I never knew much about leprosy apart from what my Grade One teacher told us in Bible class.
Enter the Venus de Milo from stage left with a sign around her neck saying, “The Buck Stops Here”. She is followed by a group of rugby supporters eyeing each other like doves. Venus wants to explode. The audience claps appreciatively.
Much later I became interested in the body, not as a whole, but as a jigsaw puzzle of tropes and signifiers. I would have aesthetic fantasies about dark, large feet then:
knees — like perfectly sculpted bludgeons shoulder-blades — like shells beneath the skin ribcages — the rhythm of a danse macabre and so forth.
Genitals however I avoided.
“Yesterday” starts to play. Couples waltz in crematoria. Someone shouts a request for “Poppie”. The band acquiesces.
Then I started drawing penises, not alone, just on myself. Objectively, as if they were shins, not prudishly nor lasciviously.
At about this time a buyer found me. The directions - Long then leftleftrightstraightdownhousewithgenericuniqueness — gave way to the overwhelming fragrance of roses coming from my oesophagus as 1 glided to the door of the art patron. A man still sticky from a balanced lifestyle, wearing one of those soft jerseys one can use to smother kittens, opened it. 1 attempted to control the roses but they were all over me. Blushing and gagging slightly I displayed my dark feet, rhythmic ribcages and objective penises.
“Now you would’ve had to really rub this part”, he purred, pointing to my objectivity. My arm fell off. I blushed again.
“Biscuit?”
As the conversation turned to pornography he projected images of his smug little fatman member onto my brain.
I lost my other arm running for the door. A woman with a long knife and a picture of my testicles opened it for me.
Here’s to Michael Jackson, the world’s most successful leper.