Bad Skin Day

                                                Bad Skin Day  

The big screen looms above me, and it looks like the surface of a planet that’s wandered too close to the sun. A nightmare landscape of active volcanoes, deep fissures and craters.  

    They’re masters of humiliation, the skin specialists. Without so much as a by your leave they’ll scan your face with their fancy camera and enlarge it a zillion times in vivid fucking colour.

    I’m already cringing with embarrassment, when suddenly there’s a flash of starched white, and, I can’t believe it, gorgeous Tania Manson comes into the room. Tania from my schooldays, who still sometimes visits me in my dreams. I had no idea she worked here. Too late, she’s looking at my close-up in all its glory on the screen, and my humiliation is complete. Her lovely brown eyes widen.

    ‘Ronald Cox! Long time no see! Wow! Hello Ronnie. I didn’t realize it was you. What’ve you been up to since school then? Gosh, I see you’ve put on more weight, and you’ve still got bad skin.’

    More, still! The words hang in the air like bad halitosis.

    She’s even more beautiful now of course. Stunningly pretty, a body to die for, flawless skin, luscious hair, teeth brilliantly white. Perfect.  

    I mumble something about working in the culinary business, in sales, and pray that she never has occasion to come to the counter at Burger King on the main street. One look at her slim body though and I know I needn’t worry.

    The skin doctor comes in.

    ‘Max, Ronnie was at school with me,’ Tania says.

    ‘Well, well.’ His eyes narrow, his lips purse, like I’m some doggy-dos he’s just discovered in his donut.

    Dr. Maxwell Johnson, dermatologist, tall, tanned, and too suave for my liking. He looks around mid forties, and already I have less hair than him at half his age. Rubber gloves? What, am I contaminated or something!? And what’s with the bow tie, has he stopped off on his way to the pox doctor’s ball?

    His plaque on the wall has every letter of the alphabet after his name. He beckons Tania closer. Too close, their heads are touching. I wonder, surely they can’t be? Nah! What? Nah!

    ‘Look at Ronald’s scan Tania. Tell me what you see.’

    Tania’s frowning, concentrating hard while he breathes in her ear.

   ‘Well, there’s some pustules, and some papules, and maybe … ’

    Pustules! Papules! The very words are making my heart race. I have to grit my teeth and clench my fists.

    To see the screen better she has to lean over me, and her left breast is so close I can feel her body heat. Hormones that have been in long hibernation are stirring again somewhere deep inside me. I can’t believe this. One half of the wonderful set that I drooled over for years from two desks away is now only a few inches from my face.

Johnson maneuvers closer in on her other side. Too close for my liking. Surely not! He’s old enough to be, well, her doctor, for fuck’s sake!

    ‘Very good, Tania, but what else can you see?’ Now he’s got his filthy paw on her arm.

    I feel like a laboratory specimen, reduced onto a microscope slide, the subject of some gruesome postmortem. Her left breast moves even closer, filling my horizon.

    ‘Well, there’s maybe one or two…cysts?’

    ‘Excellent!’

    ‘And’ I can sense her excitement building, ‘some nodules?’

    ‘Wonderful Tania! Yes! The complete set! You don’t often see them all together on the one head!’

    Cysts! Nodules! Fan-fucking-tastic. I’m making some sort of medical history here and all this time I thought I was just another dude with pimples. It seems that on the poxometer scale I’m about a ten.

    ‘This, Tania, is your classic case of Acne Vulgaris. A particularly bad case.’

    Does he have to sound so pleased, so smug? Hey, hang on! What did he just say? Did he just imply I was vulgar?

    He frowns at me. ‘You squeeze don’t you, I can always tell.’ He says it like I peddle child porn.        

    I stammer, ‘Er, well, maybe…occasionally.’  What is he, the pimple police?

    ‘You must never squeeze them!’ That’s right isn’t it Tania?’      

    She’s nodding enthusiastically while he’s looking deep into her face, and I bet he’s not checking hers for zits.

    ‘You must just gently express them.’

    ‘So they say,’ I mumble. I could have told him I tried that once, but it was like I imagine having sex without the climax, (not that I’ve ever had any).

    ‘Is it bad?’ I mumble.

    ‘It’s a serious case of adolescent acne, but it is treatable.’

    Shit! So now I’m still an adolescent, at twenty two for fuck’s sake! Things seem to have come to a head – on my head!

    ‘We’ll get you onto a course of long term antibiotics. And you will need to start deep cleansing your pores.’ He goes out of the room to his office. I’m hoping Tania will pop out as well, just for a minute or two. I feel a deep urge. There’s a mountain range on my forehead that needs exploring. But no such luck.

    She’s looking at me with such a tender smile my heart jumps. The big screen is now off thank goodness.

    ‘I liked you a lot at school, you know Ronnie. But you were always with that Shelley Brown.’ She screws up her face, and even scrunched, it’s still pretty. ‘You were suited though. She had bad skin and BO too. We called her Smelly Shelley behind her back.’

Now I’m wishing that I’d taken a shower in the last couple of days. Then she shoots a shaft of hope straight into my heart.

    ‘I always thought you were far too good for her. Too … nice.’

