My longtime policy for beauty treatments is, the crazier the better. That’s what propelled me to a spa somewhere in the San Fernando Valley where my cellulite was beaten with wet, knotted bath towels. It’s why in Paris I subjected my muscles to small electric shocks until I tasted metal. For years, I yearned for a bull’s blood facial until I discovered that the bull’s blood in question was actually just Hungarian wine. Boring.
On a sweltering day in August, I lay on a stranger’s bed under a photograph of a cowboy, hoping for something unnerving or at least disgusting to happen. Wishes do come true. Nearly every pore of my face was pierced with tiny needles and then topped with my own plasma. Or, as someone in the stranger’s bedroom called it, “liquid gold.”
