Dear Greaseball:

It is said that there is a certain bacteria that lives to procreate in the guts of a cat, and that to ensure that it can reach paradise, it makes its way into mice, takes over their minds to make them less inhabited and to have a strange attraction toward the risk that cats create, and then – once the adventurous mice are made into a cat’s meal – the bacteria have reached the holy land. Also that if you are pregnant you should not have cats and certainly shouldn’t go near the litterbox, where they poop out the newly-spawned bacteria which may end up trying to infiltrate mom and take the still-forming baby as a host.

It is possible that none of this is in fact said. I am going off a dim memory I had of having heard it said by someone who had an authoritative voice, and it seemed not only possible but likely that things like this happen in this world. And I wonder, dear brother, as a nascent man of science, why you wouldn’t embark on a choice of study that would permit you to track the bacteria, to document its zombifying tendencies? Why not choose something as interesting as gestation, and childbirth, and obstetrics? It is about life after all. One new human emerging out of another human being. Cutting the cord. But no, I am told by our father that you are inclined to seek a residency in dermatology. Moles. Patent and emergent maculopapular rashes. Impetigo and ecchymosis bone rampant. Discolored abrasions, subcutaneous wrinkles, and topological dents bullae. Desquamation and hypopigmentation. Xeroderma, also rampant, unfettered. Self-propagating skin-eating bacteria. Abscesses, vesicles, and bullae. For real? This is the small square of the medical world in which you will stake your claim?

I agree with Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto, but may I also suggest that there are certain skin disorders into which, for the sake of your sanity and sleep, you need never make further inquiry. Also, I sense a tinge of self-loathing here, a resurrection of the plangent boy I used to know. Is this because of the pimples when you were 15? The gentrifying sprawl of acne that planted itself across your cheeks and your weak chin? You have outgrown it. Don’t make of it a prison.

It is bad enough that you have abandoned solidarity with the people to try to rise above so you can live in a gated community with people who drive yellow sports cars and think getting enemas is a sign of good taste. That you will accept the white-coated largesse and concentrate in RVUs and CPT codes, rather than make like a modern day Che and go help the lepers on their concentric island. And yes, I know of what I speak. If I thought you took to dermatology for the lepers, I would be singing a different song.

Please do drop a line and let me know what the agenda holds in store for Memorial Day. I intend to claw out from underneath the pile of private placement memorandums and prospectuses for long enough to obtain a sunburn and drink myself into several soporific stupors, and I should hasten to do so before you become an expert in all the ways that I will pay for the present pleasure at a later date.

Your monkey-minded compatriot and chromosomal mirror,

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