A LITTLE BIT ABOUT MY FACE  

From my earliest conscious memories, I have been aware that there was something different about my appearance. By some fluke of genetics, some twist of prenatal fate, the lines and planes of my visage have always evoked extreme reactions in those around me.

Taken individually, my childhood features were not spectacular (though even individually, they elicited criticism from my family): phosphorescently pale skin stretched across a wide forehead and topped with a cow-licked mop of violently red hair. A bulb of a nose like congealed putty, which I inherited from my mother (although she denied the resemblance). Waxen cookie cutter ears, cheekbones sharp enough they seem ready to cut through my skin, and a jutting jaw that was compared by my beatnik aunt to the bronze ram of an ancient trireme war ship. My mouth was and is a lipless gash. My eyes qualify as most unusual I suppose: deep-set and electric blue, they glared from beneath my shaggy overhanging brows at a world I quickly learned was hostile, and wished me only harm. Sniper’s eyes my grandfather always called them, with a sniff of distaste (and in this he was accurate, as I discovered when I finally entered the wonderful world of modern weaponry).

Be that as it may, despite my individual features’ (possible) approximation of normalcy, something went very wrong in the mix. Whether because the angles were subtly wrong, or because there was something juxtaposed in their collaboration, there has always been something wrong with my face. Everyone around me saw it, and made sure to let me know.

When I was a small boy, I asked my mother and father why people treated me so cruelly (once, and once only I asked them). My mother only cried, and left the room without speaking. My father sat me down on his lap and smiled at me, his breath smelling of the cheap beer he favored (“It’s the water – and that’s about it”). Son, he said, you’re ugly. You’d better get used to making it on personality. Then he laughed, his eyes gleaming. And so I knew my ugliness to be true.

People would pull away in revulsion when they saw me, or stare in fascination. Adult strangers would discuss aspects of my facial appearance in amazement, speaking right in front of me as if I was invisible, or deaf. Children were even less kind. Teachers automatically assumed my intelligence to be subnormal -- I was placed in a “Special Ed” class one year, seated between a girl who couldn’t control her bladder, and sobbed quietly as her urine dripped to the floor, and a boy who couldn’t stop twitching. I finally stopped going to school altogether in 7th grade, and never returned. Whatever the current extent of my education, it is entirely self-inflicted. Reading was always my only refuge from the world’s staring eyes.

The world’s reaction went beyond exiling me into freakdom, however. The overall impression my visage conveyed was one of hostility and menace, to judge from the reactions I encountered. It didn’t matter what emotions or thoughts were actually occupying my mind, those surrounding me always thought I was ‘giving them attitude’, or that I was ‘looking for trouble.’ Authority figures consistently beat me down for my perceived defiance, until I refused to enter into any transaction where another human being had any say over my actions. People treated me as a threat even when I wasn’t. I’ve lost track of how many times total strangers have just walked up to me on the street and physically attacked me, without preamble or conversation. I learned to fight early, and my youth was one of constant vigilance, watching my back, scanning my surroundings for threats that the scowling beacon of my face inevitably drew to me.

For the year before I finally left home at fourteen, I slept all day and was awake all night, sneaking out of my room to wolf down my food unobserved, doing my best to avoid all human contact. My family appeared not to notice – or if they did, they neither commented nor sought closer interaction with me. I would wander the streets of the black neighborhoods at all hours of the night, a small white face alone in the dark-faced throng – none of the blacks I encountered were any crueler to me than the white folk, even the pimps and drug dealers in the pool halls. Indeed, they had the good grace to ignore me, rather than to rudely stare at the face nature had cursed me with. I was invisible among them.

If I’d been a puppy, folks would have said I had big paws, and in the course of time I grew into them. At this writing I am not small. As a young man, upon gaining my growth and entering the flower of my strength, I finally learned what my face was good for: to frighten people. Of those dark days, the less said, the better. Suffice it to say I walked away from that life when I saw my own ugliness reflected in the features of my terrified victims. I walked away, I say, because I had decided to spurn the darkness the world seemed bent on relegating me to because of my appearance. And I have spurned that darkness: I will never again allow my appearance to dictate my behavior.