27 January, 2001 -

The pain is mostly gone after a marathon sleep session. Yesterday I was starting to wonder if I'd come back from my trip with malaria, hepatitis, or some kind of foul intestinal funk. Probably just ate some bad Chinese food. I woke up early in the morning and came completely uncorked at both ends, felt slightly feverish and weak for the whole day, which I spent on or near the sofa. Spent about 21 hours of the last 24 lying down, sleeping or thereabouts. Feeling much better today.

Still there's some kind of-not a rash, exactly-but some...marks on my skin, small reddish bumps like mosquito bites that itch like hell sometimes, mainly at night. Maybe I'm allergic to something, but what?

Coffee is ready. I'm up at 5:20 am. I never get up this early-it's only possible today because I couldn't sleep any more. Gonna try to do some morning errands, tackle this pile of laundry (everything I own is dirty). Pay bills...And take a shit post haste. Hope it's a solid one.

5:45 a.m.

Update-it was soft, but quick and painless. Probably the coffee. 

29 January-

Went to a dermatologist to inspect this "rash" or whatever you call this shit that is robbing me of more and more sleep these days. Without giving me even a quick look-over, the worthless S.O.B. told me it was an allergy, and that it was my job now to "pay attention and try to figure out what's causing it." And I paid him for that wisdom.

Been using a cortisone cream for the itching, which has not been effective and doesn't attack the root of the problem anyway. Need to see another dermatologist.

2 February, Groundhog Day-

I saw another dermatologist and he has diagnosed me-correctly, I believe-as having scabies. He checked me out and came to his diagnosis quickly. Apparently mine is a typical case. He even showed me pictures from his dermatology book, and the marks looked exactly like mine, in the same places. 

Scabies-the very name conjures up dread memories of grammar school, when the school nurse used to come in and check our scalps with a big magnifying glass. I had no idea what scabies was then, but I knew it had to be awful because they always got lumped together with head lice. The nurse was there to look for lice and scabies, scabies and lice. I knew what lice were, and it followed that scabies was just another kind of cooties, which was very bad news in those days.

At any rate, I was mostly relieved to hear that I had scabies. Now my enemy has a face.

And what a face it is! Dear God they're horrible little bastards. I used to wish they weren't microscopic, so I could see my enemy, look it in the eye and know exactly what I was up against. Not anymore--that picture changed everything. They are ugly and mean, and if they were even one-tenth my size, I would hand them my wallet, the keys to my house, my firstborn son...
 

And that book! As the doctor was flipping through it to find the scabies pictures, I caught glimpses of lots of other skin maladies--people with all sorts of terrible disfigurements, flesh being devoured, burned, chafed and generally wasted by a legion of microscopic assailants. When he said I had only scabies, I wanted to buy him dinner.

He gave me some Lindane ointment for it, but I wasn't clear on his instructions as to its proper use. I'm just going to smear it all over everything for the next seven days, which seemed to be the good doctor's instructions, as near as I could figure. 

6 February-

Peace. Sleeping well. Ran out of cream so I went back for more. I shook the doctor's hand. I told him that the little buggers seem to be "responding" to the lotion I've put on by dying in droves, a weird subcutaneous massacre.

Today peace, but is it a lull? Are they just trying to make me feel relaxed, get my guard down so they can launch a massive counterattack, which would be savage and ruthless and would no doubt be driven my a mad sense of revenge for my having killed so many of their brethren, who lie buried in the Flanders fields of my armpits, thighs and belly?

8 February-

Feeling good, but I still need to go to war in this house. I'm sure (Is it paranoia?) they are still here, lying low, waiting in the wings, in the carpet, the rug, waiting, licking their disgusting little chops.

12 February, 3:17 a.m.

Can't sleep. The bastards seem to be back, and rightly so. I did some scabies research on the Internet. Along with the Lindane saturation bombing, I was to carefully wash all my clothes and bedsheets in very hot water and hang them in the sun for a day or two, which is hard to do when there is neither sun nor washing machine. I think I re-infected myself.

How much longer? Scabies has been called "The Seven Year Itch". If I had to deal with this shit for seven years I'm sure I would kill someone, probably myself.

The journals I've read list all the symptoms, but they all fail to mention the most ominous and damaging one: madness. Stark raving lunacy that makes you jump out of bed at three in the morning and scream at invisible enemies while you scratch yourself bloody.

It seems the only way to get rid of the pain is to get drunk, which of course will invite lots of other problems if I do it every day. Should pick up a Bible somewhere and re-read the Book of Job. Might make me feel better, put things in perspective. That guy had problems. If memory serves, I think his skin got pretty fucked-up too...

14 February, 3:50 a.m.

Slept only two hours or so, which doesn't seem too bad if I consider it a long nap.

I've been too busy at work to clean all my clothes and the house, so I've been putting off the second Lindane assault. And going mad.

