Skin.
Hello, it’s nice to meet you. I am a young woman who has a volcano living in my small intestine.
Hello, it’s nice to meet you. I am a young woman who has a volcano living in my small intestine.
I introduce myself like this, straight-faced, to people at parties when I am bored and want attention. I do not go to many parties. They (the people) often disappoint me; I want to talk to someone, many someones, who will make me feel a little less dead and a little more hopeful and/or angry. I hate talking about the weather, but I will do it when I don’t trust the person who I’m speaking to.
These are my preferred conversation topics, in order of most to least preferential:
sex
war
books
secrets
the joy of tiny, but impractical, objects
politics - but only with people who are not insane
King Kong Theory
the meaning of home
skin - but only with people who understand
money - but only with those who have very little; rich people are terribly boring
Sometimes, if I have had enough to drink, I play a game called ‘Do You Like That Woman Or Do You Simply Want To Fuck Her?’ I like to play this with men who have a sense of humour.
Once, after my introduction, a woman - a poet, like me - laughed and told me she would steal it and use it in a poem. I liked the brazen way she said this. It was an admission that she, like me, relied on other humans to inspire her. She then did what no one else would do; pointed at my arm, which I had been absentmindedly picking at, and asked, “Are you sure you do not mean that you have a volcano - perhaps many volcanoes - living underneath your hypodermis?”
Clever people like this interest me greatly, and she said it kindly, so I did not feel self-conscious like I usually would. I laughed also. “What is your name?”
She pronounced it a different way. Not Lu-chee-a, the way Italians do, but Lu-sia, a two-syllable punch without a hint of pretension. This further piqued my interest, and I decided that this woman would be a good friend. I have never yet been wrong about this. Lucia was watching me with slightly narrowed blue eyes, her wineglass stained with a fuschia lipstick that would have made me look like a child playing dress-up, but on her looked regal. I would compliment her on this later, when we were done talking about me.
“Lucia. A bit rude of you to point it out, isn’t it?”
“Is it?” She said, unashamedly. “I thought you meant for us to take that conversational leap, with that opening line of yours.”
We both paused then, to observe the arm I had been itching. A lesion the size of an avocado was weeping clear fluid on my inner elbow, the skin raised, raw and angry. Every so often, flakes of dead skin would fall onto my cornflower blue cotton dress, and I would have to quickly brush them off. It was my left arm that had been giving me trouble, these past few months. My right shoulder - both shoulders, actually. My face. The back of my neck. And my calves, the backs of the knees, stomach, and one sore, chafing nipple, though Lucia couldn’t see any of that. My dress purposely fell to my ankles. Like always, looking down at myself when my body was in the trenches resulted in a mixture of anger, shame and frustration. A desire to wound, to distract with wit and caustic humour. The thing is, there are months and months where my skin is flawless, and I am even beautiful. What a travesty. The months where I am ugly reminds me, unpleasantly, of my boring, predictable self-obsession.
“I’ve seen worse.” The flippancy with which Lucia said this reminded me of children on the playground, comparing scabs. Instinctively, I lifted my palms to show them off, feeling competitive. “And now?” My hands were very bad, by any measure. The skin here was so damaged, so depleted of moisture, that the folds of my fingers had split open, and bled if I moved them too aggressively. Skin like this forces one to stay still and calm. I might as well have plunged my hands into a fire and held them there for a good minute. Most people were repulsed when they saw them, they could not help themselves.
Lucia looked at the dried blood on my left thumb, frowning. “This is up there with the worst of it.” She said it without pity or sympathy, and I liked her for that. The clinical interest was a sort of attention I enjoyed - it meant Lucia was either some sort of doctor, or academic, or that she suffered, or knew someone who suffered, the way I did. It meant she understood. She met my eye and asked. “Not an allergic reaction, then?”
“It’s chronic.”
“Auto-immune?”
“Almost.”
