The autobiographic vignette below was originally titled “Brutally Honest”.  I wrote this passage in the early months of my (attempted) PhD in 1998. My doctoral research focused on educational inequality and the lessons taught by the “formal” and “informal” curriculum at schools in hard places. This story talks to the extraordinary period in the early 1990s when I suffered severe cystic acne. I have changed the name of the people in this story.

“It’s raining pretty hard, Paul. Do you want me to give you a lift to the bus stop?”, Mum asks through the bathroom door.

“Um, yeah, thanks – I’ll be there in a minute”, I say staring at my pimple riddled reflection in the mirror above the basin.

I close my eyes tight and try to picture my face and neck without acne. But I can’t. I try to recall images of my skin when it was tight, smooth, and blemish free. But I can’t. I try to picture myself older – like Mum says –when I’ve “grown out of it”. But I can’t.

Reluctantly, I open my eyes and scan my face for the fiftieth time this morning. I decide there is four basic types of zits – and in order of age they are: the ‘really old ones’ that have etched their existence into the landscape of my face by becoming a scar; the ‘old ones’ that won’t heal and remain red and tender; the ‘new ones’ that draw attention to themselves with their bright yellow puss bulb; and, the most horrific of all, the ‘recently squeezed ones that won’t stop oozing fluid’.

I remove my tissue covered fingertips from the side of my neck and inspect the ten- cent-piece sized cyst that I am trying to clean up.

“Oh, for fuck-sake stop bleeding!”, I whisper to myself.

For a moment I think I’m in luck, however I stretch the skin on my neck and a small bubble of clear fluid emerges and begins to trickle.

“Ready yet?”, Mum repeats.

“Um, yeah, just combing my hair”, I lie as I dispose of four blood splattered tissues.

When I finally leave the house and hop in the car I try to keep the volcano like lump on the right side of my neck from public view. I don’t know why I bother, for there is scores more zits on my face that are just as terrible. Maybe it’s because I’m not confident I’ve stopped the lava flow on this one.

Mum drops me off behind the waiting bus and I wave her good-bye. My hand automatically tracks to the side of my neck and I feel for ‘leakage’. My neck is slippery; I can’t work out whether it’s body fluid or the rain.

I board the bus, hand over my ticket, and stare down the isle. There are only two vacant seats. The first is next to eleven year old, Ivan– the hyperactive and extremely loud kid with additional needs. The other vacant seat is immediately behind the first and I decide in an instant that anywhere would be better than sitting next to Ivan for 50 minutes this morning.

I take my seat without looking sideways. Making out that I’m searching for something in my backpack I drop my head between my knees and try to inconspicuously rub my neck.

As the bus lurches forward I rock sideways and accidentally bump my fellow passenger. As I turn to apologise, I realise I’m sitting next to Tracey, the university student I’ve noticed before, but this time she is without her nursing textbooks. I swallow loudly and try hard to convince myself that I’m simply caught in a bad dream.

“Sorry”, I squeeze out as I flip up the collar on my pollo shirt and make some attempt to hide my distorted neck from her view.

“You’re right”, she replies without making eye contact.

For the next thirty minutes I sit perfectly still, hoping like crazy that Tracey doesn’t turn her eyes on me – the human zit farm.

I fill my time watching Ivan pester passengers. ‘How old are you?’, ‘What do you do?’, ‘Where are you going?’, ‘Are you married?’, he asks of everyone forward of his seat. I wonder if he will ever tire of asking the same questions he did the day before.

I begin to panic when Ivan leans over the back of his seat and stares at me and then Tracey and then me and then Tracey, all the time wearing a childish grin.

“Are you two married?”, he asks knowing full well the answer to his own cheeky question.

Tracey is unmoved, she continues gazing out the window, and I join her. Tactically ignoring him seems to work until I accidentally make eye contact with Ivan.

“I know you- you the one we call yucky face. Yuk. Yuk. Yuk.”

I look away, hoping that if I focus on something else he will get sucked out the window and fly away in the jet stream. To my surprise Ivan disappears back into his seat and rummages through his bag. When he settles he busies himself with something on his lap. Turning only occasionally to look at me, I wonder what he’s up to.

After several minutes Ivan informs the entire bus that he’s finished. He turns to face Tracey and I once again and displays a rough biro drawing.

“That’s me, and this is you”, Ivan tells me as he points to the two characters on the page.

I spend sometime staring at the picture. Ivan has portrayed me as a monster with scores of zits leaping off a deformed and distorted body. I can not help but think his rendering is accurately portraying how I see myself.

I feel deflated, defeated, and numb.

Unable to draw a response from me, Ivan repositions the image in front of Tracey.

“That’s me, and that is Mister Yuky face”

“Ivan! That is not very nice”, Tracey asserts in my defence.

“It’s true”, he declares while dropping the sketch in Tracey’s lap.

I watch as Tracey stares at the paper for a moment too long.

Without making eye contact I gently retrieve my portrait from her grasp and fold it in half and then in half again.

“Kids- they can be brutally honest can’t they?”, she concedes.

I don’t reply in words. I can’t. I’m crumbling inside.

Tears well in my eyes and I spend the remainder of the trip cradling the sketch in my cupped hands –all the time fighting the urge to cry.

Two months later I saw a Dermitologist who described my condition as one of the most severe cases of cystic acne that he had seen, particularly on my upper back and neck. He prescribed Roaccutane 20mg, to prevent my condition getting any worse. He said that their was nothing he could do about the scarring already present- I’d have to live with that.