#2: Dravsko Pavic

She looked at me one day and just said, “I am tired of your face.” When I woke up later, she was gone. And for that reason I would say to you never fall in love with a travelling entertainer, even one who tells you that her travelling days are over.

I have made for many years my living with my face, a face of death. Freak, Frankenstein, zombie; I have been called many things. But a man can truly die and still find himself walking.

It is difficult to describe the sensuality, the femininity of a woman’s beard unless you have encountered such a lady. In my time, I have met many such women, in the circus, in fairgrounds and theme parks much like the one I work in today. But none had the fire, the muliebrity of Rukhsana. Those eyes! Those lips! And that beard! That downy, soft beard like a bed of wild, tangelo bracken. I am close to tears just to think of her.

We married. I knew it was a mistake. How can one marry fire? Put a ring on the finger of passion itself? But I had to have her. I could accept nothing less. With my ghoulish face and work in the theme park’s “Spook Central Death Train”, we had more than enough to get by. And then, as often happens, atrophy. I began to wonder if all this was enough, if Rukhsana was enough. Maybe. Maybe if I could see her without the beard? I pressed. I pressed and cajoled. I drove a wedge between us with my dreary disquiet. In the end I did what all weak men do and killed the thing I cherished most.

So that was it. “I am tired of your face.” And now I raise little Gary alone. It is my burden, my privilege. Thank goodness for his moustache. Otherwise we would not be able to afford the Sky+.