Steve Braunias: On the nature of people with extreme appearances

We all know people who make a lasting impression due to their extreme appearance. Photo / Getty Images

The Wolfman! I saw a photo of an Auckland surgeon the other day, a practitioner of upper gastro-intestinal and bariatric surgery, and there was something about him which held my attention. He had an angry kind of face. His eyes looked as though they had seen too many horrors to mention, and that he could snap at any moment. But surgeons commonly look traumatised; they work in the office of the human body, their faces pressed close to noxious gasses all day long. There was something else about the bariatric quack that made me stare hard.

The Wolfman! The surgeon had a monobrow. It marched from eye to eye without pause. His haircut was shaggy, dark, wild. As for his beard, he had grown it to such an enormous depth that it looked like it might function as a kitchen drawer – he could reach in, and take out knives, forks, spoons, and could also, upon request, fossick about within to find and then pass the salt. Even so, he looked as bald and smooth as an egg next to the character who came to mind.

The Wolfman! The surgeon reminded me of someone I hadn’t thought of for a long time. I hadn’t seen him for a long time, either; if I had run into him even just once over the years, I would surely have remembered. We all know people who make a lasting impression due to their extreme appearance. They become mythic characters, almost famous. Every city in New Zealand has a number of people who fit that description. Dunedin has the most. It has someone like that in every street. Every town in New Zealand has one resident who fits that description. Many pack up and head for Dunedin.

The Wolfman! Of course the streets of Auckland are full of mythic characters. I wrote a terribly sad story last year about a man whose life had taken a bad turn and there was no turning back. His sister said to me, “There was a chap I often saw around town, a short guy, with long, long dreadlocks, a homeless guy, and I often thought my brother would become like that.” Many Aucklanders will know of the homeless man she means. The dreadlocks are a giveaway.

The Wolfman! Owen Marshall wrote a classic short story of those with extreme appearances in New Zealand. The Fat Boy (1984) is set in some cruel little average town with a railway bridge and an old gasworks; “Some said his socks had the blue diamonds of Marsden High.” The townsfolk hate him. They blame him for their troubles. “Everyone knew the fat boy must be made to pay for what he had done.” He has done nothing. His crime is to look different. They crucify him in the end.

The Wolfman! It was the name everyone gave to a guy who everyone knew or certainly knew of when I was in my 20s. He was all hair. His clothes looked like they were made of hair, too, such was the overpowering impression of – hair, hair there and everywhere. Hair is always in cahoots with extreme appearances. The little homeless man of Auckland has identifying dreadlocks and Owen Marshall’s fat boy, too, is known for his hair: “The fat boy’s hair was amazingly fair and straight; it shone with nourishment; it was straight and oddly medieval.”

The Wolfman! He was at all the parties, in all the bars and nightclubs. He stood out, but he was never on the margins; he was right in the middle of a vast and exciting social scene. He was a sweet guy. He had a shyness about him but he had a beautiful smile, and he liked to have fun. I don’t even really associate him with hair; when I think about him, I think about his gentle nature. The thing about people with extreme appearances is that it’s a nonsense to think all of them are in some way damaged, or lost, or cast out. Everyone loved The Wolfman.