RRJ
03-26-2005, 11:17 PM
Every day from my window, I watch her as she passes by.
I say to myself, "You’re such a lucky guy."
To have a girl like her, is truly a dream come true,
Out of all the fellas in the world, she belongs to me,
But it was just my imagination, runnin’ away from me.
—The Temptations, "Just my Imagination."
I have this fantasy.
There’s this woman, you see. Every day from my window, I watch her as she passes by on her way to work.
She’s young and she’s got long blonde hair. But the hair is lank and hangs down her face like overcooked vermicelli. Her skin is the color of a boiled pork chop and she has a nose that’s far better suited for the bust of a Roman soldier or politician. The size of her nose is cruelly enhanced by the complete lack of a chin. When she turns my way, her open mouth and dull expression remind me of the pictures I’ve seen in medical textbooks of kids who have adenoids.
Unfortunately, her body isn’t much better. Saying her smallish breasts were like pancakes would be flattery; these breasts–from what I can see when she wears a T-shirt—are like undercooked eggs with runny-yolked nipples. There are a couple of layers of fat around her waist and her bottom looks like a pile of lumpy dough, the by-product no doubt of years of sitting by a phone that sadly does not ring. Despite her young age, her stooped posture and rounded shoulders portend an oncoming dowager’s hump.
She works at the library (of course!) and I’ve heard she has a Master’s degree in linguistics. I see her around town occasionally in different stores and it always pains me that she finds it hard to make eye contact with anyone. She seems...sweet.
It doesn’t take a great leap of imagination to conclude that this girl doesn’t lead a very romantic life, at least outside her bookish fantasies. I doubt that she’s ever been fucked with abandon, or experienced much physical joy of any kind. I doubt that she ever takes her clothes off in front of a mirror, and the thought of taking them off in front of a man...in broad daylight...is probably enough to cause a rush of anxiety.
The thing is, I’m completely mesmerized by her extreme homeliness. Every time I see her, I can’t take my eyes off her.
So here’s my fantasy: I arrange for her to be contacted by a lawyer–probably a female lawyer to possibly make the whole thing less embarrassing. The lawyer tells her, oh, I don’t know, that a previously unknown relative or something, has passed away and left her 20,000 dollars. There is no catch, save one: she must use the money to improve her appearance through plastic surgery, hiring a top-notch personal trainer, using supplements and proper nutrition and getting a cosmetic makeover.
It’s my 20,000 dollars of course, but by arrangement, she’ll never know who it was who "left" her the money.
As the fantasy plays out, I look out the window months later to see a beautiful, confident, radiant girl walking to work, a girl who is perhaps different from a lot of beautiful girls because she’s got a kind soul, one that was forged in loneliness and depression and that looks kindly on others that aren’t so beautiful.
Yep, I was feeling pretty good about myself for having such a seemingly benevolent fantasy. I mean, hell, my fantasy didn’t even involve enjoying the fruits of my investment, if you catch my drift. However, pride in being kind-hearted soon turned into befuddlement when I revealed this fantasy to a couple of female acquaintances. By their reaction you’d think I’d proposed sodomizing the homely girl at gunpoint. They thought I was a monster.
The notion that beauty, or at least middle-of-the-road attractiveness, would somehow be related to a person’s happiness was anathema to them. They started laying the whole, "people should be judged by their inner beauty" thing on me in scolding tones. They said that a person’s looks shouldn’t matter. And then they said that people only judge one another on their heart and their abilities.
I was flummoxed, flabbergasted, and then flatulent, so distressed was I at their reaction. Never mind that one of these women made her living by selling cosmetics. Can you say irony?
I told them that they were deluded. I said, yeah, yeah, we should all judge people on their inner beauty and their accomplishments, but unfortunately the heart, and more importantly, the loins, ain’t such logical animals. The heart knows what it wants and so does the heart-on. They’re the ones living in the real fantasy world while I’m seeing the world the way it is.
Ugly women, in many ways, are the true third-class citizens of the world. The discrimination isn’t usually overt, but they’re generally passed over for the best jobs; generally don’t rise to the top of their profession unless they’re attractive (think especially of actresses and singers); and in general are merely props in what constitutes the real world. The ugly or homely women are everywhere, but they’re largely silent and act as spectators while the "beautiful" people are enjoying life.
As humans, we’re hard-wired for beauty. We instinctively know it when we see it. While it’s said that it’s in the eye of the beholder, 99% of the world usually agrees with any given beholder. Beauty, as explained by Italian renaissance architect Leon Battista Alberti, is "the adjustment of all parts proportionately so that one cannot add or subtract or change without impairing the harmony of the whole." It applies to buildings, it applies to art, and it sure as hell applies to the human form.