“Ah.” She nodded, “Let me guess. You’re off gluten. To calm the gut.”
“And dairy.”
“Christ. Alcohol?”
“In moderation.” I nodded at my empty champagne flute. “Apparently my digestive system is all inflamed.”
Lucia snorted. “They told me the same thing. Gave me an eating disorder and I was worse than ever.” She flipped her blonde, coiffed hair off her shoulder and turned to show me. She wore a red crushed velvet dress with a high back, so I could only see a little sliver of scaly, angry looking patches snaking down the nape of her neck. The itch must have been unbearable. Whereas I only ever wore dresses that wafted lazily around me, like fog, her dress was tight, as if welded to her long body. As it turned out, that was Lucia. Wound up and ready to spring.
“Velvet, huh?” I said, emboldened now. “I see I’ve befriended a masochist.”
At this, she laughed. A loud, harsh burst of laughter that made me jump. She tipped her head back, mouth open in a snarl. “Darling, you have no idea.”
And then something brilliant happened. Without lowering her voice, or even bothering to lean forward, she said, “Makes sex a nightmare, doesn’t it?” And she grinned, and I could have kissed her.
We settled in the garden: Lucia wanted to smoke. She offered me one and I reluctantly shook my head. “Doctor says not when it’s this bad.” Lucia simply tucked the cigarette behind my ear, and patted my shoulder. “Doctors,” she informed me, “do not help difficult women with skin like ours.”
“Like ours? Your face, your arms are perfect.” I scoffed, flagging down a white-suited man, who bore a tray of drinks. His eyes flickered first to the patch in the centre of my forehead, which burned like a kiss from the devil. I could feel it there, pulsating and hot. It was the alcohol, no doubt. I deposited my empty glass and took not one, but two glasses of champagne for myself, as she watched me and blew smoke from the corner of her pink lips. We leaned against the brick, still warm from the summer sun, and she smoked in peaceful silence. I felt like I could just lie down on the dry grass and drift off to sleep whilst she smoked. It was a nice thought.
“You remind me of myself.” Lucia declared eventually. She was on her second cigarette by this point. “You’re a bit of a mess. I find it charming.”
I said nothing, staring at the guests fanning out across the garden and trying to guess which of them were hunting, and which of them were either too timid, too satisfied, or too boring to go home with a stranger. Lucia wanted to goad me into a debate. Or an argument. I recognised it, because I myself behaved like this towards everyone else much of the time, and I was enjoying her attempts. It felt like flirting.
“A raw, blood-ridden, beautiful little mess." She said.
I sighed, letting my shoulders drop and pulled her cigarette right from her lips, inhaling it, greedily. “Tell me more about your skin.”
“It doesn’t bore you?”
“It never bores me.” I held onto the cigarette but let it burn itself out, slowly. Just to provoke her. And she laughed, deliciously. A good friend, indeed.
“I’ve had it since I was a baby.” Lucia scratched the back of her neck with relish. “You know the story. No cure. At first it was because I was a child. Then it was because I was going through puberty. Then it was because of my periods. Then it was because I wouldn’t have a baby.”
“A baby?”
“Pregnancy is supposed to help with it.” She glanced at my ring finger, “Your husband couldn’t make it?”
“He’s fucking someone else this evening.” I said this mildly, but Lucia must have misinterpreted my tone, because she spat at the ground, rather adorably. “I despise husbands.”
This was where we differed. I adored my husband, and I was confident that he adored me. But to explain our arrangement would stray into predictable, dull territory, and I wanted to listen to her talk about herself. “So, it’s always been your fault then, that horror show on your back?”
She laughed her bark-like laugh again, and nodded. “Yours too, I imagine.”
“Oh, of course.” When I lifted her old cigarette to my lips again, I wondered if the fuchsia would stain my mouth too. I had stopped wearing makeup years ago. When things were good, I felt beautiful almost every single day. “I itch, you see. I make it worse. I lie in the sun. I drink. I eat nuts. I enjoy things too much.”
