Me, Me, Me

Perhaps I am a control freak, but I can't help but feel that the world would be greatly improved if everyone behaved exactly as I do.
    Now, I do not think that I am a paragon of humanity, but I am courteous, organised, polite, thoughtful and considerate.  I look out for others and behave in a fashion that, if followed, would undoubtedly result in a decent, structured and well run society.
    Yet every single day I find myself cuddled onto the most packed train cars where the ignorant mass expect personal space for their newspapers at the expense of the comfort of their fellow passengers.
    Once I reach my office through the herd of self-serving cattle, I find a parade of toneless, inhuman emails impatiently stacked in the dreary inbox of my virtual employ.
    This carnival is sometimes punctuated by the snippy thrum of the work phone or the hurried chortle of my mobile and a tinny, inaudible huff will berate me or make vague requests, perhaps deliberately avoiding to ask important questions in some sort of surreal psychological test of my own, alleged, selfishness.
    Home I canter to be lambasted with rhetorical trivia and half-words, a string of nothing that somehow means everything to those eyes I try to love.
    I tell her all this, like a decent fool who still believes in honesty.  She chides me, calls me conceited.  Why does she stay here?  Why do I let her?
    If she were to behave like I, if she were to be reasonable and understanding.  But, I can't tell her this, because that makes me wrong.  I don't know how, but it does.
    I sleep bitterly again, as if my own life were travelling alongside me, out the window of a speeding train, and I am unable to reach it.
    I wish this world understood those things.
    I wish everyone was just like me.

The alarm clock jabs me awake.  The space beside me means she has already left for work.  Cruelly, I am glad.  I can savour my morning.
    In quiet rooms I urinate, I make toast, I drink coffee.
    I stand at the window and look at the city, if feels like it belongs to me.
    Before showering I look at my naked body in the mirror.  It has never quite been the body I wanted, I have been too aware of its shortcomings in relation to those presented to me, and I can only imagine how it appears to other eyes.  I have always considered myself a compromise and I guess I do feel lucky for the women I have had who have touched this body and kept their dissapointments to themselves.
    I dress slowly and erratically, my wardrobe an un-coordinated collective of muted colours.
    Do I even want to go outside today?  I am unsure as to what it has to offer me, but part of me is convinced it is beneficial in some regard.
    I reach the street, my bus is there, I hop on, checking the balance of my travelcard and easily finding a seat.
    A few stops later I slip through the doors and snake immediately into the coffee shop ahead of me.  I order my latte, fumbling for my bank card, hiding my pin and nimbly sliding to the counter at the far end whilst checking my phone for messages.
    The cardboard cup arrives, despite the heat I take a first lively sip.  It has a peppermint bite.
    "This isn't my latt-ARGH!"
    The sound is sharp, jarring even to me, but I am not startled by this involuntary bark for long.  More disconcerting is the worried, furrowed brow staring at me.
    It is my worried, furrowed brow.
    It is my worried, furrowed brow.
    Is it my worried, furrowed brow but it is on another body.
    I blubber sounds.  I am not aware but the cup has left my hand and I'm stood with one foot in a scalding pool of someone else's beverage.
    "That's my face," I slobber.
    But the jabbering panic of my own expression is not reflected in this doppelganger.  Instead its eyes look to its colleague, and, like signposts they move my gaze until I am looking at the cashier who wears my face with an auburn moustache.
    "Sir?" it says with a nut-brown toned impression of myself. "Are you well sir?"
    "I'm fine," I yelp loudly and then I lose consciousness.

I wake up in a strange bed.  Its sheets are stiff and foreign.  Almost immediately I know this is a hospital.
    A faded blue curtain surrounds me.  I can hear coughing and it is unnerving for its familiarity.  This curtain taunts me as if about to reveal the punchline.
    Instead, preceded by a rustle, a doctor walks through.
    At first I hold my eyes closed tighly, like a child trying to escape bad thoughts.  His presence moves around the bed towards me, and I cautiously peek at his shoes.
    They are sharp and bright black.
    It is inevitable that I look at him and, like plucking a thorn, I do it fast and suddenly.
    "Oh God, no." I whimper aloud, "Not this face."
    "How are you feeling?" it says, more warmly than I have ever been.
    I shake my head, "No, please, no, no."
    He moves a hand, palm out, toward my forehead and I flinch, then very deliberately avoid its contact.
    "What's your name?" I finally ask him, quivering.
    "I'm Dr. Raymond Cole," he replies with reassuring conviction.
    "That's not my name," I answer, more to myself, but he responds;
    "Why would it be?"
    "Don't you see?" I implore, as if the full question is already there, hanging in the air between us like a bauble.
    "See what?"
    "You have my face," I gasp. "We have the same face.  Those - those others had my face."
    His eyes, my eyes, scrunch up and examine me.
    "How old are you?" he asks,
    "Thirty four," I reply.
    The doctor then walks to the curtain and slowly, purposefully, draws it back a few feet.
    It reveals a body in the next bed, old hands, holding a bowl, my lips drinking soup from it.  My face, but olive coloured, hairless, liver-spotted and papery.
    "Mr. Ludlum here," he begins, "is seventy six."
    The doctor says this as if it explains everything and there was nothing more to be said.
    For a while I am unable to respond.  The wealth of questions is a disorderly crowd, each jostling for prominence that they cram my mouth, stoppering all sound.
    Naively, all I can do is put my hand on my chest and plead, "This is me."
    Its importance is lost on his vanilla face.

