I HAVE A HOLE ON THE SIDE OF MY FACE

by Matt Hale

I shut the door behind me and walked carefully down the darkened corridor toward the light of the living room. He was sitting on the couch with his back to me.

“I have a hole on the side of my face. Wanna see?”

He turned around before I had a chance to respond and, yup—he wasn’t kidding.

The hole in his left cheek was about the size of a silver dollar. I could see his teeth and gums and—at first I didn’t realize what it was because, it finally occurred to me, I had never seen one from the side and it seemed so massive and misshapen—his tongue. “Hole” really was the right word, too. It wouldn’t be correct to describe it as an injury. The skin around the hole wasn’t torn or bleeding or swollen as you might expect. It also wasn’t like any of the body’s naturally occurring orifices, which tend to be reddish or puckered or, like the nostrils or the ears, act as an entrance to a sort of cavern that might eventually lead inside the body but doesn’t actually reveal anything. I felt the sudden, overwhelming urge to wrap myself up in a thick, heavy blanket. I pictured those full-body plaster casts people end up in in the movies and I wanted one.

“I’m not sure what disturbs me more,” he continued, “the fact that I have a hole on the side of my face, or that fact that it doesn’t hurt at all. Though I’d be in pain, I think I’d feel better about having a hole on the side of my face if it caused me some discomfort. That would make it a problem. To be addressed and solved. As it is, it’s merely a curiosity.

“Sometimes, unconsciously, I find myself playing with the hole on the side of my face with my tongue. Then I realize what my tongue, with it seems to me a will of its own, is doing. Though I am able to stop it, this clandestine, unintentional behavior troubles me.

“It makes me sad.”

<END>