Extracts from my personal diary (part 3)

Eye of the beholder, aged 26.

There’s a girl in our department, a research student like me, who has an extreme skin condition. When I first saw her I was shocked: she looks as though she has been burnt in a fire, the skin on her hands and face looking red, raw and blistered. Her hair as well seems dry and moisture less. To look at her face and skin is almost to experience the pain and agony that she must, on a daily basis, when say washing or drying herself, experience. On top of all this she is shorter than average.

Like I say, I was taken aback when I first saw her. But I was also equally impressed upon by her personality. She is eternally radiant, chirpy and talkative. Her voice is sweet and girlish; she disarms people’s shock by her friendly personality; she is forever genial, never depressed; she is positive, she jokes a lot, she listens well – you can always rely on her to smile, she is never down, doomed or absorbed.

When I first arrived here I saw from a distance how she made friends with all and sundry, all except me. For some reason, I’m not quite sure why, she disdained me, ignored me. I got the impression I was being blamed for man’s universal and time worn insensitivity to women. Not being especially well suited to the role of hero or gentleman, I decided to ignore the silly girl, and treat her with the same hate and indifference I do any girl who dares to insult me. Then one day, some nine months later, she happened to walk into a room, where I sat studying alone.

‘Hello’ she said chirpily ‘how are you?’

I responded kindly, openly. I’m not sure why her attitude suddenly changed like that. To be honest I think she wasn’t expecting to find me in there, and when she did, before she had time to realise who I was, she’d already discharged her typical pleasantries. Anyway from that day on there was no turning back; and slowly over time our friendship has developed. We always stop to chat with each other when we meet. I also grew to see that her relationships with our piers, whom from day one she appeared to be on such good terms with, weren’t, when prodded, so strong. In many ways her relationship with me was, from the start, more intimate. In that perhaps she read me for a more sensitive person and decided to play a silent, psychological game with me.

Anyway as it now stands, I think our relationship perhaps more meaningful than others. With me of course, open, listening person that I am, she is free to be more herself. I have often thought that beneath her genial exterior must lie a more serious, passionate, angry woman, a woman beset by deep depression, consummate loneliness; and I wonder if, under the empty, vacuous silence that is my presence and personality, she won’t be encouraged to diffuse her truer feelings to me.

Of course I worry for myself as well. I am a cruel man at heart, manipulative, a bully. I am better off with woman who can stand up to me. On the other hand I like being a hero, I have a huge ego, I like having my vanity tickled. Will this girl’s life be barren, empty, sterile, unhappy? Is there any need for that? Isn’t there a hero out there ready to step up to the plate? We only live once. I can’t help recall how in my youth I dated a very glamorous woman, several years my senior, for only a few weeks. We slept together once. We didn’t really have anything in common. I think she felt sorry for me to some extent. I think her motivations were somewhat based on guilt: she regretted being such a bitch toward men in her youth. Yet how that experience changed me! After that I felt like a man, no longer inferior, no longer second best to anyone. I buried a part of myself after that little affair, a part of me I did not like. I was liberated. Even though, analysed coldly, it was a brief, cold affair with a woman who was trying to be kind.

Stupid thoughts. This week I found myself in an awkward situation.

At the close of the day on Monday B came to my office, told me she was going to XYZ, and asked if I was walking that way. I was. I could see she was mildly excited by the prospect of walking home with me. Just seeing how her attitude changed, how this was a big deal to her, how she was no longer herself, no longer the calm, dignified person she usually is, so simple, straightforward and likeable – seeing all this I already felt electrically angered, I felt so put upon. Outside the department, I have never been with B. Here on this walk we would be exposed, to the prying eyes of the entire world. The thought of it angered me, I felt so pressurised. But I couldn’t get out of it.

As we walked out of the building, I was curt and short in my conversation with her, and B in response started talking nervously, ten to the dozen, absolutely inanely. I couldn’t stand the farce of the situation, the unnaturalness. I was so ill at ease. I was angered, resentful. And as we headed out along the road we were set upon by a million eyes.

Because of the rush hour traffic, we found ourselves walking past an endless line of sluggishly moving cars; and everyone, everyone seemed to look at us; to watch B and I, she a strange sight for those who have not set eyes on her before. I felt the attention on me and hated every bit of it. I felt I became more tense, more uptight, and I felt all the people in the cars saw this too. Everyone seemed to ogle us. I don’t know what B thought. I should be flattered, I really should be so flattered, if she feels so comforted, so assured in my presence; but God how I wished I was a perfect ten, an out and out handsome stud like my cousins. For then, I could have strolled at ease; then I could have allowed all those stares of passers by to simply bounce off my carefree, indifferent, hunk-like person; then I would have been able to extend the shroud of protection to B.

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I’m on a dismal and deflating low tonight and all of my own making: in my presentation to the department today, I embarrassed, humiliated and frightened both myself and the entire audience by inserting in my talk a series of jokes so unfunny, misjudged, misplaced, bizarre and poorly executed, that from the halfway point to the end the audience sat cringing, terrified and wanting to escape, whilst I fell into myself and gave off an introverted, suicidal come psychopathic hatred of them.

At the end three or four students and colleagues, commiserating with my embarrassment, stayed behind to ask questions and simply to make sure that I was alright.

One of these was Stefan. He is a perhaps thirty year old student with glasses and a beard, who’s studying for a Master’s degree here, though his chief characteristic is that he has a degenerative disease, (MS I believe); he is wheelchair bound and makes his way about the campus via an electric motor. During the entire talk, as is his wont, his arms flailed uncontrollably – he has fits where he is unable to control his body – and this was accompanied by moaning and groaning and foaming at the mouth, all of which he is also unable to curb. Added to all of this he really cannot speak clearly, a simple conversation with him a trying task, as he demonically tries to express himself.

When he asked me his question at the end, I was in no mood to answer him, my shame and confusion confounded by the fact that a handful of the audience had remained to sensitively enquire after my health, and narcissistic, horrible person that I am, I felt a fraud and a charlatan, I felt I didn’t deserve their sympathy. Normally eternally gracious, especially with one such as Stefan, here, feeling utterly worthless, I didn’t even have the motivation to answer his question, my supervisor kindly stepping in and giving him an explanation.

But later tonight, reflecting on my hollowness, I thought back to Stefan’s question and realised what a clever and intelligent question he had asked, and I was surprised by his depth of understanding of the topic I covered.

But why should I be surprised? After all, I have known for this past year he is a MASTER’S STUDENT – his intelligence and subject knowledge shouldn’t be underestimated. Yet all the same I am left sobered and impressed upon, deeply influenced by the fact that that man, barely able to utter a word without problems, his arms, his head forever flailing, agitated, disturbed and erratic, his continual moans and groans, his paralysed, demon-possessed, wooden body forever requiring to be carried around, towed here and there in his skooting, shooting, spurting electric chair – I am left sobered by the fact that trapped within this body is a very fine and developed intelligence, and left saddened that even though I am now fully aware of this, I somehow still don’t really believe it, and can never regard Stefan as an intelligent, sentient being.

I am struck profoundly by him: for he is as intelligent as anyone, it is an incontrovertible fact and yet he can only really express himself through exuberant cabbage-like gestures, as if he is a madman or infant.

And I wonder whether he was really so interested in knowing the answer to the question he posed at the time; or whether, quietly regarding my downfall and humiliation, a seed of sympathy was sown within his soul, and he wanted, in his generous and kindly way, to commiserate with me and show me, in my hour of humiliation, that I had a friend. I am almost certain of it.