While there’s some room for variations in opinion, the vast majority of people agree that Halle Berry’s parts cannot be added to or subtracted to without impairing her glorious harmony. She is a babe whether she’s in Hollywood, Kabul or Shanghai.
Beauty is what we humans sing about, write about and dream about. Beauty is all, like a horse in a stall. Okay, so I missed the boat as a poet, but you get the idea. Denying that beauty is important in today’s world is denial of the worst and most insipid kind.
Do I refute the idea that one can love one merely for his or her soul? Of course not. But chances are, most of us aren’t going to get within ten yards of getting hooked by that soul unless that soul lures us there with a little flash, a little glitter and an alluring shimmy. In other words, humans often don’t get to know the inner person without being first attracted by the outer person.
Maybe as someone who lifts weights at least partly for esthetic purposes, I feel more strongly about this subject than the citizenry at large. I tend to think that all "bodybuilders" are really artists at heart and I’m no exception. Physical beauty has a big impact on me. Gandhi said there are "some men so hungry that the only place they see God is in a loaf of bread." Well, no disrespect to Gandhi or God, but by the same token, there are some men so entranced by beauty that they only see God in the face of a beautiful woman. Count me among them.
That’s not to say inner beauty isn’t important to me; it is. In fact, I can think of more than a few situations when a woman’s inner ugliness has made me immune to her beauty. But a combination of outer and inner beauty is the Holy Grail. It’s what we all seek.
Why I’ve fixated on this girl, I can’t explain. It’s unrealistic and probably over-sentimental to focus on one homely girl’s perceived problems. In a way, I’m like those muttonheads in Congress who are wringing their hankies over the Terry Schiavo case; men who, while fighting to save her life, are on the other hand voting for legislation that will ironically take away benefits from many patients who are in the same comatose boat as Schiavo.
I suppose it’s human nature to become personally and sometimes emotionally involved with those animals or people you come into direct contact with. That’s why humans will go to extraordinary lengths and expense to save a whale trapped in a net that was shown on the 5 o’clock news, when there are probably scores of whales being killed by hunters every day.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe my homely fantasy girl is happy because she’s deeply spiritual. Still, I find it hard to imagine that the occasional wink from a stranger wouldn’t make her life a whole lot more pleasurable and that she should undertake any means possible to incite that occasional wink.
I say to myself, "You’re such a lucky guy."
To have a girl like her, is truly a dream come true,
Out of all the fellas in the world, she belongs to me,
But it was just my imagination, runnin’ away from me.
—The Temptations, "Just my Imagination."
I have this fantasy.
There’s this woman, you see. Every day from my window, I watch her as she passes by on her way to work.
She’s young and she’s got long blonde hair. But the hair is lank and hangs down her face like overcooked vermicelli. Her skin is the color of a boiled pork chop and she has a nose that’s far better suited for the bust of a Roman soldier or politician. The size of her nose is cruelly enhanced by the complete lack of a chin. When she turns my way, her open mouth and dull expression remind me of the pictures I’ve seen in medical textbooks of kids who have adenoids.
Unfortunately, her body isn’t much better. Saying her smallish breasts were like pancakes would be flattery; these breasts–from what I can see when she wears a T-shirt—are like undercooked eggs with runny-yolked nipples. There are a couple of layers of fat around her waist and her bottom looks like a pile of lumpy dough, the by-product no doubt of years of sitting by a phone that sadly does not ring. Despite her young age, her stooped posture and rounded shoulders portend an oncoming dowager’s hump.
She works at the library (of course!) and I’ve heard she has a Master’s degree in linguistics. I see her around town occasionally in different stores and it always pains me that she finds it hard to make eye contact with anyone. She seems...sweet.
It doesn’t take a great leap of imagination to conclude that this girl doesn’t lead a very romantic life, at least outside her bookish fantasies. I doubt that she’s ever been fucked with abandon, or experienced much physical joy of any kind. I doubt that she ever takes her clothes off in front of a mirror, and the thought of taking them off in front of a man...in broad daylight...is probably enough to cause a rush of anxiety.
The thing is, I’m completely mesmerized by her extreme homeliness. Every time I see her, I can’t take my eyes off her.
So here’s my fantasy: I arrange for her to be contacted by a lawyer–probably a female lawyer to possibly make the whole thing less embarrassing. The lawyer tells her, oh, I don’t know, that a previously unknown relative or something, has passed away and left her 20,000 dollars. There is no catch, save one: she must use the money to improve her appearance through plastic surgery, hiring a top-notch personal trainer, using supplements and proper nutrition and getting a cosmetic makeover.
