My reflection still arrives as a static-electric shock. What leers in the mirror cannot be denied. I accept the bundle of walking scar tissue I’ve become, damaged and disfigured and maimed.

From childhood until four years ago I was, apparently, “cute” or “good-looking” or “handsome.” It didn’t matter if it was my grandmother, a girlfriend, or some shadowy lovely across the bar. The words hold more significance now that I am no longer any of those things. Now the words are stifled and stagnant in the lonely echo chamber of my brain.

I’m rooted to my chair, eye on the TV. They’re dancing to win a competition, and I dance through them, the vicarious master of a solitary light fantastic. Depleted by my dance, later I will drowse off in the recliner, half my face coated with ointment.

In the dark, lit only by the screen’s flicker, slouched to one side, between consciousness and sleep, my mind replays the accident. Slow to start, like a film projector gearing up, the distorted images become clear. I see the contained explosion and me on fire. It was quickly extinguished, but it left burns on a total body surface area of seventy-two percent. Acid ate through my lab coat, my clothes, my flesh.

I was a thirty-eight year old whiz kid, a well-paid chemical engineer in the beauty industry. I was the lab specialist whose job it was to make the ladies look good and smell better. My daytime world consisted of acids, bases, oxidizers, reducing agents, toxins and solvents. I was often unrestrained bravado. For what turned out to be my final assignment, I had to refine and perfect a cutting edge facial astringent for a high-end client. A missing label, a leak, and a volatile admixture made the room go boom and transformed me into a shrieking human fireball. My attorney called it improper implementation of safety procedures and neglect of the company to provide adequate safety guidelines for its employees. I was Exhibit “A.” The case never reached a courtroom. The settlement was impressive, even after my attorney took his piece of the payoff. Still, the amount I received did not make my slow transition into a sideshow freak any easier.

I pulled in more money than I needed. I was engaged to Roma, a magazine editor with brains and beauty. We shared a plush condo then. The day of the accident, Roma and I were to meet our friends Perry and Cathy (both doctors), put away some Porterhouse steaks, and top off the night with front row seats on Broadway. There was a different plan for me that night. I ate dinner through a tube. Soon, I learned the "rule of nines.”

The rule of nines is a system doctors use to determine the total body surface area that has been burned. To assess damage, the body is divided into nines. For example, a leg, or the torso area is a nine, the head or arm is roughly a four, and the penis ranks a one percent. As with everything else in my life, I was an overachiever in the rule of nines. My prognosis was “He’ll live.” Second and third degree burns. Damage to my ligaments and muscles. Hair follicles, nerve endings, and sweat glands destroyed along with portions of my reticular dermis. Infection set in, but I fought it off with the assistance of topical antibiotics. Mycitracin. Silvadene. Lidocaine.

For nine months I lived in the immobile sterility of a tent. I likened it to a space capsule. The world was far away. Beyond my tent, all was spectral. My remaining normal eye followed human blurs until they disappeared from my line of vision. I heard the whisper of voices, the clatter of hospital equipment, the chatter of a television. I endured graft after graft, surgery after surgery.

I was a human bandage the day I was released. Roma applied medicine, fed me, and took me to appointments. I observed through a plastic burn treatment mask strapped across what remained of my face. I wore it for at least twenty-three hours a day between reconstructive surgery sessions.

When I moved into the new building, I covered the medicine cabinet mirror with a towel. I took down the full-length mirror inside the walk-in closet. When I removed the towels months later, I got to know the new me.

The left side of my face is a meaty crisscross of crimson scar tissue and a mélange of hair growth. The right is a smooth permanent shade of baby blanket pink. If I hold up a sheet of paper in front of my face, I can laugh to know I’m a comic book villain. My left eye is the glossy white of a child’s monster movie memory. The hair on my scalp is patchy, but if I adjust it properly, it resembles a recurrently hip Caesar-shag. I don’t go through razor blades and aftershave too quickly anymore. My neck, torso, arms, and legs are boiled lobster red with geometric patterns of ghost white.

I treat myself with ointments and lotions and magic potions. Rarely now do I sprout an infection, quickly treated with meds and a whiskey sour. With enough pills and enough booze, sometimes I forget.

What I did was, I strapped on the burn treatment mask and traced the precise line between the contrasting sides of my face. I cut it, reattached the elastic strap, and tried it on. I saw a half Kewpie doll with an opaque eye looking back at me. I colored in a theater of tragedy frown with a red permanent marker. The mask may be macabre, but it is preferable to a sullen fork-across-mashed potatoes tissue jumble. I admired my artistry, and thought of it as sexy, in a black and white horror movie way. It’s been said that the ladies like a guy with a few scars, though I imagine seventy-two percent of the body might be overkill.

