perhaps a parrot would look nicer...

Besides a large pile of cash, one of the things I’ve inherited from my family is a dry scalp which manifests itself as a steady, though hardly rabid case of dandruff.
I’ve never been too concerned about it; a few specks of white showing up on the shoulders whenever I wear dark clothing are hardly the end of the world. Christ…your average pillow, after more than a couple of years contains about a kilogram of dead skin cells.
So I’m always a little surprised by the reaction I get from people when they spot the telltale signs of my ‘horrifying’ condition. I’ll be standing around having a chat with someone when they start doing the dandruff mime at me; the raised eyebrow, the glancing at their own shoulder, the grimace then the flicking some imaginary pile of bird-shit off their lapel.
I’m sure they’re just trying to be helpful but it’s highly fucking insulting and totally fucking unnecessary; it makes me feel as though I haven’t washed for a month.
I mention all this because it happened to me last night at dinner; in a fucking restaurant. I was talking to a chick, an old friend as it happens, who rather than hold my gaze during the conversation, kept averting her eyes to my broad, apparently snow-capped shoulders. I knew what she was doing; she tends to do it all the time with me, so I asked her to stop. Not just in this instance but forever…
The way this chick does it, you’d swear some enormous boil had just burst and a swarm of freshly-hatched wasps had emerged from my chest cavity.
Of course she got all defensive, apologising, suggesting that she thought I’d want to know about the gigantic mound of detritus inexorably building up, threatening to cause my fall through the floorboards at any moment.
The most infuriating aspect of all this is that I’ve known this chick for billions of years; she’s a dear friend. I also happen to know that some time back in the 80s, she caught an excellent dose of herpes simplex…the socially acceptable, mostly incurable form which comes and goes, rearing its ugly snout occasionally and leaving its calling card; the cold-sores around the mouth.
And this chick gets them.
I can always tell because when she’s got one, her face is made-up like a fucking rodeo-clown's however I don’t find it necessary to bring attention to her condition; especially in public.
Anyway, since I will probably never rid my friend of her natural impulse to brush the dandruff from my collar, I have decided that the next time she does it, I am going to reach over, grab her lip between my thumb and forefinger and rub the scab, real or imaginary, right off her startled face…