Acne

The Doordash driver was really attractive. Standing there holding my bag of Chipotle. She was artsy looking with tattoos running up her left thigh. Youngish. I have no idea anymore how to act around attractive women that I don’t know or that I’m not paying by the hour. I instantly adopt the mindset that I’m horribly unattractive and that I have nothing to offer them. I am even too paralyzed to offer a basic smile.

I shared Bukowski’s acne experience. I had it in high school and again really bad in college. I wanted to be invisible all the time. I marveled at how other kids’ faces were so smooth, even, and not greasy and bumpy, like mine. When it hit me in college I was living alone in that 5th Street apartment. That fucking acne and the harsh retin-A treatment nearly cost me my undergraduate career. I barely left the apartment all winter. You think I would’ve spent that acne winter reading great works of literature and discovering writing. Maybe I would’ve changed my major. Instead I spent the acne winter renting porn on the cable box atop my tiny television. So many porn rentals in fact that I couldn’t pay the outrageous cable bill, resulting in disconnection. And because I didn’t have a VCR, I would re-rent the same ones over and fucking over, out of boredom and depression. Nina Hartley was the big name back then.

I thought the acne would leave me with a face of deep scars for a lifetime. I’d drive to the 24-hour gym late, late at night to avoid people staring at my face as I worked out my skinny body. But now I have my own esthetician and a series of micro-needling sessions re-built and re-filled my face. During the pandemic two dates told me I have great skin and that I’m lucky I don’t break out. If they only fucking knew. One gave me a handjob in her car.

That acne winter got me used to being alone for extended periods of time. It was my own Covid quarantine. Give me a small room, something to write with, and I’ll take that over company and conversation any day. While the world enjoys its own miserable company.