I found a gray hair in my beard today. It juts out just below the jawline. The light reflects from it when I lift my head and present my scruffy neck to myself in the mirror. You know, they say a man’s hair becomes lighter and lighter until at last his face is coated in crags and snowy hair and he has nothing left on his scalp. I think of this as more and more of the hairs on my face and neck turn from black to orange. Long ago I knew nothing of beards and shaved regularly, eager to look young and virile and ready for something, though no one ever told me what I was preparing myself for. This changed, over time, as laziness and apathy took a firm hold and I ceased to care about the meaning of things. A pleasing appearance became less and less important until it was more annoyance than necessity. Health of any sort was not an issue because I still felt young and I was allowed to fuck up. Wasn’t I?
I’m twenty seven and I don’t celebrate birthdays. I also have a strange skin growth on my left shoulder. It replaced what I believe was once one of the many innocuous moles that dot my body (those not obscured by the coarse layer of fuzz, in any case). To picture it you must imagine a corroded nipple. It is brown and withered, with small cracks all across. It’s been sitting there for about seven months now, waiting for me to decide. My fear is not that it will be cancer or some other sign that I’m bound for death but that it will force all of the things I’ve worked hard to forget back into focus. Every misdeed, every drunken confession, every ecstasy and joy. The times I played pickle, the times I blazed in the park, the times I awkwardly fucked around with naive girls and never called back. Eager tongues, eager fingers, eager bodies grasping. The green hills of Tepatitlán, the white peaks of Denali, the endless expanse and walls of rain in Mojave, the stucco that surrounded every moment of my indoor life for so many years. It felt crumbly. A single punch, just one, could break right through that stucco and even through the drywall if there was enough strength behind it. It was so weak that one’s fist would barely even throb. Just a little blood.
But this is not old man’s nor dying man’s regret. This is fictionz. This is what I do because I need something to hold onto, something consistent. I don’t know what my last words will be when the time comes, so for now I hope you will forgive yet another quote you probably know. Sometimes I simply can’t come up with the right words.
“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I’ve watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those… moments will be lost in time, like tears… in rain. Time to die.”
– A series of forgettable moments – Blade Runner