I am discharged and try to leave with my head dropped down.  But each glimpse of a face is enough to shift my eyes, alert like a cat's, into theirs and I see them all:
    There I am with a crew cut, wearing a Black Flag vest that shows off my tattoos.
    There I am laughing into my telephone,  a goatee beard and shark tooth necklace.
    There I am sitting in a wheelchair, one eyes shut tight, the other damp and red.
    There I am eight years old, one hand down my shorts, the other picking my nose.
    There I am dropping coins into a vending machine, my light hair down to my shoulders, my short top hugging my breasts.
    ...
    ...
    ...my...
    ...my breasts?
    "Do you mind?" she says, the words coming out of my face in softened, plasticine tones.  My chin is the smoothest it has ever been.  My neck looks odd without its Adam's apple and it slopes elegantly into the plunge of my cleavage.
    I am all too aware that I am staring.
    "Do you mind?" she repeats.

The street is worse, a shambles of sights: me in a hat, me with a dog, me with shopping bags, me with a fringe, me wearing a mini-skirt, me on a scooter, me delivering mail, me selling fruit, me in a hurry, me in a queue of me waiting for a taxi driven by me, me dressed as a statue dancing for coins, me on the floor disshevelled but smiling, me holding my baby me, me nervously shaking my hand, me picking up the wallet I dropped and handing it back to me and me saying thankyou which makes me bow my head, me jogging, me leafleting, me asking the time, me going home, me waving to me and me who are holding hands, me kissing me, me, me, me, me, me.
    I run into my flat and I close the door.  I lock it.  I unlock it and peek outside then I close it and I lock it again.
    "Hello?" I call, expecting to hear my voice return like an echo, but it is silent and I can breathe.  I note the time, she must still be at work.
    I look for pictures of us, but I can't find any.  I don't know why, but I expect her not to be me.  She just seems so permanent.  It doesn't seem possible.
    I open some books and they seem unchanged, but I haven't read them before, so I can't be certain.
    I need to distract myself, she'll be back in a couple of hours and though it seems so inevitable I can't dwell on it until it is too late.
    I turn on the radio and the familiar chords of Subterranean Homesick Blues are vibrantly rattling out of the speakers, but, as Dylan sings it is not with his familiar drawl, it is with a lumpen impersonation, an unsettling hoot that grates like bad karaoke.
    I leap from the sofa and pull my copy of Blonde On Blonde from the shelf, and there's my face standing against the scene, scarf, coat and curly mop of hair, the name is the same, I am Bob Dylan.
    I shut the radio off at the plug, as if that will somehow correct this tragedy.
    Then with a horror-movie turn to look over my shoulder I face the television.
    I'm answering the question correctly.
    I'm breaking up with myself whilst a pop song plays.
    I'm selling butter and then holidays and then car insurance.
    I'm scoring a goal.
    I'm playing Johnny B. Goode at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance.
    I'm reading the news of my court case for fraud.
    I turn off the television and I'm reflected in the glass.  I try and turn it off again, but realise it's permanent.
    The front door unlocks and I bury myself in the sofa cushions, trying to muffle the sound and make this an event that's happening in the distance.
    I feel a hand on my back and I freeze, hoping it will forget I'm here and leave, but it runs up, under my shirt and toward my neck.
    I can't stand it, so I spring across the room, dragging my furniture with me and retreat to the corner.
    The voice follows me, "What is it?" it asks, it's sweet and concerned, it seems to want this to be a game, but there's a serious edge.
    I turn as if revealling some horrible disfigurment.
    There it is, plain as flour.
    She is me.
    "I hoped it would be you," I sigh, remorseful.
    She smiles, clearly misunderstanding.

I sit down with her and explain everything as far as I understand it.  To her credit she makes my face look attentive and committed, but I sense that regardless of what I say her reaction will be the same, I just don't think she's really listening to me, and that is strangely unlike her.
    When I finish she looks around, her eyes moving to three specific yet indistinct places across the floor, she then nods once and asks if I'd like a drink.
    She puts the kettle on, prepares two mugs, goes to the bathroom.
    I've left before she returns.

