Tuesday 200 - #30
It was a private comfort he kept coming back to.
Drawing himself was how he checked in. Some people wrote journals or meditated. Some never bothered and others flirted in bars, fishing for compliments.
Self portraits were a habit he’d picked up in college. He thought it’d be an easy elective and a chance to nail art students who were much hotter prospects than the business majors he usually saw. He was no Rembrandt, but each time he drew, he found a fresh perspective — either in the way he looked or the way he felt about himself.
He shaded the contours below his left eye, shiny mottled skin where a ruggedly smooth cheek once glowed. The nerves on that side of his face were gone. The remaining flesh, now healed, stretched over his cheek and jaw like a mask of thick latex, dappled pink and yellow. He stippled in three days of black whiskers on his right cheek and neck.
He wondered if someone, anyone, else would feel that contrast his charcoal recreated — taught, rubbery flesh on one side, a gentle scruff on the other.
Decades later, he still felt the fire’s heat, and burned for a lover’s warm touch.
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