Here in my lair I have delivered what I need from the world beyond. I sign into the computer’s virtual world and order my virtual medication or virtual food while I message and chat with virtual friends. Sustenance, stimulation, or new clothes – all is available with a stroke of a key. My purchases arrive at my door in tangible form. Sidney the doorman is kind enough to bring the bags and boxes up. I slide cash under the door and wait until I hear the elevator doors close before I pull my items inside and lock the three deadbolts. The doormen will even go to the ATM for me. They have my PIN number and there’s a generous tip in that task.

I am a recluse by choice, distracted by my companion playthings. Friends from a different life still call or write. Though familiar, they simultaneously seem like strangers.

During the day I sometimes open the heavy vermilion curtains and allow what I feel is eighteen percent of life inside. There are days when I do not prefer light and the curtains remain closed. But underhanded sunlight, incandescent intruder, steals across white walls. If there’s rain, I sit and watch, washed into complacency by rainfall’s torpor. I study people going about their lives – lives intersect on the journey toward their own completion.

I did not find completion. Completion found me.

I’ve tried my hand at writing. I have pages and pages of documents and notes and medical records. What I wrote recounted the experiences that brought me to this place, replete with sketches and diagrams and charts. When the whim strikes, I scribble a random word on the walls with a marker, a ballpoint pen, or my blood from a fingertip pinprick.

Sometimes I freeze into a one-eyed stare, my fingers dig into the fabric of the chair, breath comes shallow, and in those panicky moments I realize the awful emptiness of the life I have assembled. I realize I exist as a long-dead philosopher’s quote.

One day while I apply my elixirs to the eighteen percent of my head and neck, I receive a call. A young woman tells me she’s with a primetime news show and they want to interview me for a “human interest” story. They intend to “do a piece” about someone whose shiny success of a life was permanently shattered by catastrophe. I ask how they found me. Apparently, someone on the show’s crack research team followed an information trail and found my tragic saga. They pitched me in a production meeting. I find it humorous that even as I decayed here in my lair, I was someone else’s idea. The production staff agreed that I would be a fascinating subject. I tell them that I don’t have a happy ending for them. They say they don’t need a happy ending. They just want to show survival in the face of adversity and its consequences. I don’t react and she asks if I’m still there. I accept the offer. What do I have to lose?

I receive follow-up calls to reconfirm and to get my apartment’s layout. The next week they arrive. I usher the crew into my inner sanctum. The reporter is an attractive woman with perfectly coiffed russet hair, clad in a designer mocha skirt to her knees, lavender blouse tastefully buttoned above her cleavage, and a locket around her neck. I haven’t been near a real woman for a long time.

I am clad in head-to-toe black, gloved left hand, velvet dinner jacket, onyx ring on my right pinky finger, stringy hair slicked back, and the Kewpie doll theater of tragedy burn mask. She asks if I’m really going to wear it. Of course I am. It’s preferable to an executioner’s hood, don’t you think? The make-up girl, bothered by nothing, makes my exposed facial area camera-friendly. As if anything about me is camera-friendly.

We begin. The interviewer, regal and professional, goes through her perfunctory questions: “How did it happen?” The lab blew up.

“How painful was it?”

Go turn a burner on, let it heat up, then set your face on it and leave it there. That’s a start.

The interviewer gets personal, of course: “How did your fiancée react?”

She was a saint. Next topic.

“You don’t want to discuss her?”

No. Next topic.

“Four years in this apartment. How do you live like this?”

I adjust my mask. I offset my tragic side with a smile from my exposed side. How can I not live like this?

“Did you write that word on the wall?” She points beyond me. I shift and look.

Freak.

“Do you feel you’re a freak?”

I am only eighteen percent focused on the question. Her well-defined calf muscles eighty-two percent distract me.

I think I’m normal. I think the world is a freak.

“Why?”

Why? I feel like I’m talking to the hospital shrink again.

I accept what I am. It took some time, but I do. The world would rather deny it.

“Why do you think that?”

Do you live in your world?

She is even more attractive when she is desperate. There is the scent of perfume along the line of her neck. A predator, I want to bite that neck.

As expected, she asks if I will remove the mask. They want to capture this theater of the grotesque on video for the masses. They want the audience to collectively cringe and count their blessings. My reluctance is what they want. She prods and coaxes me in a seductive manner. I seduce her right back and finger the strap. She’s hungry for it. I could pull the mask up and away to the muffled reactions of the crew. The interviewer, though composed, cannot contain the clash of victory and revulsion in her eyes. “I see, I see.”

