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.

Live life more

Just got home from home…where I grew up. Got to see my core group of friends from high school, was weird but fun. It put things into perspective for me. Seeing all the people I went to high school with with their families and full-on adulthood. Made me feel pathetic for being so broke and insecure over a failed relationship.

I need to like myself more. I need to really believe that I deserve good things. That I deserve to be loved by someone. I was so surprised when girls think about me – I should expect that.

I drove around my hometown. Past my old house and neighborhood. Went to the Northern tennis courts where I spent all my summers. I deserve love and happiness. I will have all those things. I deserve someone better. I will succeed. I need to live life more.