Anxiety: We worry. A gallery of contributors count the ways.

It happened by degrees, a series of imperceptible gradations, slow and steady, a sort of “Picture of Dorian Gray” in reverse, or rather, in the natural order, wherein the picture stays the same but the man degrades.

My problem isn’t as luxurious as aging. I’ve had my summer, and don’t begrudge the autumnal tumble of leaves or the crunch of frozen winter coming. And there’s nothing wrong with me health-wise, at least not that I know of. I get over colds in a day and, while I practice my daily routine of martial arts, even come off as physically gifted. Yet there’s obviously a corruption, a slow, unidentifiable toxin seeping into my life.

I’m a creep.

Photo

I know this because people — mostly but not always random strangers — tell me so. What sort of creep is significant, I think. I’m not the catcaller or the leerer, the public masturbator or the stalker. These deviants are creeps by choice; they live the creep lifestyle. Instead, I’m just a dude who looks the part, and it’s amazing how much that affects my life.

Over the years — I’m 39 — my arms have grown too long, my thighs too thick, my barrel chest too beasty. As if to halt these things from imparting, at least, the appearance of strength, my wrists and hands have, at the same time, dwindled thin.

My hair, once caught up in a mass of thick dreadlocks, I recently sheared with a pair of $10 hair clippers, something I hoped would cut down on the creepiness factor, but only exacerbated it. I have volcano-ash dandruff, so I haven’t gotten my new hair “shaped up,” in the parlance of black barbershops, out of embarrassment. As I can’t see the back of my head to give it a proper trim, a puff of hair is developing there. I could be said to have a slight mullet. And like a lot of journalists, I have what might be called a dismal sense of fashion.

But worse than anything else is my face, or more specifically, the skin there. The condition I have, the one that’s grown more and more severe since a Christian Scientist girlfriend exposed me to a third-world brand of tuberculosis — she subsequently refused to take antibiotics and died — is called seborrheic dermatitis. Though it’s probably the most important term in my life right now, I have to look up the spelling each time I type it. As I’m generally a compulsively correct speller, I assume that’s the result of a mental block built around anguish.

All year long, but particularly in summer, the condition, which scientists think is either caused by a fungus or a yeast, but is essentially the result of an immune system kicked into overdrive, producing new cells pell-mell, causes my skin to peel away like paint warped by leaks, in big crusty flakes. What the flakes leave behind on this dark-skinned black man are patches of skin missing their requisite melanin, the sallowness that takes its place making me as splotchy as a weather map. Sometimes when I have a flare-up I can fool myself into believing the effect is minimal, but the Northern Virginia community I live in is there to remind me it’s not.

Living in a basement apartment as I do, I spend a lot of time writing in Arlington coffee shops. For the most part I can tune out the noise, and I like being able to gaze out the big picture windows. And the world gazes back.

In the midst of my tapping away on my laptop or trolling for stories on my iPad, at least one of a few things is almost certain to happen.

• Someone, usually a woman too mesmerized by her phone to notice me in detail right away, will sit down near me. When she’s finally done with her phone she’ll look up at me. A “hell, no” look will spread across her face and she’ll switch seats.

• A group of teenagers who otherwise are comfortable enough sitting near me will mumble comments like “yuck” or “gross” or, significantly in this case, “creepy” — as though I’m not clearly within earshot.

• A parent — male or female, it doesn’t seem to matter which — passing by with a small child will look at me, then immediately either pick up or grab the child by the hand.

Is it really all that bad? Is it possible that I’m exaggerating? That most of it is in my head? That the catastrophe is flowing from the inside out instead of the other way around? It doesn’t really matter, because at the moment I’m alone — truly alone — because of it.

And that, when it’s all said and done, is what a creep is, someone whose isolation has become unmanageable.

I don’t mean to validate the creep label. It’s a word meant to pigeonhole someone’s existence. It is also a variation of the word freak in a world where the culture of other-ism that birthed that particular designation is no longer considered moral. While the word freak heaps sin on its user, the word creep has the advantage of allowing its wielder to blame the victim. A creep is a mugger, chat-room victimizer or necrophiliac in waiting. Evidence of such isn’t necessary. The creep’s nature can be discerned from his (it is an overwhelmingly masculine label) appearance and mannerisms. To do so isn’t cruel or prejudiced: by labeling the creep a creep, you’re victimizing the creep before the creep can victimize you.

In the social coefficient that is Western civilization, we’re always in sore need of a lowest common denominator. That category has been occupied by a staple of outsiders, everyone from African slaves to gays to convicts, and it may just be the creep’s turn.

Of course, race is likely to play a part in all this. When white people trumpet their ability to see past color, they tend to cite the admiration they hold for black politicians (President Obama being the apotheosis of this phenomenon) athletes, actors and musicians, people whose good looks, charm, status and lack of physical proximity make them easy enough to feel good about. The rest of the black population can represent a kind of aggregated stranger danger.

I don’t know, in the end, what I’ll do with this situation of being a creep. Probably nothing, except write more about it. I’m pretty sure from his work and from photographs of him that Charles Bukowski was the king of creeps. David Foster Wallace, with his grimy mop and springy whiskers, probably ranked as well. What is there, in the face of something insurmountable like this, but keeping a record of it?

So consider this the first entry in the diary of a creep.

Rend Smith is a journalist based in Washington.