It’s my 20,000 dollars of course, but by arrangement, she’ll never know who it was who "left" her the money.
As the fantasy plays out, I look out the window months later to see a beautiful, confident, radiant girl walking to work, a girl who is perhaps different from a lot of beautiful girls because she’s got a kind soul, one that was forged in loneliness and depression and that looks kindly on others that aren’t so beautiful.
Yep, I was feeling pretty good about myself for having such a seemingly benevolent fantasy. I mean, hell, my fantasy didn’t even involve enjoying the fruits of my investment, if you catch my drift. However, pride in being kind-hearted soon turned into befuddlement when I revealed this fantasy to a couple of female acquaintances. By their reaction you’d think I’d proposed sodomizing the homely girl at gunpoint. They thought I was a monster.
The notion that beauty, or at least middle-of-the-road attractiveness, would somehow be related to a person’s happiness was anathema to them. They started laying the whole, "people should be judged by their inner beauty" thing on me in scolding tones. They said that a person’s looks shouldn’t matter. And then they said that people only judge one another on their heart and their abilities.
I was flummoxed, flabbergasted, and then flatulent, so distressed was I at their reaction. Never mind that one of these women made her living by selling cosmetics. Can you say irony?
I told them that they were deluded. I said, yeah, yeah, we should all judge people on their inner beauty and their accomplishments, but unfortunately the heart, and more importantly, the loins, ain’t such logical animals. The heart knows what it wants and so does the heart-on. They’re the ones living in the real fantasy world while I’m seeing the world the way it is.
Ugly women, in many ways, are the true third-class citizens of the world. The discrimination isn’t usually overt, but they’re generally passed over for the best jobs; generally don’t rise to the top of their profession unless they’re attractive (think especially of actresses and singers); and in general are merely props in what constitutes the real world. The ugly or homely women are everywhere, but they’re largely silent and act as spectators while the "beautiful" people are enjoying life.
As humans, we’re hard-wired for beauty. We instinctively know it when we see it. While it’s said that it’s in the eye of the beholder, 99% of the world usually agrees with any given beholder. Beauty, as explained by Italian renaissance architect Leon Battista Alberti, is "the adjustment of all parts proportionately so that one cannot add or subtract or change without impairing the harmony of the whole." It applies to buildings, it applies to art, and it sure as hell applies to the human form.
While there’s some room for variations in opinion, the vast majority of people agree that Halle Berry’s parts cannot be added to or subtracted to without impairing her glorious harmony. She is a babe whether she’s in Hollywood, Kabul or Shanghai.
Beauty is what we humans sing about, write about and dream about. Beauty is all, like a horse in a stall. Okay, so I missed the boat as a poet, but you get the idea. Denying that beauty is important in today’s world is denial of the worst and most insipid kind.
Do I refute the idea that one can love one merely for his or her soul? Of course not. But chances are, most of us aren’t going to get within ten yards of getting hooked by that soul unless that soul lures us there with a little flash, a little glitter and an alluring shimmy. In other words, humans often don’t get to know the inner person without being first attracted by the outer person.
Maybe as someone who lifts weights at least partly for esthetic purposes, I feel more strongly about this subject than the citizenry at large. I tend to think that all "bodybuilders" are really artists at heart and I’m no exception. Physical beauty has a big impact on me. Gandhi said there are "some men so hungry that the only place they see God is in a loaf of bread." Well, no disrespect to Gandhi or God, but by the same token, there are some men so entranced by beauty that they only see God in the face of a beautiful woman. Count me among them.
That’s not to say inner beauty isn’t important to me; it is. In fact, I can think of more than a few situations when a woman’s inner ugliness has made me immune to her beauty. But a combination of outer and inner beauty is the Holy Grail. It’s what we all seek.
Why I’ve fixated on this girl, I can’t explain. It’s unrealistic and probably over-sentimental to focus on one homely girl’s perceived problems. In a way, I’m like those muttonheads in Congress who are wringing their hankies over the Terry Schiavo case; men who, while fighting to save her life, are on the other hand voting for legislation that will ironically take away benefits from many patients who are in the same comatose boat as Schiavo.
I suppose it’s human nature to become personally and sometimes emotionally involved with those animals or people you come into direct contact with. That’s why humans will go to extraordinary lengths and expense to save a whale trapped in a net that was shown on the 5 o’clock news, when there are probably scores of whales being killed by hunters every day.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe my homely fantasy girl is happy because she’s deeply spiritual. Still, I find it hard to imagine that the occasional wink from a stranger wouldn’t make her life a whole lot more pleasurable and that she should undertake any means possible to incite that occasional wink.