Ahhhh, the mask. Know it well. Too well. It's a double-edged sword. It's the questions issue that drives me too. You're not alone in that, SDRL.

It's an exhausting effort, yeah? On the one of your two ways, I only go the first. Even then I can employ the mask to a positively frightening degree. (Not in the super perky sense, but in the someone not being able to realize just how very very bad it is sense.) But can only manage it for short times. And frankly, it's not as hidden as I like to think. The only reason it works at all is because people are generally in their own worlds and oblivious.

At best they may pick up on the flat voice, expressionless face and dead staring eyes, but that's usually chalked up to their perception of my general weirdness. Fortunately they can't pick up on my delusion that my head is actually a skull with dead eyes set way back in. But yes, I have checked in a mirror just to be sure. Yeah. Now that would be a mask. As in Halloween. And it wouldn't fool anyone.

Guess, it's some consolation that pretty much everyone does the mask thing... it's just a matter of degree.