Do you see? Do you really? Because I think you don’t. With one brooding hazel eye, I stare into her and wonder if she has ever felt so powerful.

In reality’s scenario, the interviewer asks and I refuse. I don’t want anyone’s pity. “Don’t you want people to see what you’ve endured? Perhaps they’d more readily accept someone with a disfiguring injury.” I don’t require anyone’s acceptance. She gives up and the interview ends. The crew packs away their equipment.

The interviewer says she will keep me updated about the eventual airdate. When they’ve gone, all is silent again. I want her to come back.

Six weeks later, the segment airs and I am a sudden celebrity. That same evening, there is contact. Old friends write, caution and sympathy in their carefully composed messages.

I’m startled when the phone rings. Hello? After a pause comes Roma’s voice. She saw the segment. I muster, “It’s good to hear your voice.” The conversation is stilted and hardly seems real. It is my gentle Roma, softly in my ear. Roma and her compassion and love and I still feel it. My responses are muted monosyllables in the key of mourning. I ask no questions because I don’t want to know where she is or how agreeable her life is now. She tells me I am loved and that I should never forget that. And she’s gone. The rest of the day I sit in my chair and I only see her.

Roma didn’t leave me. I left me and made her go. I targeted her with my anger and self-pity. I lashed out with caustic remarks and tactless aggression. Despite her attempts to reason, I retreated.

Until the out-of-court settlement from the company, I found isolation in our condo’s den. I placed a mattress on the floor, stared at the muted television. I rebuffed Roma’s attempts to help or soothe me. Her tears were not endless. She stopped crying and started packing. Alone in the dark, I recall the sounds of the drawers and closets opened, closed, and bags zipped. She rapped softly on the door of my hideaway. She spoke with a murmur. She told me where she would be. She told me she loved me. I didn’t respond. I heard the front door close. It looked as if I’d be going alone to my next skin graft procedure.

The doctors told me these dozens of operations made significant improvements. I had to ask, an improvement from what to what? Anything besides what I had been would never be improvement enough. The hospital shrink tried to talk me through it with a patented congenial demeanor. Unless she could make me a real person again, I had no interest in her psychological truisms.

I am my own best company because I am my only company. That’s my truism.

The dance show on the tube features a cast of tail-end celebrities engaged in a contest where one couple is judged most limber and crowned victor. It’s fluff, but the ladies are lookers, and the rule of nines applies. Whatever percentage I deem them, they do make me want to dance, and occasionally I will. I heave myself out of the chair and perform a locomotive shimmy, naked under my robe, arms in a push-pull motion at my side, feet forward and back, dancing with my scars.

Fatigue sets in and I cannot distract myself from clusters of disparate images. From above, I see the panic at the lab. From below, I see the glare of surgical table lights. I hear weeping and words of devotion and concern. I see me, the monster assembled by mad doctors. I shamble out into the world and I terrify the villagers who find recourse in torches and mob rules. Chased to the edge of a crater, I look down into bubbling magma. I stumble and tumble toward the heat and find I look into the flame of a table candle at a dinner party, out-of-focus behind Invisible Man bandages as these vaguely familiar people with their hands over their mouths to hide their laughter. It’s not Halloween yet, they tell me.

Awake, I go through morning medical rituals. I log into the Internet. Over these many months, I have connected with people. They don’t have to see me. It’s not like these are real relationships. Even though I am disingenuous about myself, I can still manage to be me. I simply don’t tell them exactly who I am or what happened. Not all secrets need be known. My screen name is “Fire Dancer.” There is one young woman with whom I exchange instant messages several times a week. Her name is Amanda. I’ve seen her photos on a social networking site. She’s a pretty brunette with blue eyes. She is single, in the city. I wonder why she spends so much time online.

I’ve been burned, she tells me. I remind myself she is only using a metaphor. She goes on, I decided to drop out of the dating scene for a while. I need to concentrate on me. My job. Right now I prefer to socialize with my computer rather than at some bar or club. Even though my girls will drag me out.

Sometimes on the weekends Amanda is not around at night. I know she’s out there, drink in hand, laughing and gabbing with her friends and catching the eyes of many a hungry man. I feel jealousy. She doesn’t want the superficial boys at the clubs and bars with their pick-up lines and tacky dance moves. But I never let my attraction – or my jealousy - show in our messages. I can’t.

One Monday night Amanda chimes in. I push out of my chair and walk to my laptop computer. It is a simple “Hi.”

Hi, I reply. She asks what I am doing. Looking through some magazines, and that dancing show is on the TV.

“I have that on, too. I don’t pay much attention, but it makes me want to learn to dance. Better.”

