It’s nearing bedtime on Tuesday night, and I’m lying on the couch after a long day, unwinding while watching “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit” reruns and cursing Stabler for being a dick.
That’s when the itching starts.
At first, I try to ignore it. My wife—who has dealt with eczema her whole life—sees me biting my bottom lip. “Don’t scratch,” she snaps at me. “You’ll start the ‘itch-scratch’ cycle and never get yourself out of the loop.”
It’s only been seven months since the psoriasis inexplicably appeared in my shins and ankles, but I’m already at my wit’s end. “I can’t stop myself. It’s so damn itchy.”
“Think of something else,” Liz says. “Think about the Red Sox.”
“Screw them! Full-throttle, my ass,” I scream and release a bear-like roar as I claw at my legs, scratching vigorously. “And Stabler is such a dick!”
So it begins, another evening of Benadryl and hydrocortisone cream, scratching the psoriasis while trying to sleep. And for anyone who suffers from skin ailments, I feel your pain—full-throttle.
It’s been almost 30 years since I’ve worried about my skin. I’m not saying I’ve ever enjoyed a perfect complexion—my skin tone can be accurately described as “pasty-pale”—but I also haven’t had skin problems since I was 18 years old.
When I was an adolescent—to borrow the eloquent phraseology from the “National Lampoon’s Animal House” writers—I had “a face like a pepperoni pizza.” While I can make light of it now, as a teenage boy, trying his best to get laid, it was the source of much malaise. Adolescence was daunting enough, and the last thing I needed was a skin affliction to compound my already prodigious insecurities. Similar to my inability to not scratch my psoriasis, I lacked the self-discipline to keep my hands off my face, popping the pimples and exacerbating the whole mess.
For three years, my days were filled with facial washes and Clearasil, acne patches and dermatologist visits. Then, the summer before leaving for college, I decided to use the atomic option for acne sufferers: Accutane.
“Atomic” is not an arbitrary term in this case. Accutane is a heavy-duty pharmaceutical that literally sends the epidermis into a nuclear meltdown. For months, my skin was beet-red as the drugs baked up my skin.
But it worked, and I never suffered from acne again.
Now, after 30 years without a dermatological dent, this psoriasis has appeared, and my skin, again, is betraying me. Granted, this time around I’m fairly certain that it will not have any major bearing on my ability to get laid—my wife doesn’t seem to mind a few patches of flaky skin on my shins—but the malaise has returned.
When I think about it, the skin really is a rich and vital organ. Think about the numerous skin metaphors—“being thin or thick-skinned” or “getting under your skin” or “having no skin in the game.” Without my skin, I’d look like the ghoul in Clive Barker’s “Hellraiser.”
And skin pigmentation also has a tendency to bring out the worst of humanity’s hatred, ignorance and oppression. How many people have suffered and died due to the color of their skin?
Yet I’m inconsolable because mine itches? Is Stabler the only dick here?
It’s best I get over this recent betrayal and try to make an appointment with a dermatologist, which should only take me about five years to be seen. In the meantime, I should just take some more Benadryl and go to bed.
And quit being so thin-skinned.