“You’re a goddamn fool.” She said, and then we both laughed and began to compare notes. Treatments. We talked about the disgusting, slimy feeling you get after slathering yourself in petroleum jelly. Stains on the bedsheets, like oil spills. Greasy handprints on leather. White cotton gloves that turned grey and shapeless. We talked about sex.
“Having it on your back is massively inconvenient” Lucia said, “I only like to have sex on my back. I like to lie back and lose myself - but it prickles and I get distracted. Feels like spiders, swarming across my limbs. I can’t orgasm when I’m itchy.”
“I would swap with you in a heartbeat.” I told her, and I meant it. “Try feeling sexy when you wake up with red, swollen eyes and a face that looks like you’ve been attacked by sandpaper.” At this, some of Lucia’s hardness momentarily melted. She reached out to me, placing a hand not on my shoulder, or cheek, but on my chest, just above my heart. She was careful not to touch broken skin, and I felt something like love for her because of that. “I feel,” Lucia said quietly, gently, “disgusting, all of the time. I feel like a thick, gelatinous mess. Tainted, and small, and ashamed of myself. Not that I would ever admit it.”
Her hand was warm on the blue cotton. Wondering if she could feel the slow, unsteady heartbeat underneath, I wished we were alone, with only the sky as a witness. The urge to meet her vulnerability with humour was powerful, but I held back, because I am not cruel.
“I spend my life telling other women their obsession with what they look like ensures they lead smaller, constrained lives. But here I am, a hypocrite.”
“A hypocrite?” Lucia’s hand rested still on my chest.
“Imagine if the doctors realised they could either treat the way the skin looked, but not how it made us feel, or if they could cure the discomfort but not the blemishes. Which would you choose?”
She did not hesitate. “What’s a lifetime of discomfort in exchange for smooth, soft skin?”
“Exactly.” And I felt a rush of affection for her. My forehead burned as she dropped her hand, but I did not scratch. I am too vain to touch my face.
“My last doctor recommended a cold shower when the itching got too bad.” Lucia snorted and closed her eyes, leaning her head back. She was a dark silhouette, throat exposed, pale hair catching the light from the windows. Statuesque. “A cold shower, in the middle of sex. How useful.”
“Mine suggested epsom salts.”
“Oh?” Lucia looked down at me, interested. “Do they work?”
“They don’t make anything worse.” I shrugged. I pictured her lying on her stomach, the street lights illuminating her back, her skin. I could itch it for her with my long nails, hear her groan in relief. It was an appealing image. We talked about Balmonds, about sterilised steel itching tools, about ice packs and bandages and redness and bloating and burning. We talked about being eaten alive from the inside, and she inched her way closer to me. We talked about pain and hopelessness, and how men recoiled and women took pity. I told her about the time I was scratching my neck, in ecstasy, and a friend grabbed my hand and held onto it. Ostensibly, to stop me from causing further damage. But we both had known it was because I disgusted her.
“What a bitch.” Lucia said, and I smiled and said nothing. She picked up my hand with two of hers and turned it over. We both looked down at my aged, marred palms. They were swollen and hot.
“I bet washing those things hurts like a motherfucker.”
“I try not to wash them.”
“You’re gross.” She said, and it felt good, coming from her.
“And you’re captivating.”
She liked this. She let my hands go to reapply her lipstick, just like that, without a mirror. A skill I envied. The darkness and the August heat seemed to swallow us. There was so much sky, indigo and grey, above our heads. The back of my left knee called and called and called to me.
“I am a young woman who has a volcano living in my small intestine.” Lucia said, softly. It was an invitation.
A quick favour. I love writing these posts, and I intend to do them for free for as long as I can. If you enjoyed reading this, forward it to a friend (or three) who you think might like it too. It helps massively, because validation from strangers is truly the only thing that makes the horrors bearable for me.
PS: If you spotted a typo, no you didn’t.