I've got you under my skin-who sang that, Bennett, Sinatra? What the hell was that moron thinking? Has he ever had another living creature under his skin? It itches like hell and drives you insane. Maybe that's what he was talking about after all, but I'll bet he didn't lose a lot of sleep over it-scratching himself raw and drinking gin and soda at four in the morning on weekdays...Remember to let her under your skin/then you'll begin to make it better...What absolute fucking nonsense.

Scabies are insidious. During the day, it's easy to forget about them, they leave you in peace and save their energy for nighttime, which is when they become hyperactive-wild dance parties, orgies, egg laying and a general rave-up under the skin. It hurts like hell, the scratching I mean, which I am forced to do robotically, unconsciously, reduced to a beast, like a dog whose scratch reflex goes on auto when you touch that magic spot on its belly. 

[There follows an extremely vulgar paragraph, which, when stripped of the expletives, can be boiled down to "I can't sleep"]

15 February

"The itching is caused by an allergic reaction to the fecal matter, which the mites deposit under the skin."-I felt like shit before I read that; now I understand quite clearly that I have, in fact, become a cesspool.

I feel like I'm dancing the limbo, only they can't get the stick low enough.

16 February, 4:05 a.m.

Just now a cockroach ran across my floor. Hi there, little fella! They never before seemed so benign, like an old friend coming over for coffee. They don't do anything for me, but they don't seem to get in the way either. He's lucky he crossed me today, after scabies has given me sensitivity training, a dose of bug perspective. 

[Mostly unintelligible passage]...the environmental protectionists who say we must protect every species...they go to great lengths to save the spotted owl, the bald eagle, the California condor...do they worry that scabies too might disappear, a once-proud species that roamed the wild epidermis? Or do they dream (as I do) of eradicating every one of their miserable numbers forever from the face of the earth? Do they just wish to protect those species they deem cute, necessary, or somehow worthwhile? 

What about mosquitoes? Lying in bed on sweaty summer nights with those little monsters buzzing in my ears, I am whipped into a state of crazed genocidal madness, stalking the room like a berserker with a bloodstained, rolled-up newspaper in one hand and a spraycan full of poison in the other. I've often wondered how the disappearance of every mosquito in the world would impact global ecosystems. Even if their extinction crept way up the food chain and meant the disappearance of every spider, spotted owl, Sumatran rhino...at four o'clock on a Monday morning I would gladly pay that price. Fuck biodiversity. 

Is anyone mad enough to even consider a "Protect the Anopheles Mosquito" campaign? Show me that bastard and I will beat him senseless with a rolled up newspaper.

What about cockroaches, does anyone like them? I remember that Archie guy, that old newspaper column that was ghostwritten by a cockroach who used to come out at night and bang around on a typewriter. Nice try, but I'm not buying that shit. Kill them all. What good are they? Do they have any redeeming qualities whatsoever?

What is the standard for acceptance? Must every creature have a value or a redeeming quality? Is protecting biodiversity just code for "Let's protect the useful or harmless species...okay, and the cute ones too..." Wipe out polio and they throw a parade in your honor, but God help you if you kill a gray whale, even if you only did it because you were hungry.

People get mad at the Japanese because they hunt whales, but why are whales any better than mosquitoes? What's the difference? We like whales, and why? How many people have even seen a live whale? What do they contribute to this great planet of ours? Mosquitoes at least feed a hell of a lot of spiders, which in turn feed higher predators. A whale is only good for making oil lamps and baleen corsets, both of which went out of style years ago. Even the meat isn't that good-it's too oily, like eating a giant anchovy.

Madness.... Unrelenting itching fucks your head completely. I can't think. I scratch myself silly...frenzied state. I have been reduced to a vegetable. Or, I wish I could be a vegetable. Scabies don't eat vegetables.

Or do they? Are vegetables suffering in silent madness with no mouths to scream and no fingers to scratch themselves? The horror...

17FEB???

I am the moon and the stars and the sun. I am your universe-the air your breathe, the food you eat, the earth beneath your pseudopodia. I am your hometown. I am a nursery, a love shack, a mobile maternity ward...This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no foolin' around... My belly a metropolis, my arms a faraway city. I am mountains and valleys and plains and forests. Yesterday I was life, and today I am become death, destroyer of worlds.

And I have to pay the rent or we'll all be out on the street. Should return these bottles first.

18 February

Yesterday was scabies Armageddon day. I covered myself with Lindane-pretty toxic shit-and washed the hell out of everything I own. Woke up, showered, and put on fresh clothes, being careful not to sit on the sofa (which I vacuumed, along with everything else) until at least two days pass (which is the longest the mites can live away from the body.) Die, bastards.

21 February

Four days after Armageddon. Apart from some lingering paranoia, I'm feeling good. I'm sleeping peacefully. The marks have cleared up. Maybe soon my friends will start hanging out with me again. I think I can say with certainty that they are gone for good--the scabies, I mean. 

Going out to hang some garlic on my door. I'll keep this rotten picture (see above) on the computer desktop. Maybe it will serve as a kind of talisman. Like the people who refuse to have their photos taken because they believe it somehow traps their soul. Maybe I have robbed the little bastards of theirs. Or let it serve as a severed head on a pike outside the savage general's camp. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here...

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