Ugly Man's Manifesto

Some of us aspire to mediocrity.
It's the best we can do.
We with our big noses.
Our bad teeth.
Our tiny dicks.
Our extra digits.
We just want to be ordinary.
Average.
To live ordinary lives.
We don't want to be cast out anymore.
Driven from the village.
Shunned. Spat upon.
Laughed at.
We never asked to be different.
We didn't purposely cultivate our freakishness.
We with our lisps. Our effeminate ways.
Our weird proclivities that came from nowhere.
We stutterers with our nervous conditions.
Our tics. Our profound sensitivities. Our avoidant behaviors and social ineptitude.
Our performance anxiety.
Our borderline autism.
Our schizoid tendencies.
We don't want to be pointed at anymore.
Or pointed out.
We with our mild deformities that aren't actual handicaps but that, nonetheless, handicap us.
Our beady eyes. Our tiny ears that stick out. Our receding chins.
Our birthmarks and moles and hairy brows.
Our excessive dandruff. Our psoriasis. Our vitiligo.
Our acne. Our flat butts.
We've had enough negative attention.
We’d had enough in grammar school when you and your middling little tribe of friends formed a circle around us in the playground and said all those mean things.
As though you had a right.
As though, based on your genetic makeup which you did absolutely nothing to earn and which, between you and me, is not that great anyway, you had some sort of license to dole out abuse.
To point out our shortcomings. To mock the best we had to offer.
Now we just want our puny share of what you take for granted.
To stand in a checkout line without you gawking at us like we’re from another planet.
To sit at a table in a fast food restaurant without your kid staring a hole through us or asking embarrassing questions.
Can’t you control that impolite little fucker?
We can’t help that we weren’t lucky as you.
That we came up short in the genetic lottery.
It’s not our fault, you blasé’ motherfucker, that your own deformities are so minor as to fall within society’s range of acceptability, but ours are not.
Anytime now the fates may yet dictate some anomaly in your life.
Your beautiful tan could backfire. Melanoma could eat the nose right off your currently acceptable face.
A wacky thyroid could make you extremely fat or very thin with bulging eyes.
Then you could be like us.
Almost normal.
Not quite human.
Always a stranger.