I'm here to tell you I'm liberated, I'm enlightened, and I'm as eager to lower myself beneath plastic surgery's knife as if it's a Limbo stick and the game prize is a lifetime supply of gasoline! Some plastic surgery critics are no doubt sincere in their objections, but I suspect a number of them are afraid of being cut on, or can't afford it and just don't want to admit it.

Since I can't come within pissing distance of affording plastic surgery, I've cooked up the idea of merit-based scholarships awarded on the basis of how much you need it. Of course this leaves open the possible humiliation of walking into a medical practice, having them take one glance at you, and quickly being offered the Morehead Scholarship of plastic surgery, all expenses paid.

My cosmetic issue? Well, I have this nose -- I've had it all my life, as a matter of fact. This nose is what I'll kindly call prominent, and has ever been so, splitting my face in the manner of a pipeline cracking through the Alaskan tundra. My mother recently passed along a portrait photo taken of me at around the age of nine months and sure enough, there's The Nose, rising out of my baby pudding flesh like an immortal Egyptian monument from the desert floor.

If you suffer dissatisfaction with the size of your boobs, at least it doesn't kick in until you reach the age where you're faced with what you've been given. But from earliest memory I've been thinking "Oh Help" when I look in the mirror. Actually, my realization that my nose is substantial was also hastened by one of my pig-Irish cousins, who could barely talk until about age 12 but once managed to spit out, "You goth a big nothe."

That's part of the cruelty of the situation, the fact that I was born into a family of weensy Irish snub noses dotting all my many cousins' faces and those of my two sisters. It's as if God allotted a certain amount of nose material for the Cotton family and when He got to me, the youngest, He just globbed on everything that was left over.

The sister closest to me in age has this especially delicate, sculpted tip, while I have the pipeline. My one sweet satisfaction is that although she got the little nose, she also got the little tits. Showing He has some sense of fairness, God gave me the bigger breasts and they've probably served me better overall than a button nose would have.

Still, I have this lurking suspicion that my life so far would've been different if I'd gotten both the hooters and the hardly-there nose. At least I might have been spared the nickname in grade school which I can't even repeat it pains me so much; maybe I'll finally utter it with my dying breath like "Rosebud," but rest assured it was nose-related.

So I look at those alluring ads that feature flawless women arranged on sofas like Sirens on rocks proclaiming, "Join Us!" and think, think, "If only I could!" I hear radio spots for cosmetic surgery practices that say, "Trust Us!" and in my heart I cry, "I'd be happy to, if I just had the money!"

I've even considered attending one of those "free informative seminars with complimentary refreshments and a great door prize" which could be a nose job, who knows, but I worry that everybody looks you over, trying to guess what you're seeking to fix, and that I'd overhear someone whisper, "That beak, definitely."

The argument that says plastic surgery is unnecessary just doesn't deter me. Getting operated on involves heavy-duty drugs that zoom you straight to La-La land, right? I'm there! For the one surgical procedure I've had as an adult, they gave me some dope that didn't totally knock me out but did make me feel like I so didn't give a flying damn, one of my preferred states of mind anyway.

If I have to be unconscious for cosmetic surgery, well, hell, that's another mental state that has its pluses. As for the recovery period, my attitude toward physical pain is that compared to childbirth (an experience designed to be agonizing so we don't reproduce too much, which is why Catholics shouldn't be allowed to have epidurals), most doses of it are no worse than sneezing.

So to paraphrase Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard, I'm ready for my slice-up, Mr. DeMille.