I am itchy

I am itchy.

I scratch like a monkey.

I locate one itch. I scratch it. It feels good. But then another pops up somewhere else. I get it. Then another elsewhere. Endlessly.

The doctors call it eczema.

At fourteen I was hospitalized. It had gotten bad over a period of weeks, then one particular night of crazy vivid dreams, in which I battled my father through thickets of thorns and brambles, I scratched so much that when I woke up the next morning, my face was stuck to the pillow and my fingers were covered in blood.

The itch wouldn’t stop. My mum held my hands till I could bear it no longer and tore them free.

She drove me to the doctor, who immediately referred me to hospital. They gave me a steroid shot, put an antihistamine drip in my arm, covered my blistered skin in thick cream and left me there in my bed amongst coughing pensioners, on grey wards that smelled of bleach.

I lay there for a few hours trying to read a copy of “Elle” mum had left me. As if that was my thing! She might have aspired to that, but I didn’t. The pictures and articles in there had nothing to do with the world I knew, with their plastic models and over-priced clothing.

They weren’t cool like my heroes—Bowie, Jimi Hendrix, Iggy Pop, and Lou Reed. I had come to know their music from my older brother. Through the bedroom wall.

I looked up from the magazine to see a short, scruffy-haired man wearing glasses in a white jacket with pens sticking out of his top pocket. He picked up the clipboard at the foot of the metal-framed bed.

-Doctor Osborne, he said.

-Hello, I said.

-From the Greek for boil or eruption. The doctor returned the clipboard, and looked up at me.

-Pardon? I said.

-‘Eczema’, from the Greek. He pushed back the black horn rimmed glasses on his nose and smiled the smile of a man who had never seen himself smile.

-Oh. I nodded. I pictured a tide of boiling fluids coursing through my veins and bursting from my skin in a volcanic explosion.

He reached into a pocket and pulled out a pair of rubber gloves, which he proceeded to stretch over his fingers like he might catch something. He took a white packet from another pocket from which he withdrew a surgical wipe. He held my hand in his and lifted it up. With the wipe he removed the cream on my inner elbow. I winced and involuntarily pulled back my arm. The doctor maintained his grip and continued without a word. A single tear formed in the corner of one eye. When the cream was off he looked at the red inflamed skin for a second or two, then reapplied more cream from the cabinet beside my bed.

-Lean forward. I did so and he looked at the back of my neck. You did this to yourself? he asked. I was unsure how to answer but I found myself nodding.

-How did it feel? His eyebrows rose up as he pronounced the words.

-Sorry? I said.

-How did it feel when you were scratching?

No one had ever asked me this question. The fact was that when I scratched with my nails, hard, it felt like nothing I had ever experienced on earth. Later in life I might have likened it to great sex or amazing drugs but now all I said to him was,

-It feels good. He nodded then checked the drip.

They kept me in for the night and released me the next day.

I’m older now. I still get it. Though not too bad. I figure it’s related to diet. I’m told I’m allergic to many foodstuffs. I’m also told it’s repressed anger.

Do you know the phrase, ‘If you’re not angry you’re not paying attention’?
I don’t want to be angry. I’ve got feelings. I haven’t always been king of my own emotions.

They just erupt out of me.

So I pick up a pen. I write longhand. I write these words and scratch that itch away. I use a rough old fountain pen. Its nib is sharp. I watch as my hand leads it across the paper, like it has its own will. It tears at the fibres of the page and leaves a smear of red ink behind.

I wanna write things that other people just think, or maybe things they don’t. Or maybe they don’t know they think them, but they do.

I wanna scratch it all out.