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Date Machine: I'm Too Sexy For Your Blog

Posted by amboabe

I try to not worry too much about my appearance, but it still winds up feeling like a trip to church or the office. There's a continuing knowledge that I'm being inspected by someone else, appraised on physical appearance, among other things. I always wind up being a more hygienic, self-censoring version of myself when I'm on a date. I wish I could say that I'm completely uninhibited when meeting new people, offering an open and free-spirited glimpse at my truest self, but I'm not. I edit myself, even when I'm consciously trying not to.



One of my worst relationship fears is becoming de-romanticized in the eyes of my partner. I fall hard for people. I swoon. My heart skips beats. I don't always understand what the women I'm with see when they're with me, but I've got a vague faith in the existence of some good qualities which, in the right light, can be alluring. I'm not completely sure how that comes about, or what exact behavior makes it most likely, but it happens.

I've been rebuffed for the way I describe people, mostly women, in my posts. I said one date had a "flat butt," another looked like "a teenage boy in drag." I described a sex fantasy with an older woman and her "speckled hand, with its knots of blue-green veins." I waxed lyrically about the bulbous calluses on the third toe of a certain special someone. Some called me pessimistic; others said I was being cruel. The owner of the allegedly flat butt told me that I was entirely inaccurate.

There's a tremendous pressure to be optimistic and complimentary in our every day candor. Is there an honest way to answer when someone asks how you're doing? Is everyone always doing "pretty good?" Are all the people you've ever been attracted to Grecian totems of beauty? Has nobody ever fallen in love with someone that had a gap tooth, halitosis, or knock-knees? We're bred to covet beauty, to possess it in a way that validates ourselves. We must all be fabulous people with alluring silhouettes and unblemished skin, and so too the company we keep.

In my worst fantasies, that is the world I fail in. It's where my charms are superficial and evaporate as soon as I'm caught picking my nose on the couch or rabidly forking pasta into my mouth with ugly smacking noises. I fear that place where soapy hair left in the shower drain is grounds for divorce, and morning breath a personal degradation.


Before I lost my virginity I remember talking with my friend J, who had just lost his. He told me about the startling phenomenon of female nipple hair. I was stunned, nothing in porn magazines or movies had prepared me to consider such a thing. I thought sex was all smoothness and candle-lit montage. I couldn't imagine a place for nipple hairs in all the velveteen pageantry of centerfold humping.

There's always a gap between the things we want to be true and the things that are. In dating, it's easy to fall back on insecurity and try to upsell yourself, to offer someone the showroom floor version of yourself. A wonderbra, an undersized t-shirt, a dimly-lit bar, all of it points towards the imagination, inviting the other person to invent their own fantasy of beauty and attraction. There's no room for love handles, cellulite, or back hair.

All the little imperfections, the strange sounds we make when we chew, the funny walk, the odd slouch, the widened ankle, the hairy armpit, the flat butt, the liver spot, the halitosis; it's all a part of who we are. It's all a part of the vessel that we have to share with another person, the body that can become an instrument of intimacy and sweaty, slurpy sex.

Over Thanksgiving, I described my body as an alphabet. That's all it is to me; neither positive or negative, beautiful or repulsive, until it's made that way through some animated expression. When I meet new people and try to figure out how our two bodies might relate to each other physically, all those details are opaque fragments, inexpressive and untranslatable. To me they aren't imperfection; they're building blocks.

Previous Posts:

Love Machine: Breaking Up Is Hard To Do, or Leaving Home

Date Machine: Super Macho Man Slumber Party

Sex Machine: Having Sex in Your Parents' House During the Holidays

Date Night: Trying to Behave on a Boring Coffee Date

Sex Machine: Sex with Older Women, or How I Would Make Love to Gloria Swanson

Love Machine: Using Your Words, or I Like Pap 

Date Machine: Drunk Emailing with J, or How To Fail at Seduction 

Sex Machine: Listening to the Neighbors Have Sex 

Date Night: In Which I Try To Believe In Aliens 

Date Machine: Rate My Pick-Up Lines Redux 

Love Machine: Loyal as a Dog 

Date Machine: Rate My Politics 

High School Machine: Ten-Year Reunion Fantasies

Date Machine: Setting Up Your Friends 

Sex Machine: Having Sex at Weddings Redux 

Love Machine: Making Love to ESPN 

Date Machine: 5 Things I'm Thankful For 

Sex Machine: Having Sex at Weddings 

Love Machine: What Work Is 

Sex Machine: Sleeping Naked 

Love Machine: Breaking Up in a Text Message

 


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Posted Jan 07 2009, 02:14 AM
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Comments

loobetchka said:

I just think you've read too much John Updike and Phillip Roth... the way you describe people's physical appearance is obviously ripped off from them...

January 7, 2009 11:36 AM

amboabe said:

I've never read Updike, and the only Roth I've ever read is the screenplay adaptation of The Human Stain way back when, but he didn't adapt it so I guess that's a no for him too. I do steal liberally, but keep fishing...

January 7, 2009 3:24 PM

adriftinbklyn said:

it's a question of emphasis, isn't it? yes, of course, a comprehensive and realistic view of someone includes their flaws as well as their assets, and in casual conversation we do tend to focus on the positives (she's the one with the gorgeous mane of honey blonde hair) as opposed to the negatives (she's the one with crooked teeth and pudgy hands.)

i just don't get the relish in describing the negatives. like there's courage or integrity in waxing lyrical over varicose veins and sour breath while glossing over luminous skin or sparkling eyes. it isn't any more true, to say he's got a weak chin or thinning hair, then it is to say he has sculptors hands and a disarming smile. choosing to lean into the less appealing aspects IS a choice, not an achievement. and one that seems - if not cruel or pessimistic - at least weirdly self-congratulatory.

January 7, 2009 6:29 PM

amboabe said:

adrift: But who determines the pejorative nature of all these descriptions? Why is it that thinning hair is necessarily a negative trait? Why can't it just be neutral, something that is? I don't see it as a matter of emphasis at all, it's a matter of needing to judge people based on descriptions, no? Where did we get these ideas that physical traits that are less than ideal are abjectly negative? It's more to do with our knee-jerk desire to always sit in judgement of people and things, to reach conclusions, to wrap things up in a dismissive little ball than pessimism or crulety. At least that's what it looks like to me...

January 7, 2009 9:35 PM

adriftinbklyn said:

you seem to be saying that you want to describe the world the way you see it, unburdened by the pressure to downplay some qualities and emphasize others simply because society insists on applying value judgments to those qualities.

but by the same argument, selfish, rude, dishonest or small minded are simply character traits. there are situations when those traits will prove beneficial, a context when you might value or appreciate them. nonetheless, they are generally regarded as unappealing, just like thinning hair and weak chins are generally regarded as unappealing. if you're opposed to anyone evaluating people based on descriptors then why provide descriptions? the only view we readers have of the characters described in your blog is through your lens. when you focus that lens on elements that (like it or not) are generally considered unattractive, it seems a natural conclusion that your objective is to paint the subject in an unflattering light.

January 8, 2009 1:07 AM

amboabe said:

Descriptors are not evidence. They are intended to relate an experience, not condemn it. Anyway, my paint is absolutely not objective. It's entirely subjective, but my subjectivity is not a condemnation, even if many readers want to assume I am condemning someone by describing them in ways that are not openly flattering or, dare I say it, obsequious. Just because we've all seen thinning hair doesn't mean we all agree that it is a negative trait.

January 10, 2009 10:13 PM

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