It’s gotta be melanoma. How I’m gonna die. Gotta be. I used to joke that I went through three noses a summer, for fuck’s sake. Burning and peeling and burning and peeling. And of the parts of my body that didn’t molt, family and friends with skin as white as mine used to admonish: you have to get that first good burn of the summer in, then you have your base and you don’t need to wear sunscreen as much.
One aunt told me sunscreen’s most effective if you apply it after you’ve burned. This same aunt told me to wash my face with my first pee of the day. It’s got the vitamins and minerals your skin needs.
Vitamin E is one of these essential minerals your skin needs. If you’re looking to source it from your own body, it’s excreted through your urine, but mostly through your feces. If you don’t want to rub your own waste on you, a better option is olive oil. I used to apply it liberally in the summertime and I’m not sure why, after doing it even just once, that I continued. My whole body felt like it was in a crock pot. My skin would glow redder and redder and would stick to my clothes and my bedsheets.
Still, I would bathe in it, draw a bath and drop in two shots of EVOO. It slicked my tub fiercely, like a Home Alone trap, and showers became perilous, most perilous when the urge to self-pleasure arose.
What I had was a studio apartment that was probably once a hotel, so when the urge came I only had about five small steps to the bathroom to ease myself. When I was frying in EVOO all night my brain would go completely mad and I could sense the spirit of the hotel, which is a very real spirit, a spirit of carnal desires and regrets. I had two options, the sink or the shower. The toilet is never one. Just try it–no.
One summer night I chose the shower instead of the sink and that’s how I got this scar on my chin. Almost every shave I cut it open. Today was one of those shaves.
todd of tacoma 