Conclusions: PHOBIA vs. SECRET AGENT vs. real life

[Ross253212]

1) Phobia: a tale of being. By Joey LaFollete. Copyr. 1992
Concluding passage:

"They put me in a chair in front of a big mirror and then click on the
lights. In front of me is a grizzly skeleton covered in a thin film of
skin and I am him and he is me and I wish to God that I wasn't and yet I
am happy that I am something more than just a dream or fantasy or even
worse, a terrible nightmare. I become accustomed to my hairy face. I
want to speak but words won't come out, just a growl. The nurse drawing
my bath, the fat one with blubbery cellulite deposits on her white hosed
legs back away. She's going to call the guard. She doesn't. I try to
clear my voice. The one with pigtails starts to lather my face. I want
to push her hand away but I don't have the strength. It is gone --
utterly gone, my voice, my memory, my strength, but where did it go?
Finally I become conscious of my words and I growl them out of my dry
mouth.
".... shave...me"
"You want me to shave you?"
"....yes."
"Hey Maria, he's speaking." The other nurse comes over and shakes
her head.
"He hasn't spoken in two years. Not since--" She breaks off
suddenly and then fixes her crooked spandex waistband where her naked
rolly polly gut was spilling out. Since when? Two years?
"He certainly did. He wants us to have off that terrible beard."
"Is this true?" She asks me with an incredulous tone.
"Yes. I do." I answer wrong, I know but how else? I am almost
dead.
"We'll need some scissors. It's too long to shave." Maria leaves
the room maybe to get them? I take a deep breath of relief. The weight
of this ugly mat of hair is just too much for me. Perhaps that person in
my dream is just hiding behind that beard? Maria returned with two pairs
of scissors and they both begin cutting away at my coarse salt and pepper
threads."

2) Joseph Conrad, SECRET AGENT

"He walked frail, insignificant, shabby, miserable -- and terrible in the
simplicity of his idea calling madness and despair in the regeneration of
the world. Nobody looked at him. He passed on unsuspected and deadly,
like a pest in the street full of men.

3) David Kaczysnki..... real life.

"The images of his tattered clothes, of his appearance, gave me
this awful sense of woe that this person I do love and have been close to
has really deteriorated. He looked so isolated, so disconnected. I felt
terrible, just terrible."