It's always a tumor.

My sister, S, is obsessed with things easily. As I was growing up, she wanted to be a fashion designer, and live in Venice. Then she started thinking a lot about the end of the world, and how it wouldn't last twenty years. Fifteen years later, it was back to fashion a bit, before she started studying the art of non-verbal communication. Thanks to her "You're bored now, aren't you?" and "Stop looking away and pay attention" barrage, I now know what people are thinking when they talk to me - judging by their eye movements, they're often times thinking of something else. But more importantly, it brings to mind facial structure. My own is messed up; one side of my nasal ridge/cheek is drastically larger than the other. At least in my mind it is. People often tell me that they don't notice until I mention it. People lie. I can feel their eyes, like jackals, prying apart my very flesh! My only real comfort is in finding people who have more pronounced facial deformities, and seeing how well they fare. Ha ha, uggos.

Well, I succeeded in my task. I can imagine what this guy must've gone through as his facial too-mah developed - probably neck pain. Beyond that, though, the well of my ideas runs dry. Also, what people thought of when they talked to him. Like, all the normal visual cues are gone, replaced with tumor. I wonder how many people were inadvertantly offended by him not responding in the proper way. Or even if we knew that he was a he! God only knows how the ladies gussy themselves up these days.

This guy already work on the subject, and probably a lot better than I ever could. Lord knows I've had some people mistake me for a lady* in the past, and I can only imagine what Zach and James must face, since they shave and grow their hair out long because they're hippies or unicorns trapped in human form (respectively).

*Albeit an ugly one.

I don't want to make this some kind of feminist rant, because bleargh. But like I mentioned before, saying hello is a risk, and oftentimes, putting your worst foot forward is unavoidable. Especially if your face is eight-hundred percent tumor. I remember talking to my grandmother in a nursing home when I was very young, how I thought she just looked scared all the time - ever since then, I've been unable to really "get into" the nursing home scene. I wasn't really interested in talking to her, I was primarily interested in getting the h-e-double-hockeysticks out of there. It's no wonder that certain cultures attribute powers to the deformed, to the hard-to-figure-out, why they used inbreds and freaks as models to sculpt a thousand unique gargoyles onto Notre Dame, but used the same ho-hum looks for every angel and saint. Faces are terrifying when we can't figure them out.

So, like, internets, right? No faces, no inscrutability, because we imagine what we want from other people.

Which I guess is why we need photos on this thing.