I was on the L, reading a book, when someone said, “Sir?” I looked up to see the most terribly disfigured person imaginable. He took my breath away, a black man who’d been horribly burned. His head looked like a candle in the shape of a head, the skin slick and dripping down like wax. He was missing both his hands, and there was a can attached to his bandaged stumps. Taped to it was a sign reading NEED MONEY FOR OPERATION. Man, it scared the life out of me.
