Zits are fun. Maybe not for the tortured teen who looks like someone flicked flaming marshmallows at her face at last weekend's quasi-sapphic 4-H meeting, and maybe not for you with your prescription acne meds that clash with your zoloft pumps. But for me, zits are fun.

Sure, they can be inconvenient: the little red bump at 7am becomes a bubonic whitehead by 3pm and you absently lance it with a toothpick in your hot coworker's car after lunch. That's frustrating. Unless your hot coworker is Veronica and you're me. Because then your hot coworker's eyes will light up the way you'd expect if like was just like bad erotic literature. Only it's not cock that's got her so excited; it's the holy grail of pusfiends: multiple chambers.

Which makes me wonder if Marilyn Chambers ever had multiple orgasms. That's a fairly heady connection, ho ho ho, but you've got to admit: if she turned out to have an anal-vaginal fistula, the nickname 'Multiple' would take on the savory glow of someone pooping into their own coochie.

But I digress. Veronica, as indicated earlier, loves to pop my zits. She gets this cruel, delightedly taunting tone when she sees one on my neck or nestled in the depths of my beard. "Sweetie," she fiends. "You've got a treat for me."

A treat. Not a zit. Not a pimple. A treat.

For most women, a treat would be perhaps some exquisite European chocolates. Free cosmetics. A week without beatings. Not so Veronica: I could club her with a pound of Teucher as we prance merrily about the Clinique counter and it still wouldn't compare to finding a three- or four-chambered pustule somewhere on my person.

My sister Hillary was recently bitten by an Hobo Spider; frequently confused with the Brown Recluse, the Hobo Spider's bites are similar but different. Like Mandy Patinkin and Al Jolson. So Hillary spent about a week with a softball-sized welt just above her left ass cheek. She put some ointment on it that drew the fluids into one spot, and after a few days the floodgates opened.

It happened while she was at home during lunch (she lives with my parents, apparently taking a sabbatical from her Wayward Hayward lifestyle); she was in the bathroom, twisted around and poking at the angry red planet when it reached its apogee, epigee and perigee simultaneously: blood and pus began to dribble in chunky starts down her leg like mozarella-tomato soup down your grandmother's shapely chin.

"Mom!"

"What."

"I popped it!"

"Ooo! Lemme see! Come in here, I've got my magnifier all set up."

Which is why Veronica fits so well into my family.

So Hillary goes in there, pants around her ankles and one cheek peeking, hopping and making the pus plert-plert-plert out with every impact. Now, you've gathered that Mom likes to pop zits. What you don't know, or what you now also know, is that she's none too gentle about it. Her bedside manner, one might say, leaves something to be desired. Imagine an older, giddy retarded busdriver performing hamfisted openheart surgery. That's what it's like having my Mom pop your zits. If it hurts, she won't just nudge it: she'll thump at it with her gnarled arthritic fingers like a madwoman testing boulders for ripeness.

So Hillary's in there twisted around to watch and Mom's got her glasses on and is scooting her chair forward while simultaneously adjusting the big while flexible magnifying lamp. Meanwhile, Banner and Penny have gotten excited by the raised voices and the half-naked pusquest and have launched themsleves from beneath my parents' spacious desks to pant and bark and -- you saw this coming -- try to lick the blood and pus from my sister's buttock.

An Hobo Spider bite you do not want. An Hobo Spider bite on your ass is best avoided. My mother sucking pus truffles from your Hobo-bitten ass chambers with the plastic syringe from our (hopefully?) decomissioned Flavor Injector is a definite No. Doing all this while a pair of pony-sized dogs are vying for first place in the Open Wound Contamination Olympics? Serious business.

"Banner, Penny, sit!"

"Come on, you guys, settle."

"Mom, take them out and close the door."

"They'll be fine in here."

"Sure they'll be fine. They can smell it."

Banner walks over and tries to plant his nose somewhere on or around Hillary's ass. She's trying to push him away and Mom is sitting there saying, "Settle, Bubby. Settle. Come on, Bubba Dog, be a good boy. Now, now, don't try to lick Hilly's ass -- ohhhh look at you, Miss Penny. Look at you. Aren't you a good girl? Penny. Penny. Penny. Not you, Bubby. Penny. Aaa-h! Penny. Miss Penny. Penny. Penny, -- Bubby, no -- Penny? Do you love Hillary?"

Penny licks a generous globule from the back of Hillary's knee.

Hillary keens heavenward, "Ewwwww!", a forsaken suburban angel. She's trying to push Penny and Banner away now and Mom is just laughing at her: "She must really love her Hilly! Miss Penny, was that good? Did you like that Miss Penny? Do you want some more?"

"Mom, that is so. GROSS!"

"She'll be fine, honey, she eats from the cat box, too."

Which is when my father, who's been home the whole time and whose hearing is apparently improving from three drops of castor oil in both ears nightly, walks in.

"What are you doing to Hillary, Mother?"

"Get out you old fart, can't you see she's half naked?"

"Dad, Penny just licked blood and pus off my knee."

"Eew. Oh, did it pop? Let me see that."

The dogs are suddenly nowhere to be seen, and Dad leans in as Mom switches on the magnifying lamp and Hillary angles a compact so she can see what they see. For a few moments, the house is still.

Dad says, "It looks like that shrimp cocktail we used to pour over the cream cheese at Doc and Merle's."

Mom and Hillary both go, "Oh yeah ..." at precisely the same time, with precisely the same inflection.