The Skin Tag

I was convinced it was cancer, what with all the irradiated clementines I've been eating recently. I noticed a growth, a disgusting little blob, that had appeared on my back. People of my disposition always jump to the cancer conclusion, any lump, scratch, discolouration, it must be cancer. This time I was especially worried, so I booked an appointment at the doctor.

He sat behind his desk, a desk which proudly displayed a plastic model of an inflamed prostate (huge, by the way), and gestured for me to take my shirt off. I obliged and seconds later he had diagnosed a harmless skin tag. He drew a diagram on a post it note while explaining what it was. Above the diagram he wrote SKIN TAG in capital letters and handed it to me. He told me to make an appointment to get it removed at the front desk and waved goodbye.

The next appointment manifested itself in a huge ball of humiliation. I entered the room and immediately noticed that this doctor had no prostate, just a very neat empty desk. In the corner of the room there was an extremely beautiful girl, sitting silently on a chair.
"You don't mind if there's a medical student here, do you?" asked the doctor.
"No," I replied. The doctor continued to ask me questions, which I answered in an extremely witty and charming way.
There's something wrong, I thought. I've never been this witty and charming before, not in front of a beautiful girl.
There was indeed something wrong. The doctor gestured for me to take my shirt off which I did. He then produced a magnifying glass and beckoned the girl to his side. They began to examine the skin tag in great detail.
"Touch it," commanded the doctor. I felt cold fingers prodding me.
"Give it a tug," commanded the doctor. There was a slight pain as the beautiful girl began pulling on the skin tag. This went on for sometime, my spirits falling.
"Oooh, what's this?" the doctor said and prodded my back. The beautiful girl reeled off a medical name for something I couldn't see.
"Oooh, and this," another prod, another medical name for some invisible ailment.
"What about this," and yet another poke. This went on for sometime, my humiliation growing. "All that's nothing to worry about, completely normal. You can put your shirt back on"
"Aren't you going to remove the skin tag?" I asked.
"Oh, no," he replied. "There's a three month waiting list for that kind of thing."
That was the end of my appointment.
This was a new breed of humiliation. An appointment that was pointless, apart from me being sniggered at by another beautiful girl. I left feeling used. Christ, what a day...

The Annual Vacuum

A year has slipped by with barely a whisper. I started this record in early-November 2004, and I didn't even realise until today. When specific markers of time pass, such as this or a birthday, Christmas or even the anniversary of that event which shouldn't be mentioned, I start to think about mortality. I'm sure most people are the same. However, I don't think about it in a morbid, worried-about-death kind of way. Mortality just presents itself to me and I consider it. The best way I can describe this feeling is that it's like seeing the alarm button in a lift. Of course, you are fully aware that such a thing exists when in the lift, but it's only when that little red, shiny button catches your eye that you really think about what it means. You think about what it must be like to be stuck in a lift, and you assess all possible ways to make such an event comfortable. I suppose that's what I mean when I say I think about mortality.

I don't really know if anything has changed since last November, or if I have grown as a person. I think that is a terrible prospect, to live through another year, to put another dash on the scoreboard, and realise that you have learnt absolutely nothing.

What have I learned in the past year?

I typed this question for my own benefit, to make me think about it, but I have just spent the last fifteen minutes staring at the blinking cursor, punctuating every second. I think I'm back to the whole mortality thing again. I better go now, lest in this coming year I forget to learn anything...

Royal Flush

Once again, the early hour caused a catalogue of disaster with my internal workings. A vicious lack of sleep caused me to stumble into work feeling terrible and, because of a desperate action, I ended up feeling worse. I managed to find myself at Starbucks and, forgoing my usual coffee, I made the reckless decision of having a coffee that was blacker and stronger than any I have had in my life. (A quick interlude in the story: despite now being hopelessly addicted to the South American Bean, I am a relative newcomer to the narcotic thrills of the drink. My tolerance had yet to be tested fully until this morning). This coffee was a brutal concoction, a thick, chewable drink that tasted of burnt matched and tar. I gulped it down regardless.
The sweats started shortly after. This was followed by a very strange feeling. It was as if there was a small, tight and extremely hot knuckle of energy directly in the centre of my torso. The energy was not being released from this hard, little thing, just burning up somewhere under my diaphragm. There was no feeling of elation, just a freakish dizziness and a nagging thought that maybe my time was up.
I came to my senses about three hours later with a particularly expressive headache and promptly chased down two ibuprofen without thinking.
This course of events has led me to the realisation that when the early shift is bad we all do whatever we can to get through it, in the hope that we won't fall apart until we are safe at home. Coffee, painkillers, sugary food, they are all just quick fixes, used to help deny the fact that our bodies are on a downward spiral. Christ, when will it end?

On a lighter note, Stockton and I were faced with a passenger who had a sick kind of fever about him. After overhearing me make a comment about Charles and Camilla's current trip to America, he approached us.
"I've met both of his wives," he said.
"Oh?" said Stockton, allowing the man to continue.
"I was in the army," he stated proudly, "and I've met both of them."
At this, I think both Stockton and myself thought this was the end of the conversation, and prepared to say farewell to the man. But no.
"I tell you," he continued, his voice speeding up, a sheen of sweat appearing on his tiny, bald head. "I definitely would."
"Would what?" I asked.
"Do it," he said. "With her."
"Which one?" Stockton chipped in. "Diana or Camilla?"
To our surprise he said, "Camilla." He was proud of the fact and started rhapsodizing that she was "one of those women who you know just would." While Diana, the Queen of Hearts, "just stood there with her mouth open." The whole scene culminated in him pointing a finger at us and exclaiming, "I'm telling you boys, you would definitely fuck her, she's just sexy."
I don't know what Stockton was thinking at this stage, but I just replied by stuttering the word, "wow," over and over again. Once he had left we didn't speak much about him, but I think he may have been in the army too long. Despite his vigorous descriptions of why Camilla Parker-Bowles is sexy, I remain to be convinced. I can't speak for Stockton, of course.