My face has begun to peel, specifically my nose. I wish I had preserved some of the little yellow-brown flakes that I pulled off of it, so I could show them to you, but they were flushed down the bathroom sink once I turned on the faucet - floating on top of the water like fish food. I now have the stylish nose of a leper.
Speaking of peeling skin and leprosy, I was accosted by a drug addled homeless man yesterday on the corner of 8th and Mission. I was standing there, minding my business, waiting for friends, peaceably leaning against a wall, when he seemed to emerge as though out from a sewer. His clothes were black, extra black actually, from the filth he'd garnered while gutter groveling. I could tell this was no ordinary homeless person; he was a wizard. When I saw him he was facing away from me, but once my eyes had drifted toward him he abruptly spun around, causing me to wonder whether he'd been facing me the entire time - I'm not even certain I saw his body rotate through space or time. His eyes, situated deep inside recessed sockets, stared at me sharply while his prognathic jaw seemed to slide in and out like a cash-register. Thin muscular arms twitched about his torso like twin tornadoes; his hands hopped from his hip to his head and back again, until his left arm settled in position across the bottom of his ribcage as a resting place for the perched elbow of his right arm. The blackened fingers of his right hand pressed and tapped the tangled facial hair of his jawline like piano keys.
I had made the mistake of holding his gaze for too long, to convey my fearlessness. This, of course, signified an invitation and he slithered toward me with the whiplash motion of an eel. He stood to face me without saying anything, so I broke the silence by saying "Sup." He didn't reply. Instead he pulled his shirt up to his chest, revealing a sea of sores and puss-filled blisters, necrotic lesions and putrefying tissue. It was something you'd see in textbooks and drug-prevention videos in high school. He looked at me quizzically, his lips moving like two entwined caterpillars, trying soundlessly to formulate a sentence.
Look at this, he said, rubbing flakes of skin off of his body, what am I going to do? I'm not sure, I said, maybe a moisturizer? I need some too, I continued while pointing to the peeling sunburned skin all over my face.
In a moment of rare honesty, his exterior seemed to soften and dissolve and, as I saw the shine of humanity welling up in his eyes, he said, I didn't think this would ever happen to me.
It was crushing.
I was speechless. A paltry apology bungee-jumped from my tongue and I felt the rope snap. Help me, please. I can't, I told him; I didn't have any money on me. I saw his hope transform into an orange butterfly and flutter away; his parted lips became a torn open chrysalis the color of dead leaves; a ripped up, old, birthday card envelope.
I watched him blow away down the street.
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