Real Life Wears Slippers

Real Life Wears Slippers

I started out just like everybody else.
I averaged out: height, weight, shoe size. Everything you could think of. I was going through life not leaving a mark, the faceless passer-by of newspaper quotes, an every and nothing man.
But then I started to change.
I didn't notice at first. I'd been away on holiday with my girlfriend. Catch a bit of sun, get a tan, a few beers, you know the sort of thing. So we do, I do, get a tan. I go brown. Not my usual tan, but deeply mahogany. My skin was a rich chocolate all over, not just on those parts exposed to the sun. I thought it was a little odd, but I put it down to the new swimming trunks I had bought. Science is always coming up with new materials that keep this and that out and let other stuff through. My girlfriend was so jealous at my lack of tan lines.
I didn't start to worry until a few days after we got back. My colleagues in the office had been really impressed. I'd never had so much attention. In fact, I was so dark that some people didn't recognise me and looked shocked when I said hello. Of course they relaxed when they realised it was me.
No, it was a few days later, a Thursday morning, when I noticed I was peeling. A piece of tissue thin skin, about the size of a postage stamp was lying on the bed sheet near the pillow. I was hunting all over myself, not finding where it had come from until my girlfriend screamed. It took a couple of minutes for her to calm down and explain what had upset her. She led me into the bathroom and showed me where the patch of skin had come from. There it was, on my shoulder blade, a small square of blue in a field of lustrous brown.
Now, you have to understand this wasn't a normal sort of blue skin. Nothing like the colour people go when they're cold, which is more white with a bluish tinge. This was blue. Uniform, like a snooker ball blue. I reached over my shoulder, straining to get at the area, thinking it was something she'd stuck on me, her hysterics part of the joke. I scrabbled at it and felt something come away. The joke was proved, but no, it was more brown skin, revealing more cobalt blue underneath. Ten minutes further scratching and peeling produced an A4 patch of brilliant azure back.
I made two telephone calls. One to work, feigning a stomach bug. I didn't think: "I'm sorry, I won't be in this morning, I'm turning blue, would go down very well. Original yes, but believable? I could see it for myself and I was having trouble. The second was to my doctor.
I dressed in loose fitting clothes and drove to the surgery. My girlfriend refused to kiss me goodbye in case I was contagious. I left her franticly checking herself over in the mirror. Before I went into my G.P's I shook my T-shirt out. Skin like dried tobacco leaves fell on the black asphalt.
My doctor took his time. I didn't see his initial reaction when I took my T-shirt off, showing him my back first. I heard his breath rush in. It didn't seem to come out for a long time. When I eventually turned to face him he still looked fairly stunned. He took blood, urine and tissue samples.
"Of course, you'll have to see a specialist for further tests.
I nodded. Of course. This was the normal pattern of events to follow. This was reassuring.
"And this is only a preliminary diagnosis, you understand?
I nodded again.
"But I think you have Acute Dermal Chromatitis.
My third nod was a little less sure. He must have noticed.
"In layman's terms, your skin has changed colour.
I thought of my girlfriend.
"Is it catching?
"O no, I shouldn't think so. Conditions like this tend to be genetic, triggered by some external factor. Think of it like a switch waiting to be thrown. What tripped it we may never know, but there it is nonetheless.
"Can it be cured?
"Cases like yours are very rare. Now, as I said, I'm not a specialist, but I'd have to say no.
I was stunned. I don't remember driving home. All I know is I was bluer than when I had left that morning. My forehead was peeling, a glimpse of sky between thunder clouds. My girlfriend listened patiently to what my doctor had told me and then went upstairs to pack. She was weak, she said, she couldn't live with a blue skinned man. Her brothers would come round for the rest of her things.
I stripped off, put on a dressing gown and slippers, pulled a beer from the fridge and got fantastically drunk while the last of my normal skin left me.
I have to admit I cried later that morning after she'd gone, when I went to the bathroom and had to piss out of blue penis.
By Monday morning, I was beginning to come to terms with my new blueness. It made a great contrast with my dark hair, and I found, after some experimentation, the right suit, shirt and tie combination had quite an electrifying effect. I decided to go back to work.
My colleagues, despite their initial shock at me being blue, were more curious than anything else. Several of them wanted to touch me. They were surprised when I didn't feel any different to them and the colour didn't come off. In fact, I created such a sensation that the boss had to come out of his office and break up the crowd. With hindsight his reaction was understandable. He sent me home on full pay, pending the outcome of my appointment with the specialist.
The next day the telephone began to ring incessantly. A little after ten in the morning the first television crew turned up. It was the being of the media siege. I took the 'phone off the hook. I saw my parents looking confused on the news, my now ex-girlfriend giving a candid interview on breakfast telly, and my own blue hand waving behind a window.
Eventually, I felt I had no choice but to put myself in the hands of a famous PR guru who had pushed his card through the letter box. As he pointed out, any treatment I might need could be expensive.
The day of the specialist dawned, and with it came bodyguards and a limo. I was bundled into the car like a man accused and whisked off at high speed, camera flashes in our wake.
The specialist was a serious man in his late 50s with grey hair. He confirmed my doctor's diagnosis, taking blood, urine and tissue samples. He said I would make an interesting case study. He also confirmed for my agent that my condition was irreversible.
So I resigned from work and began to put my side of the being blue. I did Breakfast with Frost, children's TV and Richard and Judy. Women's magazines wanted to know about my emotional turmoil, Lad's mags about the exact shade of my genitalia. I was in demand to open supermarkets, to do nightclub PAs and after dinner speeches. I was invited to all sorts of parties, openings and premiers. I even recorded an album of songs entitled Sing Something Blue.
And then, about three months later, things began to change.
I woke up in the soft light of an afternoon, my head throbbing from last night's drink and drugs. My bladder made itself felt, so I slipped from between the two girl band members and went to the bathroom. To my horror, instead of the perfectly blue penis the girls had been so eager to see, there was a length of crimson flesh. In panic I checked to see if the girls had stripped me with their teeth, the cocaine acting as an anaesthetic. Everything was as it should be except it was pillar-box red. I looked in the mirror with the fear of a drowning man. There, across my blue shoulders, were two swathes of red skin. It was happening again. My blue self was sloughing off.
In the terror that I was somehow developing a Union Jack hide, I kicked the girls out and rang my agent.
The initial response was definitely hostile.
My specialist muttered darkly about having to rewrite his paper, then took blood, urine and tissue samples. The newspapers started calling the whole thing a hoax, questioning whether I had ever turned blue in the first place. The companies that I'd signed advertising deals with, (toilet cleaner, hair dye, top shelf magazine), all threatened to sue for breach of contract. They even withdrew my album from the shops. My agent managed to smooth the mess over eventually, through a skilful combination of leaked medical reports and promotion of the benefits of redness.
I must say he was tireless, which was just as well when six months later I turned yellow.
There have clearly been some winners in all this. My specialist has won the Nobel Prize for his work on Spectrum Dermal Chromatitis, (his revised diagnosis), and I was happy to go with him to Stockholm to see his acceptance speech. I suspect that I have made my agent far richer than he will ever tell me, but I don't mind since I have enough money now not to care if I never change colour again. I also have a beautiful wife who is currently thrilled that my present hue glows in the dark.
Am I happier now than when I was just an average guy? The cliche would be to say that I'm the same person inside as I always was, but the would be a lie. Of course I'm different, but that's another cliche because everybody changes with time and circumstance. I think, perhaps happiness is impossible to judge. All I can say for sure is that I feel comfortable inside my skin, whatever its colour, and that life creeps up you while you're doing something else.
Real life is quiet.
Real life wears slippers.