I hammer on the door.  Though I was here two nights ago I worry that he might have left, or that, for some reason, he never existed.
    After another minute or so the chain-lock is reluctantly removed and the door squeaks ajar.
    "Cliff," I blur, "I need a drink."
    "I'll get my shoes," comes a half-asleep reply.

More than anyone else Cliff resembles me.  Even before he had my face.  We have been best friends for twenty five years, so, oddly, it doesn't seem too unnatural when I look at him and see me.
    He, however, is looking at me with my face as if I'm crazy.
    "You think everyone has your face?" he asks, bewildered.
    "Look in a mirror," I gesture behind the bar where all my faces are reflected.
    He look at the both of us for what feels like a long time.  I am unable to comprehend his indifference, but it's there, and he soon breaks into a hushed laugh.
    "This is definitely the weirdest thing you've ever said, man!"
    "What can I do?"
    Cliff shrugs and swigs his bottled beer, his eyes glancing around the room.  He leans forward and whispers, "Mate, check that out."
    I look over my shoulder to see me by a cigarette machine in the corner drunkenly fondling my breast whilst sloppily and shamelessly sticking my tongue down my own throat.
    "Oh Jesus, man, don't show me those things!"
    "Christ," he sat back, "you really are messed in the head.  Maybe you should see a shrink?"
    "Yeah," I snorted, "or a priest."
    "Stephanie's dad's a vicar," he suggested off-the-cuff, but for some reason it made sense.
    Cliff called Stephanie and begged her for her dad's number, which she duly texted over in return for a month's loan of Cliff's cinema pass.  I managed to convince her father to speak to me at his parish church in two hours.

I was a little tipsy when I met the soft-spoken, silver-haired me on the rain soaked steps of St. Jude's, but he didn't seem to notice.  He told me to call him Danny, which felt peculiar.  I asked if we had to go to the confessional, he said he had coffee and biscuits in his study.
    "You were very vague over the phone," he smiled, "But you did sound genuinely troubled.  Can I ask, are you religious?"
    "No."
    "So why did you want to speak to me?"
    "For some reason I thought you might actually listen to me.  I didn't want another doctor just to shrug me off."
    "What's your concern?" It was a peculiar phrasing, but it felt reassuring.
    "Danny," I took a breath, "everyone has my face.  I mean everyone.  You.  You have my face.  Your daughter, Stephanie, she has my face.  Hitler, Hitler has my face."
    He considered his words for a moment and then asked, "How do you mean?"
    I drew breath through gritted teeth nearly at a loss for words, but persevered in the hope of sense tumbling out by chance.
    "Yesterday," I began, "people looked different.  My friend Cliff, my best friend, had a long nose, a Roman nose, like Julius Caesar.  My girlfriend had full lips, a bit like a moody fish, and freckles across her nose and cheeks, whilst her ears seemed just a little too small for her head.  But today they both look exactly like me but with diffferent hairstyles and body types.  Their voices also," I continued, jumping on top of his next sentence, "they sound like me doing an impression of them, and you, not only do you look like me but older, but you sound like me pretending to be the kind of person I imagine you are."
    I then proceeded to do a note perfect impersonation of Father Danny's voice which he smiled solemnly at.
    "If you've just come here to mock me," he said in a careful controlled manner and I immediately repeated the sentence back to him, matching the intonation perfectly.
    "I'm serious," I added hastily in my own voice.
    "Well," he murmured after some consideration, "follow me."
He walked me out into the main hall of the Church and we stood by the altar.  I looked down at the well maintained copy of the Bible resting there, whilst he stared up towards the abstract, coloured shapes of a stained glass window.
    "You remember," he stated rhetorically, "that the Lord made all in his image, perhaps that is the root of your dilemma."
    I raised an eyebrow, I was worried he was about to try and baptise me or something.  But he didn't say any more, he just held his gaze and I followed his line of sight and realised he wasn't looking at the stained glass window but he was looking at a statue of Christ on the cross, and I looked at the figure, and I realised...
    I was Jesus Christ.

