I had an original face, that’s what they said in my town. My face was unique here and in the world. No one on the planet looked like me. And that’s why they came for it.

Because the proportions were perfect. A long, wide forehead under a half‑bald scalp full of red spots and scars, with long hair on the sides. Very long, thin, and gray.
The right eye smaller than the left, which was turned toward the center of the nose.

Wide glasses.

A large, aquiline, unorthodox nose.

Two ears bent forward.

Mexican mustache with two hairy fangs.

Thin lips that looked like a slice of ham.

Crooked, yellow teeth with protruding front ones that gave my mouth the look of a deformed Freddie Mercury.

Cheeks puffed like a pig’s.

A round chin.

A neck a few centimeters long but the neck doesn’t count as part of the face.

My face was the fixation of my parents, my younger sister, and my neighbors.

In Mataderos they said my face was the reflection of years of misfortune. Others, on the contrary, thought it was a miracle of genetics. And my power was translucent and waning. Wherever they found me, they asked for a photo. They printed T‑shirts with my face and sold them on MercadoLibre.
But let’s talk about what matters…

My face was the face dreamers saw.

It was the face of dreams of hope and nightmares. And it was me speaking to dreamers, sibyls, and prophets. How do I know?

In Recreo many tourists rested, coming from Córdoba, Santiago del Estero, Tucumán, Buenos Aires.

They crossed me on dirt streets while looking for the YPF station and realized they had already seen me in their dreams. They didn’t need to be masters of the supernatural. My face was there. And it was only my face. My body is not perfect, it’s fat, flabby, bony, and ordinary. The body of any local from the north of the country.

What makes this curious is that I’ve seen beautiful women go mad when they see me.

They recognized me. Their eyes opened wide, they told their boyfriends or husbands “I saw him.”

“But we’ve never met, my love," was my most common reply. I didn’t want to break up couples.

My parents didn’t separate because they made money off me and weren’t going to split it equally.

They used my face for illustrative images and ads in local and provincial shops. I could appear eating a hamburger at Terkos, swimming in the municipal pool, bottle‑feeding a baby at the hospital, or jumping on a trampoline at a game in the Festival Nacional del Cabrito. I was everywhere they looked, because here in my town they loved me.

Well…love is a word full of subjectivity. But they loved me, even if love is always irrational…

Manuel, a former high school classmate, offered my face in online stores. The problem was his idea made no sense, it was a setup, a scam.

Roberta Mansilla, the single neighbor next door, wrote on my father’s car that she needed my face to pay Andrés, the debt usurer. How could she pay with my face?

Roberta knew a face collector. She contacted him through social media.

Luckily, Manuel didn’t know about the collector. He ignored that, and the fact that

Roberta and I had already started talking.

And no, we weren’t talking about wax faces or artificial skin.

It was Roberta and the collector from New York sitting in El Quincho bar, drinking coffee and beer, waiting for me to say yes…

My face for twelve thousand dollars. It was better than I thought. I would be rich. I imagined moving to Las Termas de Río Hondo, working in a Chinese appliance store, and loving a wife who wanted to live with an introverted man, with a face easy to kiss and bite. It would be a radical change.

The collector sweated a lot and smelled strange.

Roberta kept him entertained with her sexual massages. There was no contract. And they called Dr. Raymond for the operation. Roberta said it would be good to call the mayor, the provincial media, and make a reality show of my operation.

"That’s too much exposure," I told my neighbor.

"You sell the rights…" she said.

A couple of phone calls.

I had my doubts.

The collector yawned…he had a return ticket to New York the next morning. He needed my face quickly, there was no time for TV cameras.

"When do we do it?" Roberta asked.

The collector spoke with the owner of El Quincho. We would do the operation on one of his tables. A couple of knives, a pair of pliers. No anesthesia.

I agreed. It wasn’t easy to say yes under those conditions. I agreed because the deal was favorable.

Dr. Raymond appeared at El Quincho. He was with his teenage daughter.

"It’ll be a shame," he said, putting on gloves.

He pulled a scalpel from his pocket.

We looked at each other, Roberta, the collector, and I. We sped up our movements, and the bar owner set up two tables and invited me to lie down.

"Doesn’t it matter that people are eating?" I asked.

The owner of El Quincho smiled.

He was taking a commission for his kindness.

Lying down, I thought of betraying my parents, of the untimeliness of my decision.

Dr. Raymond asked if I was calm.

I made a gesture with my hands.

The doctor grabbed the scalpel.

"Close your eyes," he told me.

And I began to scream while the bar owner turned up the volume of the television. Boca Juniors was playing Rosario Central. My screams were drowned out by the crowd’s chants and the commentators.

The cuts were deep, I felt the scalpel touching the bone of my skull.

I cried.

I was a damned coward.

I couldn’t stand the pain.

And I stood up.

Half the skin of my face was hanging loose, the scalpel stuck in my right temple.

Everyone looked at me, terrified.

And breathing heavily, blood stained my shirt.

"Lie back down!" Roberta shouted at me.

And I took a few steps toward the door, without speaking or giving explanations.

It was fine, though it didn’t work out as I expected.