Attention ladies and drag queens: have you all ever used waterproof mascara? Am I the only one who has been in the dark this whole time about this stuff?

If you think I’m about the rave about the wonder of waterproof mascara, you’re wrong. In fact, I’m really learning to loathe the goop I put on my lashes each morning.

Throughout most of college, I rarely ever wore makeup. I owned little more than a powder compact and one shade of greasy eye shadow, and I only used those on special occassions. On one such special occassion though, I decided to go all out and borrow my roommate’s eyelash curler and mascara. I found that I loved that particular mascara so much that I went right out and bought my own. And even though that first tube lasted me a couple years (bad, I know), it never failed me. Eventually I graduated and got a job and had to be presentable more often, so I minimally increased my makeup supply and began to go through tubes of mascara much more quickly. But for the last five years, I’ve always stuck with Maybelline’s washable Full n’ Soft mascara in Very Black.

Until a couple weeks ago. I had been scraping the inside of my mascara tube for weeks and finally broke down (I hate spending money on makeup) during one visit to WalMart. However, they must have been short on stockers that day because the cosmetics section was nearly wiped out. My long-relied-upon mascara was completely gone, and the only near substitutes were the washable version in Dark Brown (um, no) or waterproof in Very Black.

Waterproof, I’ve heard that’s pretty good, I thought to myself. I can cry, swim, let my eyes water and never have to worry that I’ve got black streaks all over my cheeks. I’ll take it!

What I failed to consider is that I could also take a shower and wash my face without worrying about black streaks. When they say waterproof, they really mean it.

Now each night when I wash my face, I spend about 10 minutes trying to remove the paste on my eyelashes. I scrub scrub scrub with water. Doesn’t budge. I scrape it with wet soapy fingernails and only manage to infect my eyes soap suds. I try a washcloth. Nothing. Before, all it took was a little water, a little soap and a little rubbing. Now it takes bleach and buzz saw to rid my lashes of the black goop.

I’ve considered buying some kind of makeup remover, but not only do I hate spending money on makeup, I also hate spending money on things to remove it. So my dilemma is this: either chuck the waterproof and pay $6 for the stuff I wanted in the first place, shell out the money to buy makeup remover, or shut the hell up and consider myself stuck with this sticky glue for at least another month.

I understand the value of waterproof mascara for things like, say, sappy award shows and Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition photo shoots, but for every day use it’s really more work than it’s worth. I rarely cry, my eyes don’t water easily, and it’s the middle of a freezing winter, so swimming is pretty much out. If I wasn’t so Dutch, I would have resolved this problem long ago, but as the HUGE cheap ass that I am, I’m instead holding out for humanity to realize that it is men who should wear the makeup and women who should always be au natural. Has that happened yet by the way?