He had a way of walking which told everyone: hey, look at me, I have a thing where I sort of half step/slide my left foot and then whip my right foot around and in front and continue on like that but it’s not really a disability more like just the way I walk…as in it’s too slight to say: “don’t look” so it’s like a thing he has that is looked at and puzzled over and, sure, made fun of (when he was in school and sometimes even now) and there is no treatment for it, as in, no free health care type treatment, politeness in gratuity, it’s a way of walking that’s not, you know, common, or usual, yet to fix it would be thousands of dollars in therapy-type treatment with hour long massages and reformative braces and osteopathy which, given that the pre-existing condition is even more than you can imagine in paid health cover, and being as he walks in like that and the assessors see it and think “well hell he has to pay a premium if he thinks he can start claiming on that pre-existing ailment in the first twelve months”, so much so that it has forbid him from signing the contracts on numerous health cover contracts over the years because, what, three hundred bucks a month to wait twelve of them to begin getting ‘help’ seems, well it seems impossible and even then seeking out help from professionals, getting one hundred and eighty dollar consultations through for them to say “it’s going to be many visits like this until we can fix you”…the maths of it, the monetary mathematics of it in comparison to the (minimal) ridicule, spectacle and discomfort (on all counts little at best) make the decision for him.

It’s not the largest of moles but it sits just under her right eye, big enough though that she is acutely aware that when people talk to her instead of looking her in the eye they look her in the mole so to speak and she is sick of seeing that look, that just below the inner eye contact she wants so much, that they think she doesn’t know or care or is used to it or god forbid expects it, no, she doesn’t think that she forgives them one and all for looking and talking like that, even those who she works with who she’s known for several years, those she forgives because, well, not because she is a saint or some evolved human who has experienced such treatment over and over enough to absolve other humans of their behaviour, no, it’s because it is all the time, merely that, merely that she is resigned to engaging people whilst they stare at her fifty cent piece sized 5mm elevated mole and that she knows in herself that she stares at things, an invalid drooling in a wheelchair, a man with a blatantly large birthmark over half his face, she knows and stares and doesn’t imagine them staring back, feels apart from that visual anomaly world when she herself can partake, be the gawker, think (even her think!) “oh god imagine having that” and then it is maybe one of two breathes when she thinks again that ‘I do have that’, either because she thinks it or catches a child looking up with his or her mouth open.

In the mirror was a monster, ugly, deformed, he tried to pull his form into all kinds of positions to make the fat suck in or lift up or move around but inevitably he relaxed fully and worse bent forward and only saw the hideous round belly hanging underneath, legs below it, slumped shoulders and a skull that barely escaped from being pulled into the wholly round body, chin lost in there so he lifts his head to see the jaw bone and when he sees the shape of the jaw feels relieved because it is there, firm and real and part of his body and straightening up again there is pride coming again, shoulders back, legs slightly apart, a big breath that heaves the chest upwards and open, turns away from the mirror, leans down to touch the toes and come up, down and up, down and up, starting to breathe a bit more heavily now, good he thinks, good, down and up down and up, getting more and more furious, quicker, sweat starting to form under his arms and forehead, good, down and up, a simple move he knows but he can feel his stomach muscles singing, saying look at me look at me, stops mid move, looks back to the mirror, sees the same fat man, a glow on his cheeks, a smile quickly or instantly disappearing, takes his hands and holds the gut, holds it hard and harder, it hurts, he is pinching it hard, harder, sees that his hands are fat, slaps himself on the chest, sick of doing this everyday, every time after a shower, the same routine, up and down, hate and pain, holding his fat belly in his hands and telling himself over and over “you are a fat disgusting fuck”, a mantra before leaving the house for another day.