I vividly recall being worried enough about it to make an appointment with Columbia s official university dermatologist for the next day, December 10, 1983. His name was, naturally, Doctor Moley, and for those of you who require documentation of such things, his office was on Amsterdam Avenue at 114th Street. Anyway, people with free medical coverage can t get finicky about inappropriately-named physicians. Warts are strange. Not to be confused with their darker, hairier cousin the mole, wart viruses are among the oldest life forms on the planet - even pterodactyls probably had to deal with these hard little growths disfiguring their leathery wings.
Warts come in tens of thousands of varieties.
Everyone has wart virusues all over their skin, but almost all wart viruses are too damn weak to plant a root and become visible. According to a brochure I picked up at my dermatologist entitledWarts, the average American sports some sixty of these things. You should see this thing - it had photographs of people who have warts on their warts. It s not pretty to think about, but the virus is mildly contagious, which means you can and will get them from handrails, subway seats and other places where wart-ridden citizens drag their infected limbs. All it does is turn your skin white and smell like shit, like Gary Oldman in Coppola s version of Dracula.