The following day I woke up on Cliff's sofa and I felt an enormous weight had been lifted from me.  I was not expecting it all to have been a bad dream, indeed, the sight of me making me breakfast seemed strangely comforting, as if I was somehow both observing and performing those actions.
    I drank the coffee he handed to me, he chuckled to himself and asked, "You seem pretty happy, did you discover God last night or something?"
    I was content to go about my day, almost embracing the idea of a world populated entirely by me.  I even began to notice the improvements that I expected, such as better pedestrian awareness, more orderly queuing systems and simple, polite behaviour directed towards strangers.  In general, people would smile at one another, laugh at their own fumblings and always be willing to lend a hand and look out for their fellow citizens.  This was immediately apparent even from the most cursory of observations, there just seemed to be an almost choreographed harmony to the way people moved when out in society and it didn't feel forced or artificial, it just felt right.
    I decided to go to the same coffee shop as yesterday, something which, in the normal world, I would have been apprehensive of, but here the same staff members treated me warmly and respectfully, though they must have known it was me.
    They must have known it was me?  This kept going around my head like a carousel, the question asking itself in varying tones as if searching for the cadence that would invariably lead to an answer; They must have known it was me?
    Some time later that day a woman with my face approached me smiling widely and held her arms open as I drew close.
    "Gavin!" she beamed.
    I kept walking towards her, but my pace slowed cautiously.
    "Gavin!" she repeated, no doubt registering in her voice.
    I looked over both my shoulders, but there was no one else there.
    "Gavin?" she asked the name this time and I shook my head apologetically. "Sorry," she said, her tone sad and confused.  "You look just like him."
    I smiled and nodded, "I can imagine."
    It didn't really bother me until it happened again later, but this time the name was Oliver.  The old man who had mistaken me apologized.  I asked him if I looked like Oliver, and he said, "Yes, you're the spitting image of my son."
    This rattled me, so I went to a charity shop and bought some new clothes, then I got some hair gel and styled myself in a fashion unlike any I had tried before.  I took a bus to the florists where she worked and brazenly strolled up and down, barely a foot from her nose.
    She looked at me and smiled warmly.  I smiled back, feeling very foolish, until she said; "Can I help you sir?"
    I scowled directly at her, her wearing my face, and I abruptly left the shop.
    I looked deeply into every one of my faces that I passed, and they all looked back at me, smiling at first, but, as their expression met mine the smile soon dropped and all that was left was the fear in their eyes, the fear that had been there all along.
    I went to the bar where Cliff worked and I ordered drinks from him without him ever geuinely acknowledging me.  Sure, he grinned and called me 'Mate', but he did that to every patron of that bar that I observed him serve.
    I felt like a ghost, as if I just floated through rooms, sometimes someone felt my presence and they smiled in my general direction in order to appease my restless spirit.  But it was no longer enough.  I wanted to tear down the walls around me, to strip myself of my clothes and bare my naked body to them all and proudly scream: "This is me."
    But that would not be enough, not for them.
    How long had these people had my face?  Had this world of me sprung up overnight or had everyone always been this way and I had only just awoken to this world as if from a dream?
    Whilst there are remnants of unity throughout general opinion, the population is still as splintered as it was when every face was unique.  To me this makes sense, whichever way you look at it.  If this change was spontaneous then, of course, opinion would remain.  If it has existed for ages then, even if all thought began alike, it must have fragmented.  But then, why haven't looks evolved?  Why this constant?
    Perhaps this is merely just some cruel joke, no matter how you dress people up they will never be unified, there will never be consistency of thought and feeling, no matter how destructive, anti-social, xenophobic, misogynistic, sexist, racist, homophobic, vile, ill-tempered, disgusting, degrading, degenerative, repressive, regressive, insensitive, hurtful, shameful, bile-inducing their ideas may be, decency, goodness, warmth, supportiveness, these things don't chime with everyone, at least, not in an all-encompassing fashion.  Though it seems, to me, that any thought outside of my liberal viewpoints is backwards, broken, selfish and strange, there are many others who would disagree.
    But, isn't that why I wanted this, everyone to be like me, it doesn't make sense that thoughts should still be fragmented.  The more I know myself the more I hate myself, the more I see the doubt and distrust in my behavior.  As much as one can fear the uncanny and the unknown perhaps the opposite is just as unsettling.
    It is not everyone else, regardless of what face they wear, what attitudes they hold, when they take everything away, when you get down to the very core, it is what I have always known, it is what has always, on some guttural level, driven me, it is a simple truth, it is me I hate.
    Walking around this world of doubting faces, where everyone is uncertain and so fickle of who they might be staring at, who they might be talking to, I am all too aware that if I were to die today it would be hard for anyone to miss me.  There are a billion other mes all jostling for prominence.  Once I am gone to the unimaginable nothingness of death time will continue and, in a way utterly disconnected from myself and all I ever hoped to achieve, I will be replaced by another exactly like me.  Stripped of any individuality, if I were to die, how would anyone grieve?  The only thing anyone can miss here is my name, and would they really miss that?  What do I offer this world outside of myself?  Every thought, every idea, every ambition, every dream, I have kept them all inside, I have sneered cynically at the world outside from within my shell and never tried to better either it or myself.  It doesn't deserve me, I have thought, and I was right in the wrong way.  This world does not deserve me, I should burden it no longer.