    There is a heaven! I’ll take nice. Why don’t women realize they don’t always have to look at one’s face? There are positions other than missionary. And I’d even be prepared to talk afterwards. Maybe there’s a chance? Maybe she can see past the pox to the inner me. Acne is only skin deep after all, as they say. She’s now looking a bit embarrassed.

    ‘We, er, called you Poxy Coxy. I don’t know if you knew. It all seems stupid now, so mean of us.’

    ‘I don’t care,’ I stutter. She can call me Fester-head, Pus-face, whatever she likes, if there’s a chance .with her

    ‘I always wanted to go out with you, Tania,’ I blurt. ‘But you never showed any interest.’

    ‘Well, for goodness sake then, fancy that.’ She’s shaking her pretty head. ‘What a shame.’

    I’m holding my breath.

    ‘Life goes on.’ She sighs. ‘School was ages ago, it’s been what, five years now. Max has been very good to me. He’s training me to be his assistant.’

    ‘I can see that. He’s very … attentive towards you.’

    ‘He wants me to assist him in his clinics. I’m doing a Tech course. I’ll hold his things for him until he’s ready.’

    Oh yes, he’ll want you to hold his things all right. Fucking pedophile.

    ‘That’ll be nice for you, Tania.’

    ‘He’s so good at his profession. He does a wonderful job with skin cancers. You should see how brilliantly he burns them off.’ Her eyes are dreamy. ‘And his scalpel work, his curetting and surgical excising, is second to none.’

    Yeah, yeah. So he slashes and burns. Throw in some raping and pillaging and he’s up there with Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan.

    I nod agreement. ‘It’s fantastic, to have a skill like that.’

    What a cushy fucking job, skin specialists. Nine to five, no weekends. No emergency call-outs. He’s hardly likely to be called out at three am to a case of terminal ringworm!

    I won’t bore you with the story of my sad life, Tania. Because we, the acnied of the world, have no friends, and have to stick together you know. We gravitate to each other by default, hanging around in alleys and dark places, hiding ourselves from the unblemished world.   

    ‘D’ya know what any of the others from school are up to Tania?’

    ‘One or two.’ She’s thinking hard. ‘Oh, yes, Andy Collins, he’s high up in banking now. Tim Allen’s an accountant.’

    ‘That’s great!’ Money-grubbing parasites!

    We’re addicted, you know. We’ve become what are known as Squeezaholics.  We can’t keep our fingers off them, they make such tantalizing targets. And after a while we start to seek out bigger blemishes. Recreational squeezing is no longer enough, and pretty soon we have a full blown habit. Did you know that some ordinary pimples with a bit of nurturing can be mutated into more desirable things, like, boils, carbuncles, furuncles.

    ‘Jenny Watson and Jack Thomas are doing well in IT.’

    ‘Good on them!’ Fucking geeks!

    And there’s nowhere for us to turn for help, Tania. If you’re alcoholic, or suicidal, or a drug addict, there are places. Clinics. But there’s no such thing as Hickey Helpline, or Acnied Anonymous.  We have to settle for pimpled partners too, the only ones who’ll have us, and we have to close our eyes just to kiss. And if, God forbid, we ever manage to procreate, our progeny are sure to be pimply as well.

    ‘And Davie Allen’s made a fortune on the stock market.’       

    ‘Wow, I always knew he’d do well.’ Arsehole!

    It’s a vicious circle Tania. And it’s hereditary. I suffered abuse from my parents too -- skin abuse that is. My mother had the habit, and she’d pounce on me at every opportunity. It’ll be hard to break the cycle. I worry that down the track I’ll be waiting at the door for my kids to get home from school just to see if anything interesting has come up during the day.

    I decide to go for one last try.      

    ‘Max reckons he can clear me up, Tania. Maybe we can go out for a coffee, or a movie or something? You know, when I’m cured?’ I hold my breath.

    She has her back to me, and I wonder whether I should risk a quick squeeze, the big one on my left cheek that I’d noticed on the screen. The one a bit like Mt Doom in Lord of the Rings and about to erupt. Nah, better not, she might turn around at any time, I’ll save it for later. She’s been pottering, tidying things, but now she goes still, and takes an age to answer.

    ‘Don’t be offended Ronnie.’ She turns towards me. ‘It’s just, well, I’ve moved on, and don’t see anyone from school much. I want to ask you though. Would you mind, um, being a case study, for my course? I’ve been looking out for a really bad skin to write up.’   

    Fortunately, just in time to save my complete humiliation, doctor ultra-smooth enters clutching a prescription form.

    ‘Right, here we are then. Get this filled. One tablet twice a day for three months, and get some cleanser for those pores. They’re very badly clogged.’ He says it like they’re long-drops chock full of bad bowel motions. ‘We’ll soon have you like a baby’s bottom. And don’t forget, you must never, never squeeze!’

    I steal a glance at Tania, to see whether a baby’s bottom might interest her, but she’s turned her full attention to sugar-daddy. Straightening his tie for fucks sake! I see myself for what I am right here and now, like a weeping, open sore in the kitchen of some posh restaurant.

    ‘Thanks,’ I mumble, and head for the door. ’See ya Tania.’

    She doesn’t even answer me.

    Fuck them. I’ll have a night in tonight. Life’s short and I’ve got a lot to squeeze in.

‘

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