The scar par l'erhu vert
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He’s 53 years old. His name is Joe. He’s 6’1”. He’s bald, but he does not seem to care, so he has just about 25 strands of frizzy white-gray hair around 10 inches long. That’s also the length of his very much un-kept beard. The kind of beard that would look very patchy if trimmed but that is long and messy enough that it looks mostly full if you don’t over-analyze it. He has blue eyes. His nose is big, but manly big, not ugly big. He has a “naturally pale guy that spends a lot of time outside” tan. His lips are of average size and his teeth slighlty more yellowish-gray than the aveage 50-year-old man. He used to smoke, hence the colored teeth, but not anymore. His clothes don’t smell like tobacco. More of a mixture between ever so slight body odor and Tide Original laundry detergent.
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He’s a naturally big man. Not obese, just chubby. Visibly strong, too. The kind of man who has a gut, but a thick noticeable muscle mass under the fat. Not that he works out. He cares way too little about how he looks to spend time in a gym. No, his muscles are all genetics. His fat is, too, as he does not overeat.
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He has 27 scars on his body, from neck to toe. Some are small, some are big. On of them is over one foot long. He has 8 visible ones his face, ranging from one to seven inches. No one knows how many he has under his messy beard. He does not try to hide any of them. He also does not try to showcase them. He wears very normal clothes. Jeans, t-hirts, and often his old Lake Tawakoni hat. He has so many visible scars that kids in his neighborhood call him “The Scar”. Well, they’ve been calling that since he arrived in town 16 years ago, so they are not kids anymore, and nowadays, everyone calls him “The Scar”.
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He has a deep voice. Calming. He does not ever seem to ever be nervous. He talks slowly and moves slowly. Not too slow. Just slow. Calm. Steady. Confident, but not assertive. Just walking through life not seeming to care about anything or anyone.
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If Joe’s description was performed as intended, the reader must be visualizing quite a badass looking motherfucker.
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Joe is single. Some would say celibate, but it is not exactly by choice. But not not by choice either. If a kind lady was to take time to get to know him, he would be opened to love. But he does not care enough to seek it for himself. He takes life as it comes. And it usually comes alone. He’s a land surveyor. He walks around large pieces of landscapes, measures, maps out, and reports. It’s quiet. He likes it enough. Though he could do without the uncomfortable looks, he does not dislike people. But he likes alone time the most. He never married. He did have a couple of girlfriends during his lifetime. But it was mostly girls thinking it was soo cool to be with a guy who looks like he was tortured in the war. While he, as most people, finds sexual intercourse pleasant, Joe values emotional connections above all else. And these women weren’t interested in that, so he quickly stoped being interested in them.
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The Scar lives alone in a condo, in a small town about an hour west from Dallas, Texas. No pets. He spends most of his free time reading old books at the Canton TX public library. He owns a few guns. Two rifles, one handgun. He doesn’t feel the need to protect himself against people – his scary face and his nickname do it for him – but coyotes, cougars and wolves can be aggressive. Encounters with such predators is rare in North-East Texas, but he spends enough time alone in the national and state parks across the Lone Star State that he prefers to be safe rather than sorry.
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No one in Van Zandt County – that’s where he lives – knows how Joe got his scars. He does not have a ‘veteran’ bumper sticker on his F-250 – he does not have any bumper sticker. He does not have a Facebook account one could stalk to try and figure out when and how it happened. Assuming it all happened at once. He does not talk about it. And most people are too afraid to ask. From time to time, a young marijuana-ed barista will throw a “woah what happened to your face, bro?” at him while he orders his coffee on his way to the county library. When such a thing happens, Joe looks at him with kind eyes, smiles, and thanks him for the coffee. The young barista immediately understands not to ask again, so he does not. Obviously, many rumors have spread throuhought the years. Totured during the Vietnam war is the most believed one. Joe is obviously too young to have been part of that war, but Northen Texans don’t seem to know much about lost-wars history. Some rumors are less manly sounding. He’d have fallen in a blackberry bush as a toddler and the scars would have simply grown with him. After all, just because one looks badass does not mean they don’t have the most boring life-story. It’s a known fact in Canton that Joe does not want to be asked about his scars. But no one knows why. Is he embarassed, does he find it amusing to leave people wondering, or does he simply desire to be seen as Joe the man, not Joe The Scar?
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Anyone reading this is welcome to develop their own theory about The Scar. But at this point in time, it really seems no one will ever know.