understand that doughnuts don’t start out as spheres that are then hole-punched to create the doughnut shape. Bear with me though.

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