MyFace

Marlena and I sit on folding chairs as kids spill into the gym. The noise level rises exponentially. I sit with my eyes closed so the students can stare at me.

Eighth graders get the privilege of sitting on the bleacher seats. The seventh and sixth graders sit in rows on the floor.

Two boys are by themselves. off against the gym wall, about 30 feet to our left. They look unhappy.

The assistant principal takes up the microphone. Nobody is looking, nobody pays attention. “Good afternoon, students!” he yells, and they respond. He does it again, more quietly, and they settle down. Teachers step into the crowd to shush a couple of noise pockets.

I am introduced and stand in front of the crowd. I pause for a couple of beats and begin: “I want you to stare at my face today.” They do so. A few grimace and turn away. I invite them to ask, “What happened to your face?” They shout in unison and are engrossed in my explanation.

They love physicality and humor, so my description of being a member of a gang consisting of Freddy Kreuger, the Beast, Frankenstein, Igor, the Phantom of the Opera and Quasimodo goes over well, especially when I finish with “and Michael Jackson,” and act out how my gang likes to play lurch tag while hanging out in the bushes at night.

I tell about how my parents supported me and how my grandmother (mi abuelita, my nana) reacted to the prayerful pose I learned from the nuns by jerking my chin up, up, up and yelling at me to keep it there and look people in the face. I act out her anger and it shocks them into silence.

Then comes the story of showing up, dressed as a clown, at a Halloween party that turns out to be my first boy-girl party, and the inevitable spin the bottle game which ends up in my being rejected by the cutest girl at Our Lady of Grace School.

All I do is tell stories and be as emotionally present as possible. I do indeed feel rejected as I kneel on the gym floor in my imaginary spin the bottle circle. A couple of times, students have come up to us afterwards and said, “Thanks for not telling us what to do.”

“Love at Second Sight” is all about appearance and acceptability, and that is also what their lives are about. They have to do math, but it is a secondary concern. They are trying to find their place in the world and much of it has to do with self image.

Next comes the story of how I sat on the couch with Carol, paralyzed with anxiety and self-doubt, wanting to kiss her but excruciatingly aware of having only one real lip. I finally do ask for a kiss and when she responds “I thought you would never ask,” a feminine “Aaaaw” arises. I look up and see a few boys staring wonderingly at the girls’ reaction.

They are a wonderful audience, reacting authentically to what we present. They are not yet practiced in being cool, in controlling their muscles of facial expression. They seem to radiate light.

I end by saying that my face is a gift because I have been forced to find my inner beauty, and how it has become a gift again in that I find I am able to see the beauty of others like them, that I know that I look different to them than when they first saw me. Some nod in assent. I say that they look different to me too, that I have seen the warmth in their eyes and their intelligence and that I want each them to hold their chin up and be proud of themselves.

I bring up Marlena and they look curiously as I put my arm around her.

“The first time I met David, I heard his voice before I saw his face.” Marlena shows how she walked away in shock when she first saw me.

Marlena’s is the true Love at Second Sight story of taking a longer deeper look, of looking for “the flash of gold” in another. It is all about how to relate to someone radically different and is the perfect counterpart to my story.

She asks, “Do you know how it is when you have a crush on someone?” and girls look knowingly at one another.

It is an afternoon assembly, the last period of the day, and the students are becoming restless. This can be like speaking to a big box of worms. But they are with Marlena when she describes her new awareness of how people like me can get stared at and affected by constant comments and pointing. This, too, is part of their lives and she acts it out well.

They become still again when Marlena tells the sickening feeling she had when Cheryl, her new best friend in high school asked: “Marlena, please don’t tell my parents that you are Jewish.”

She finishes by asking them to take a second look too. I rejoin her and the question and answer session begins. Some of the questions are asked most every time: “Did you tell Cheryl’s parents that you were Jewish?” “Does your face hurt?” “Do you have brothers and sisters?”

Boys tend to ask the more matter of fact, physically oriented questions: “Can you see ok out of your left eye?” “Did you play sports?”

The girls have other interests: “When did you get married?”

And always, some that surprise: “When did you first realize that you had inner beauty?” “If you could change your face by a special operation, would you do it?” When the latter question is asked, I look pensive and say, “Well, only if I could look like Britney Spears.” That gets a mixture of laughter and shock; I feel compelled to announce that I am kidding, that I would not want to give up what I have learned, that my face is a gift. But that I do wonder sometimes what it would be like to be normal. “Maybe I could have a six month trial period with a normal face?”

