A Minor Flora

I have one aesthetic flaw, aside from which I’m immaculate [1]. And this one defect is out-of-the-way, a minor blemish. It causes no harm or inconvenience to me or the people around. Its existence is so unobtrusive it should be forgotten, brushed over or noted maybe once in a decade—but it’s not. Instead, when people see me, this is all they see. Hark! I hate to bring this feature to the attention of my readership for fear of the additional shame it will bring. But for honesty, and building author–reader trust, and to achieve the goal of this post (which I’ll get to soon), I must disclose: I have a fungi toe.

Contrary to the popular jokes, I do not fruit oyster mushrooms from beneath this nail to pare off and use in risottos. Truffle dogs do not frenzy in my presence. Nor do I sell sucks of this phalange to desperate hippies for mad psilocybin trips. And for the last time, I am not an entertaining person—I am boring, lacklustre, quotidian—I am not, god dammit, I am not a fun guy! I’ve been ushered from the jacuzzi at my own birthday party when others feared infection. I’ve been told to keep my shoes on indoors and excluded from teenage sock wrestles. Social distancing is a permanent state for me. For the entirety of my life I’ve been ridiculed and shamed for this insignificant imperfection, a little growth beneath a single nail that (1) makes the nail slightly thicker (4 mm), and (2) discolours it from warm ivory to murky sallow. And that’s it. The fungus is hardly contagious, hardly. But still my friends complain and tease and call for me to amputate. Amputation, really? Is your periphery so besmirched by this blotch that you would resort to surgery? If someone else had a similar defect, I’d never incite such ridicule; you never know the full extent of how you effect other people. You can never predict the full story of their lives, nor of the lives before them, epigenetically linked. In my case, the ridicule cuts deeper than what might be considered normal; my condition is rooted in the vile origins of my family name, lore passed down from father to son.

A few generations back (circa 1280 A.D.), Gambrinus invented beer. I’m not claiming to be a descendant of this jolly ball of a bearded king, but rather a descendant of Brabant’s worst innkeeper—Hans Eisworth, a supposed weasel of a fellow whose stinginess was renowned. He would charge patrons an extra pfennig if they slept past sunrise, claiming they had used the bed into the next day. He would carve his serving bowls shallow to stretch the stew thin and leave but one candle lit in the dining hall because one candle is ‘all a person needs to see.’ I was told this story when I was eight years old, when I first questioned my father about the fungi toe. He said, ‘Our story starts with Gambrinus’ daughter, actually, Alda of Brabant, who wanted nothing more than to celebrate her father’s invention, wanted to master bierkunst. But in those days, brewing was reserved for men; because ale rhymes with male, and because beer rhymes with steer, obviously. So Alda was denied tuition from her father, and in her despondency, sulked around town. Her traipse was a mindless loop of streets until she happened upon a certain dishevelled inn. 

‘Hans (that’s your great x10⁴ grandfather), the slimy fucker, recognised the daughter of the best brewer around, and invited her in and listened to her woes and slowly grew this Machiavellian smile. “Why don’t you practice your brewing here?” He said, knowing that the daughter of Gambrinus would produce ale far superior to anything he could whip up. And so she did, and so he watched, and so he learned beirkunst like no other ignoble, and his business at the inn boomed. But one day Alda requested to be recognised for her efforts, requested to take a barrel to show her father, hoping the evidence of her skill would change his mind. And at this, Hans worried, feared that if she left him, she might erect her own alehouse in direct competition. So, “We must taste it first,” he said, “ensure it is worthy of your father’s consumption.” He showed her over to the barrel, held the child up to drink from its open lid—and then he dropped her in. Hans held down her writhing body as ale and yeast and sugar clogged her lungs. And when she was spent, he disposed of the corpse, and—uncontested—became indelibly known as Hans Brauer, a master of beer.’

I bet you’re wondering how this relates to my fungi toe, but first let me highlight how troubled I am by this story. My surname is literally built on jealous murder. A surname should be a point of pride. It should remind us of all the hardship of our ancestors, and all the falling dominos that led to our existence. But this story has tainted my name. Throughout all Brauer generations, we’ve tried and failed to atone for this original, almost Adam-and-Eve sin. 

In Germanic folklore, murdered children return as kobolds, goblin-like sprites in tattered clothing that cause mischief about the house. Well, Alda of Brabant came back to us, and haunts us still. She comes while we sleep. She visits every male Brauer born in my linage and stuffs ale yeast beneath our nails as vengeance for her sticky demise. I’m not proud of my great ancestor, and this toenail is a constant reminder of my family’s mortifying past.

The impossibility of removing the Brauer-fungus is proof of the kobold curse. Where the everyday fungi-toe cultivator can use traditional methods of infection removal, us Brauers cannot. All thanks to Hans, Alda keeps coming and treating us to the yeast in which she drowned. My father and I have tried the lacquers you’re supposed to apply to the nail thrice daily until the nail dislodges like an infant’s tooth—but after months of effort, nothing, not a wobble, just further sickly discolouration. Dad’s tried soaking his foot in Listerine, metho, horse piss; Poppy’s tried snake oil, fish slime and heat; GG-Pa tried magnetics and leeches to no avail. The fungus always survives. The condition is unalterable. It’s out of my control. And yet, friends continue to tease and ridicule. Well, all except one.

Through my teenage years, my saint and saviour was Nathan Booth. Where others looked at my defect with disgust, Nathan was fascinated and inspired. He considered it an idiosyncratic asset. He saw the extra thickness of the nail as plated armour, and saw the organic externality as a highly functioning colony, a second mind. Nathan—my gymnastics buddy—inspired by Transformers at the time, conjured this fantasy where I, upon pressing my toenail and having my fingerprint read, would evolve. The fungus and thick keratin would spread in rapid proliferation from my foot, up my leg and over the entirety of my body in an organic Tony Stark/Iron Man-like suit. I had a shield-sized nail tethered to my left forearm and a one-way transparent toenail visor over my face. And I’d allow this colony to spread to Nathan so we could dive and swing and flip around the gymnastics centre as somewhat discoloured superheros, protected by the thing that most hurt me elsewhere. If one of my friends had, say, orange hair, or a gross perfectly circular scar on their calf, or an oversized mouth, or a weird obsession with performing chin-ups in front of new German students, or a shocking flap of underchin when they retreated their head into their shoulders, or a mountainous pimple called John (or John 2.0.) on their back—I wouldn’t begrudge them for it, wouldn’t ridicule. I like to think that if any of these problems affected my friends, I’d be a Nathan-like figure. I’d promote their obscurities because you never know the full extent of their shame.

Now, the point of this post, why I felt it worthwhile to expose this blemish to a wider audience. About a week ago I received this message from a friend:

Joel, I have a secret

Joel, I have to tell you…

OMG I have a fungi toe

The satisfaction. Justice! at last. Indeed, I could be a good friend here and offer advice and encouragement. I could be a Nathan Booth. But nah. I responded:

There’s no turning back

Amputate now!

So, Unnamed Friend, let us share in the ridicule, divvy it up like a mushroom risotto.