When I study someone’s face the first thing I notice is their nose — its tip, the length of its bridge, how much air the nostrils can vacuum in three seconds. Fat noses. Yellow noses. Beak noses. Horse-faced noses. Freckled noses. I wonder, “How would that nose look if it were pierced?”. Based on observation, I’d conclude that a lot of these noses aren’t fit for a nose ring.

For a long time I fooled others into believing that I had a nose ring. “I like this,” a friend in town said to me on our walk to the Schomburg Center for Research in Harlem. Placing a finger on his right nostril, he continued, “You look like a girl from your country.” I was wearing a 5-millimeter brass loop on mine. The loop had a small sapphire stone in its center.

“Huh?” I thought.

I didn’t know how to respond. I didn’t feel more Eritrean, or East African, with a hole in my nose. Receiving his compliment meant that I dismissed confronting him by asking what he meant. “Thank you,” I said and turned my head to the side to hide my cheeks from showing. My face felt flushed. I was flattered.

Buying fake nose rings online and wearing them to pass as an authentic piece of jewelry in my nose is a cosmetic trick I employed during my late teens. “Ariam, you have the nose for it,” said a girlfriend of mine in college. My head grew big by her comment, and at this revelation I marveled: I could reveal parts of my face that may or may not have been real, thus controlling the image I portrayed to the world. It amused me. I was being deceptive. This wasn’t the first time.

In high school, I drew a dot between my eyebrows before leaving home in the mornings. It was the perfect circle like the shape a full moon, only black. On my way home from school one afternoon, I pulled out a mirror from my bag to take one final look at myself before ringing the doorbell. I saw the dot had partially smudged and left a long, thin streak of mascara shooting upward turning the perfectly shaped circle into a half moon. I was devastated. I licked my finger tips and wiped off the excess mascara. I swore to always carry a mirror.

People believed I had a nose piercing because it looked natural. After a few minutes of browsing the ‘nose ring illusions’ section on Etsy’s web catalog with my debit card information already filed under my account, I was always one click away from a new set of rings. Some had gems. Some didn’t. None were studs. I squeezed a few of the rings together to keep them from falling off my nose. When I wore them, I could pull my hair back in a ponytail or leave my tresses to fall on the sides of my face. Letting others believe my long, peanut butter skinned nose survived the pain of being stabbed with a hot needle or stud gun is insane. After all pain is beauty, isn’t it?

*The opinions and ideas expressed are solely those of the author, and may not reflect the opinions of The Bronx Brand*

Ariam grew up in the Parkchester area of the Bronx and moved to Soundview when she was 9. Because of the Bronx’s multitude of ethnicities and nationalities, Ariam has never stopped loving her culture and roots in Africa’s second youngest country (Eritrea). She loves being able to show off her neighborhood to people who may not be familiar with The Bronx.

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