Then Marlena interjects, “Well, do you think he should change his face?”, knowing they always shout out, “No!”

Afterwards, we stand at the door of the gym to say goodbye. They pour past us; not everyone gets to shake hands. One boy returns to the gym door after having left. He looks tentative. He holds his hand out halfway. As I hold it, he flinches slightly. After he turns away, a teacher says, “That was amazing. Richard never lets anybody touch him.”

***

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DIE
By David Roche

Many baby boomers nearing the cusp of geezerdom are confused and concerned about what happens after death.

I can be of help. I have been studying the afterlife since being under the tutelage of the good sisters at Our Lady of Grace School in the 1950s.

Death itself may be a source of concern for you. Get over it. It is not so bad. It is what happens just before death (e.g., cardiac arrest, poisoning, removal of ventilator) that is often rather unpleasant. And according to Sister Mary Wenceslaus, the aftermath of death can be pretty distressing, too.

DEAD ON ARRIVAL: MANGIA, MANGIA.

The nuns were very clear that the first thing that happens when you die is that you have to finish all the food you wasted in your life. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

So let’s review the postdeath consumer choices you have after you are done eating.

RETRO VERSION

HELL: The most likely eventuality.

You probably chose hell long ago. Yes, you did. You’ve known it all along.

But it is no longer called Hell! Due to the influx of a better class of people who are interested in maintaining property values, it is now known as Lower Paradise Estates. You will find exclusive areas such as “Demon Oaks” and “Festering Ridge.” They are not gated communities, as Lower Paradise Estates itself is a form of gated community. It’s a buyer’s market right now, with lots of creative financing opportunities.

You’ll be pleased to know that a section of Hell has been preserved. It’s called “Old Hell,” and retains the quaint charm portrayed so well by Dante and Hieronymus Bosch. Be sure to schedule some time there (actually, it will be scheduled for you). The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse lead a parade through Old Hell every evening. They drive Hummers, dragging newly arrived CEOs behind them. At the new bowge for anal retentives, you can watch them clutch at postits dangling just out of reach.

Give up on trying to avoid hell. That is a lot of wasted effort. Instead, I advise you to spend time and energy developing as much endurance, stoicism and self-discipline as you can muster. Yes, you still will be covered with flaming boils for all eternity, but you will be a little more able to scream “one day at a time,” and other positive affirmations.

PURGATORY: Hell with a shelf life.

Purgatory is where you go if you die with relatively minor sins on your soul. Of course this is impossible, so purgatory is pretty much only a concept.

After all this time, there are only 34 people in purgatory. Those are the ones who dropped dead as they left the confessional, with no time to even think about committing new and exciting mortal sins. The bad news is that the suffering in purgatory is just as bad as in hell. Eternal flame, red hot pokers up your butt, the whole bit. The good news is that when you have suffered enough, you go up to heaven. However—you are not the one who gets to say, “I have suffered enough.” Somebody else does that, either God or someone he has appointed. I think it is probably one of the nuns from grade school. They had a pretty good sense of how much suffering one deserved.

Well, actually, you could say, “I have suffered enough.” You probably would be saying that constantly in purgatory. Or screaming it, rather.

Also, purgatory ends on Judgment Day. After Judgment Day there is only heaven or hell. So the luckiest people are the ones who die and go to purgatory the night before Judgment Day.

LIMBO: cancelled due to lack of interest.

Limbo used to be up there in the sky somewhere a little east of purgatory. It was a nondescript place where unbaptized babies went to wait until Judgment Day. They just waited there. Not happy, not sad. They were “in limbo.” That’s where the expression comes from. Think of a dog kennel for souls. Recently, the Catholic Church announced that there had been a misunderstanding and there was no Limbo. I don’t know what happens to the souls of the unbaptized babies now.

HEAVEN: the desired outcome.

The best thing about heaven, according to the nuns, was that you got to be in the presence of God for all eternity. Which seemed a little boring to me. The Mickey Mouse Club had an “Anything Can Happen Day” on Wednesdays—surely God could muster up something similar. Anyway, my vision of God at that point was of a cranky old bipolar alcoholic with a club behind his back and a forced smile on his face. Who wanted to be in his presence?

