I have no recollection of the fated doctors visit where I would first hear the word that would thereafter work its way into my identity, but some time later I visited the Connecticut State Capitol with Dad and my sister. It’s a magnificent building, visible for miles around by its gilded, domed tower. We were given a tour of its stately hallways and went home with photos as souvenirs. In the one that sticks in my memory, I’m sitting on the throne-like Charter Oak Chair, a veritable work of art carved of a fallen oak tree in 1857. Dad took the photo, standing perhaps 40 feet away. I’m wearing shorts, and if you look closely enough you can see that first spot of vitiligo, like a drop of bleach that fell onto the photograph and washed out the color.

When Michael Jackson began wearing a single white glove, a token that came to be his hallmark, he too was noticing early manifestations of his own vitiligo. The permanent introduction of the glove to his wardrobe was seen at the time as a fashion choice, though is now understood to have been a prop to hide loss of pigment on his hand. Jackson unintentionally became “The Gloved One” in an attempt to hide his condition.

Taken in the late 80s, a rare photo of Michael Jackson showing severe pigment loss.

There are moments in the lifespan of my vitiligo that stand out as starkly as the affected spots themselves. They are often accompanied by conflicting emotions and difficult conversations. Sometimes they were personal realizations, and other times were observations made by others that, for a bystander, would appear innocent but for me were impactful. For Michael Jackson, one such moment would have been the donning of the glove. The understanding that he could no longer avoid pointed questions if he did not make the effort to cover his spots.

The first of such moments for me came late in high school around the time that I was becoming intimate with my first serious partner. Vitiligo is a condition which abides no reason nor rules in its slow spread around the body, so you can imagine my dreadful apprehension at explaining to my then-girlfriend what the pearl-white spots on and around my penis were. At a time when the mere prospect of showing your naked adolescent body to another human was embarrassing enough, explaining the presence of an alien mark, a blemish on my most private of parts, was morbidly uncomfortable.

But by the grace of a God I’d by then sworn off, my girlfriend embraced my defect. As we sat on the side of a hill, one overlooking the sports fields at our high school, she told me that not only did she not think my spots were weird, but that she actually kind of liked them. At the time I was likely incredulous, disbelieving of her response, and yet through the years I’ve heard the same response time after time from partners that shared intimate moments with me.

These moments, the ones intimate in nature which for me were remarkable and memorable in the extreme, were surely minor footnotes for my partners in the larger story of our relationships. Despite this, they should know how thankful I am, both then and now, for their understanding and reassurance. I hope that Michael Jackson had similar reassurance from people he loved. To be told in adoring honesty that your absolute belief in the adverse affects of your condition is without merit is to learn a little bit more about the world. It is to realize the objective insignificance of things that once paralyzed you.