28 December 2006

THE SHAME, THE HORROR, THE TEARS, AND MY ULTIMATE RECLUSION

Email

Today, friends, I uncovered something horrifying about my physicality. So damning was this find that I can scarcely remember ever feeling this deflated, this melancholy, this totally moribund. My discovery could cause me to banish myself to the far corners of my apartment, never to speak to anyone again, riddled with pure, unbridled shame.

In the shower, just seven or eight minutes ago, my mind drew (what I assume to be) an elongated blank. I can only guess that I had been distracted for about a minute, but when I snapped to, I found myself looking down at my chest.

I am not a naturally hirsute man. I have what one might consider normal hair growth on my legs, some sparse forearm hair, and some regular-pattern growth on my belly. I have no current back hair. What worries me to no end, however, is my chest hair.

It is, by all accounts, absolute crap. It's wispy, like the fuzz on a frightened puppy, and has a foundation that is completely devoid of any follicular strength. It curls at ungodly angles. Sometimes, for no apparent reason – and with zero provocation – it gets caught in the simplest of cotton t-shirts. It is, in a word, a nuisance. There's not a lot of it, but what's there seems to relish in making a living hell out of my waking life. If I had one physical defect that I would choose to redact, it would be my chest hair. Any of you who have actually seen me in the flesh and personally viewed this haggard, bloated, sad excuse for a corpus are now saying to yourselves, "Wow, he must be serious if THAT'S what he would change." Touché.

Here is what strikes me near to the point of throwing myself off the most proximate bridge:

Peering down at my upper torso I notice, for the very first time, that one side – the left – is abundantly hairier than the other. This in and of itself does not immediately throw me off…until I gaze at my nipples. On the hairy side, the nipple is rather absent of hair growth; a few baby sprouts abound, but nothing to write home about. As if possessed by some unseen force, however, I decide to immediately compare it to the other nipple – the one on the less-hairy side. I am shocked and disgusted to find that it is, by quick and accurate calculations, almost 75% hairier than its twin.

How in the annals of f*ck does this happen, I ask you?

I literally don't know what to do with this unwanted knowledge, but I've spent the past fifteen minutes contemplating the best way to suffocate myself – AFTER shaving my chest. Can you imagine showing up to a funeral home with unsymmetrical chest hair? People would speak of it for years! I'd be castigated post-mortem, laughed at posthumously, derided as an utter fool and a degenerate in children's nursery rhymes!

No, friends, the only thing left for me to do is to take myself and my disjointed nipples and bury the whole package in a 12x14 box of self-loathing otherwise known as my bedroom. I don't feel fit to be a part of society anymore; truly, my heart burns, as though the ties between my soul and the great pool of humanity have already been severed. I am disfigured. I am unnatural. I am a monster.

Fare thee well.

|