The other thing about heaven: people there get to look down upon the people in hell. Which is the most enjoyable thing about heaven. If you go out on the deck in heaven and look down, there they are. Covered with boils, skin blistering, body parts bursting into flame. Just what they deserve. They are all screaming for mercy. They look up at the people in heaven. They beg for a drop of water to ease their pain. They beg you to go pee on them. Really. They would love that. They think it would be much better than burning up. Don’t bother, though, because the pee evaporates on the way down.

NEW OPTIONS

REINCARNATION: Please leave my Blackberry in the coffin.

Catholics don’t believe in reincarnation. Instead, we have confession, where sins are forgiven immediately. Why wait until another lifetime? You don’t carry the guilt forward as if they were minutes on your cell phone plan. Another disadvantage to selecting reincarnation: your to do list adheres to your soul no matter what.

THE BARDO: Hell for type A personalities.

My understanding is that Buddhists believe that immediately after death, everything is the same except you have no body. You are wandering around in the air, same feelings, same desires. You are hungry but you can’t eat. You are horny but your sex organs are kind of misty and transparent.

That’s the definitive thumbnail guide to the afterlife. Clean your plate thoroughly.

End

Free Market Faces

Face transplants are in the news again.

Remember the woman in France who had the first face transplant a couple of years ago? I saw the photo of what she looked like presurgery. The whole lower part of her face had been torn off by a pit bull. She looked like one of the cadavers in that recent Chinese exhibit. I was skeptical, too, when I read that she started smoking not long after the transplant. That didn’t seem like a good thing for a new face. But the transplant worked!

The technique for a face transplant is developed but there is a new problem—people don’t want to be face donors.

“The liver, yes, the heart yes, the lungs, yes, but no, no, not
my face. I want to bring my face into the afterlife.”

Seems to me that the free market needs to take hold! Here are some of my musings about that prospect.

First of all, the upscale market needs to be emphasized. The rich will be first on board. Not as donors, but as donees. Wannabe CEOs will want a rugged executive face. “You can’t get ahead without one.”

Trophy wives will be a great niche market. Some Russian or Saudi billionaire, some hedge fund manager with an eight figure salary will get tired of his wife and want her to look like Angelina Jolie. He could pay to get Jolie’s face when she dies. As a gift for his wife’s 40th birthday! If Angelina dies within two years, her estate would receive, say, ten million dollars. If she died at age 65, the value of her face would be vastly reduced to, what, $20? It will only be useful as a memento or souvenir. Of course any hedge fund manager would also want to make a down payment on other attractive faces, perhaps in a cancer ward.

Many jobs will be created, for example in Homeland Security. Passport photos will no longer suffice as proof of identity; dental xrays will have to be analyzed at airport security checkpoints.

There will be opportunities for face recruiters. “Mr. and Mrs. Taylor, I’m so sorry to have to tell you that we lost Debbie on the operating table. But there is a way that you can keep her memory alive forever. Just sign here.”

As companies like WalMart get into the act, a market will be created for “budget” or “value” faces, which will be the only ones that the less well off can afford. Such as old ladies’ faces that still have powder deep in the wrinkles. Old men’s faces with hair coming out of the nostrils. Or faces where a bit of rigor mortis has set in.

The mass market (the faceless masses) will start seeing XS, S, M, L and XL sizes. Then “one size fits all”. When it’s too large, it bunches up around the edges. When it’s too small, it will gets stretched over your face. Those cheap faces will be itchy. People will have to wear a cone around your necks post op, like dogs get when neutered.

Other problems will have to be solved. For example, it appears that unwanted DNA is part of any transplant.

I read about the woman who got a heart and lung transplant from a 19 year old male. Not long afterwards, she was walking down the street and saw a young man she had never met. She recognized him and knew his name; it turns out he was a friend of the donor. I imagine she also found herself hungering for pizza and beer. Along with other unaccustomed desires: “I don’t know, doctor. I have this overpowering desire to have sex with myself.”

With a new face, you might find you can’t help picking your nose. If you got a younger person’s face, you’d get a libido boost, too. At least for oral sex.

A whole underground market will grow. People will start auctioning their faces on Ebay. Eface, it will be called.

That’s what I am waiting for. I figure I will get top dollar because my face comes with a ready made career as a performer and public speaker. Plus a web site. And a blog.

end

Welcome to my new blog! I promise to have the first entry, “Face Transplants in the Free Market Economy” by this weekend. It will be funny, yes it will.