Soil, silt and clay; mud, cob and adobe, limestone filled wet, disgusting soil dripped from my cheekbones to my temporal, so dense that it almost dripped unwillingly. My perception of time was somewhat distorted, I watched the amber colored lump of muddy sand drops drip from my little fingers into the puddles on the ground, which seemed to take ages as I saw the drop in mid air, slowly pushing air away and making its way down. I felt like I was looking at myself from a lifted point, I was not within myself; sounds were distant and obscure. Laughter resonated from miles and miles away, I could tell my classmates annoying laughter but was this what I deserved? Being a bald teenager, did it have to be this hard?
It wasn’t long before that horrible day that I got as some call it “obsessed” with cleanness as I shed every little patch of hair I had. Day by day I held tens and tens of strings of hair in my unaware hands, until there was none left after all the five million follicles became useless in every square inch of my body. Well, except for my eyebrows but who can bully someone whose eyebrows are on fleek, right? Anyway, as I was stuck with my disgustingly bronze skin, I started to appreciate and admire the smoothness and purity of my skin. I somehow loved my creamy arms and I couldn’t go on without feeling my sleek hairless head. This love for purity escalated very rapidly and one day I found myself wiping random shop windows because I noticed every minimal speck of dirt that the naked eye could see. I had become the symbol of clean as some might even say Mr. Clean. I was actually appointed that name later on as I became the face of a brand of cleaning supplies. Who doesn’t love to rub some toilets, right? Well also keeping a huge grin on my face was a big part of my job description, as well as posing along with typical American families, you know a boy creates a mess, his mom cleans it and the dad is just content. I wasn’t expecting much from my life anyway, an obsessive compulsive bald kid, not your perfect doctor or lawyer. Yet, I liked what my image created around the world, I started out with a liquid cleaner in my hand at the age of forty and suddenly a search started for men like me. In this fucked up world with men dominating every single aspect of our lives sickened me and there was a chance for women to be seen as equals. Well, I had found what was missing in my life, what I had been looking for all my life, a purpose. Feminism introduced me to a world of equality and change and I embraced that, I loved that. I loved how I could go far than being a guy who held an unbreakable plastic bottle in his hand and smiled you over the shelves. In the end I was the man behind the shine, but did I ever shine?