You know how to dance already?

“Sort of, but not great. Not like these people on TV. Can you dance?”

I have to laugh. No, I can’t.

“We should take a class.”

You’re joking.

“Not really. It might be fun.”

I realize she thinks I look like the photos I put up on the social network site. Under the profession heading I put “Consultant.” I posted some pictures of me as a strapping young lad at the Eiffel Tower, at the Parthenon, at Pier 39 with lazy sea lions in the background. The only indication on there of my current condition is the snapshot I took of my theater of tragedy medical mask, propped in my chair. She asked about that. I lied and told her it was a memento from my college theater days. Okay, it was a half-lie. I took a theater class to fulfill a humanities obligation.

I don’t know if I’m up for a dance class. Oh, how I want to meet Amanda. I would accept her dance class proposal if I weren’t a monster movie creation.

A thought occurs, and I hesitate, but ask anyway. I type: Did you see the interview with the burn victim on television a couple weeks ago? She says she did not. “Why? Should I have?” Yes. He was a fascinating character. I poke around on various websites. To my surprise, I find my interview posted in dozens of places. I read the comments people have left. Some call me cocky or arrogant. Others reason that they would have an attitude problem, too, if the world viewed them as a sideshow attraction. Some show sympathy. Others are callous. I send Amanda a link to the interview. It’s interesting, I tell her. This guy seems to have become some minor celebrity.

“Oh yeah. I know about this. This weird guy at the office was talking about it.”

Well, I now know that a member of my audience is a “weird guy at the office.” Only appropriate, I suppose. I tell Amanda that I have to take care of a few things. But watch that interview.

I go to my chair. I wait while she watches me. I want to give Amanda a chance to see me for who I am. I want her to know. For once, I don’t want to hide behind my mask.

I return to the computer twenty minutes later. Hey, I’m back.

“Hey. I checked out that interview. That guy was kind of a creep. He was mean to the reporter.”

I’m a creep. I smile, use a discolored washcloth to dab a trickle of drool away from where my left lower lip once existed. Yeah? You think he’s a creep?

“A little bit, I guess. I’m sorry he got burned. That’s awful what he endured. And how he lost the woman he loved. Maybe he has a right to be so angry.”

He’s not angry, I type.

“You don’t think so?”

No, I don’t. I think he’s lonely and afraid. He hides himself away. I think that he is the only person left to keep himself company.

“You seem like you really care about this guy.”

The feeling of care is periodic, not persistent.

“Huh?”

I drop my hands to my sides. Here it is, the perfect opportunity. I trace my fingertips over my scars.

“And when he took off his weird mask…”

She stops there. I become impatient. When he took off his mask… what?

“That mask looked a lot like the picture of the mask you put up.”

Here is the first defining moment of my life I’ve experienced since I moved into this place. That’s because it is my mask.

“What?”

He’s me.

I await her response with the proverbial baited breath.

“Stop it. What are you talking about?”

I am that guy, typing to you right now.

“Stop. You’re freaking me out.”

I’ll prove it to you. I’ll take a picture of myself holding a can of beets, and post it. I tell her I’ll put it on the social networking site.

“This cannot be for real.”

I get my digital camera, get the beets, and take a shot of myself in my mask. I load it onto my computer and place it on the site. Meanwhile, she sends a few messages: “You’re not serious.” “Are you there?” “I don’t believe this.”

Believe it. I direct her to the photo. My heart pounds relentlessly. It is torturous as I await her response.

“Oh my god. You really are that guy! This whole time!”

Yes.

There is a long pause. “I can’t do this.” She signs off. And the freak leans back in his chair and bows his freak head.

I think about her all night and all the next day. She does not sign on. Days pass and I go about the routines of my life. The incident with Amanda remains sharp, but I accept that she might be gone for good.

She’s not. A week later, I hear the chime of the message from my computer. It’s her, again with a “Hi.”

I grin and I want to perform a foxtrot right then and there. Instead, I reply. Hi there.

“I’m sorry I freaked out.”

That’s okay. I can’t blame you. It had to come as a shock.

“There’s an understatement. I thought about it and I realize that those photos you put up are you. Just, before the accident.”

Yes.

“Fire Dancer. Too clever.”

That’s me, clever to the end.

“We’ve gotten close online. It’s weird. I’ve told you some things, like about work or old boyfriends, that I haven’t even told my best friend.”

Sometimes it’s easier to engage a stranger.

“But I don’t think of you as a stranger.”

I don’t feel like a stranger, either.

“I want to see you.”

I am filled with glee and dread. I don’t really go out.

“You should. You have nothing to be ashamed of.”

The world feels like I do.

“Not in my world. If people are going to act like you’re the freak or the monster, then they’re the ones who should be ashamed.”

Her words were truth.

“Come out. Thursday night. I’ll meet you at your building so that I’m with you the whole time.”

Not a great idea.

“I realize the prospect of stepping outside might be scary. But you can’t live like that.”

I’ve managed for four years.

“Too long. See me. Come outside.”

Let me think about it?

“Don’t think about it too much.” She gives me her phone number.

I have to take care of medical stuff. I don’t. I sign off, feeling overloaded. I don’t sign on for the next two days. I pace. I mumble. I examine my face in the mirror.

Loneliness has been my companion for so long now. The possibility of breaking the cycle of my life frightens me. I lost my swagger long ago, but flickers of self-assurance penetrate the years, masked by doubt and insecurity.

Last night, Wednesday night, I dozed off in my chair. When I wake up, it’s morning. I eat, I watch a game show, and apply meds. All the while, the word “tonight” recurs, bouncing off padded walls in my mind.

I spend time looking out the window. And I decide, even though I already know. I call Amanda and get accursed voicemail. I tell her that I want to see her. Tonight. I give her my address. I ask if seven o’clock is okay. I hang up. Again I pace. I can’t believe I’m doing it.

Amanda calls back an hour later. I am careful not to pick up too quickly. It’s like I’m playing a first date game again, except this time I’m a bit mutated. She is happy I decided to come out. When she didn’t see me online all week, she figured she’d scared me off.

I admit, I’m scared. But excited, too.

“I know. Excited. I’ll be there at seven.”

I’ll wait downstairs in the lobby.

“You don’t have to. I can ring you when I get there.”

I want to.

“All right. It’s a date?”

It’s a date.

She giggles and that exhilarates me and then I am peeling around the apartment, to the closet to find good clothes and to the bathroom to shave my scraps of facial hair and determine a hairstyle.

I wear black pants and shoes, a striped maroon shirt buttoned to the top, a black topcoat. Gel molds my hair in place. I clean my mask in the sink and put it on – the finishing touch.

Where did I put my keys? I haven’t used them, ever. I look in the desk, the dresser, and the kitchen cupboards and drawers. I feel panic rise when I realize –

I call the desk. Sidney answers. I ask him if they have a spare set of keys for my apartment. He says they do. I ask him if he will bring them up. I lost my keys and I need to lock the door behind me.

Sidney is stymied. “You’re coming out?”

Yes. I have a date.

“That’s just wonderful. I’ll be up in a few minutes.”

I open the door and listen for the elevator. There’s Sidney now. He approaches with a smile, locks the door, and hands me the keys. On the elevator he watches me. Do I look okay, Sid? “You look dashing.” Only an older gentleman like Sidney would use the word “dashing.”

I sit in the lobby near the front doors. I clutch my mobile phone in my gloved hand. I’m anxious so I decide to wait outside. As I open a door, two tenants enter. They don’t disguise their shock very well. I’ll have to expect that. As they walk toward the elevator, I overhear the man say, “…upstairs. He was on TV. Remember?”

Outside now, people pass, some gawk and hurry along. I am ambivalent. A woman, by herself, comes up the sidewalk. Long brunette hair, dressed like me in fashionable black, she sees me, hesitates. Then with a flourish of recognition, she comes over and her eyes smile.

“Amanda.”

“None other. You look great.”

I look great? I sputter, “I look great?”

“Yes.”

“Thanks. You do, too.”

“Thank you.”

“Um, I didn’t think… well, I guess…”

“You didn’t think I’d come. An insult is not a good way to start.”

“Sorry. I’m a little out of practice.”

“It’s fine. I didn’t get us a dance class for tonight, so how about we find a quiet little café?”

“Sounds good.”

“This isn’t my part of town. You know of any places around here?”

“No, I don’t get out much.”

“A joke. Much better.”

“I’m full of surprises.”

“I’ll bet.”

“Well, let’s find that café.”

She stops me in motion with a hand on my shoulder. “Let me see you. I like to know who I’m going on a date with.” Her gaze is adamant but warm. This is important to her. I feel as though my feet have fused with the sidewalk.

“It’s okay. You can put it back on. Just let me see you. The man, not the mask.” She squeezes my shoulder, drops her arm. There is such benevolence in her voice.

I file the rule of nines away. I don’t need them. I firm my resolve, unclasp the mask, pull it aside and lower it, and clench it tightly at my side. She doesn’t recoil or avert her gaze. Her eyes do not fill with pity. Rather she becomes consumed with gentleness. She glows. Her lips turn upward into a tender smile.

She reaches up to touch my face.

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