Eve vs Velcroed

I have gone through most of my life thinking I was beautiful.

This is due, in most part, to my mother, the only person I trusted entirely, telling me, repeatedly, since I was about 5 years old, that I was the most beautiful girl in the whole world. I believed her. Without debate, without question.

I also believed that old adage that, when I got to a datable age, I would “be beating them off with a stick,” that they would “be lined up at the door.” It was a few years after her death that I discovered that these were, in fact, common utterances—verbatim—to young girls by their mothers all over the maritime provinces and, I suspect, all over North America.

My body has always been beautiful, I know that—Mr BMI tells me I’m perfect, and I believe that. I BELIEVE THAT. But this question of facial beauty—well, that’s a bit trickier.

I stumbled upon this website [beautycheck], which documents a very interesting and one of the most famous studies in facial aesthetics. The following two pictures are computer composites demonstrating what are, possibly, the most possibly beautiful of human faces. For details on the project, go to the site. Very interesting. Anyway, here they are.





So I’ve been thinking a lot about beauty, and how I measure up, and how others perceive me. Regarding my physicality, I’ve been the subject of relentless pursuit, blatant rejection, and indifference. I have often asked my friends and family to tell me, as objectively as possible, how attractive I am. The responses have been overwhelmingly positive, but I know this is in part because a) my loved ones, understandably, may not want to hurt my feelings by telling me that I’m plain and/or ugly, and b) may find me more attractive than I am, strictly on a physical level, on account of my unbelievably infectious personality, wit, and charm. I mean, I can be quite fetching in person.

I could always, of course, post various pictures on my blog, but again: you, reader, are like a friend to me, and may therefore not want to hurt my feelings. Another possibility, of course, is that you, too, have become smitten with my literary personality, and therefore may subconciously find me more attractive than you would if you just, say, saw me walking down Main St with a neutral expression on my face.

So there was only one answer: hotornot.com. Below is the picture I submitted to the site. It's a graduation photo, from 18 months ago.


I was expecting something in the 8-9 range for the photo below this paragraph. I mean, I look pretty damn happy in this picture, I’m wearing make-up (which I usually don’t), my hair is fairly nice, and the photography was professionally done, with “beauty-enhancing” lighting, etc.

As of now, my score is 6.6, based on 425 votes, on a scale of 1-10 (not 0-10, as it should be).

Now, there are 4 major factors worth remembering:

1) I do not look this attractive, facially, usually.

2) My body is not in the picture, and my body is, in all honesty, about 5 lbs from perfection.

3) Girls who are scantily clad and in semi-sexually-suggestive poses tend to get higher ratings on hotornot.

4) Many people, including myself, do not always take a significant amount of time to consider each picture before voting. I, for example, have been super-guilty of repeatedly clicking “6”s just to get through pictures quicker. So there is a possibly high degree of randomness in many votes.

So how can we discover how attractive velcroed is?

Good question. And I have the answer.

I’m going to put up two new photos, one of the prototype perfectly beautiful female (let’s call her “Eve”), who is wearing no make-up, a neutral facial expression, and with her hair pulled back, with one of myself, following those same criteria. I will then take Eve’s score (which will be known as x) (which will probably be, like, 7 or 8, I suspect) and mark my new score (which will be known as y) out of whatever score Eve received, dividing y by x and multiplying by 10 to give me a tidy little number on a 0-10 scale (sidenote: whoever invented 1-10 scales is a moron).

I will keep you updated on how attractive I am, if you’d like.

P.S. Hilariously, the below (and, in my opinion, completely gorgeous) photo of Monique was rejected by the hotornot moderators, on account of her looking “under 18.” She’s turning 24 soon.

funeral (nostalgia)

I spy on my friends, sometimes. They say things they don’t necessarily want me to hear—usually, they think I’m not listening, even though the room we’re in is so dark, anybody could be there, really. Mind you, it’s important to keep in mind that these aren’t secrets I’m overhearing, just tidbits they don’t know I know about. So when Tiffany expresses extreme enthusiasm at going to see Silversun Pickups, I notice, even though she has no idea I was even there when she was talking about it. Then, when Tara, or Monique, or someone, mentions that they heard this really awesome song by Silver-something, I remember Tiffany, and the name of the band. I say “Silversun Pickups?” and Tara/Monique says “Maybe” and that’s pretty much the end of it.

So I just watched the “lazy eye” video—by Silversun Pickups—and feel vague indigestion, and very mild anger. Not disappointment, of course—it takes so much to get me disappointed these days—but certainly unimpressed. The minor thing was that I couldn’t figure out whether the main character is male or female, which is always disconcerting if not a deal-breaker.

The major thing was that there was no real delivery—the song was good, sure, but it doesn’t go anywhere, it doesn’t do anything. A truly fantastic song both goes and does. It does not sit on the couch, night after night. It does not refuse to make eye contact. It doesn’t have to skydive, of course, or climb mountains, or run marathons, but it must have a proper climax, replete with sweat and if not at least one audible yelp of pleasure, tears. ‘Lazy eye’ does an almost-climax, but it is a tease that leaves you hungry.

When I hear of a new “indie rock” band from North America, something like hope always sparks in me. I’m looking for the Next Best Thing which is, of course, the next Arcade Fire. But even the Arcade Fire has ceased to be the Arcade Fire. ‘Neon Bible’ is a wonderful and oft-times beautiful album with very good lyrics and a couple of moments of poignancy. It is arguably the best album to be released this year thus far. That being said, ‘Neon Bible’ ain’t no ‘Funeral.’ ‘Funeral’ was the musical equivalent to my first love. I’d thought I’d been there many times—first when I was five, then once in junior high, several times in high school, a couple of times in university, but one night two years after I graduated from degree #1 I met this guy who blew my mind, and oh, that’s what everyone’s talking about.

That guy was Funeral. And there has been no second Funeral, no one even close.I do not say this pretentiously, or facetiously. It is a truth ununiversally acknowledged (but a truth nonetheless) that Funeral was the penultimate accomplishment in modern music. And when I hear Tiffany, in that dark room, talk about a man I’ve never met before, my ears perk up though I know not to get my hopes up. I know not to expect delivery on unspoken promises, but still I listen. Even if it’s just out of habit, so be it. I say there’ll never be another first love, another funeral. But what I want most is to be proven wrong.

oh, mo

While watching Bobby, quite possibly the most boring. movie. ever. Which is shocking given that it stars Shia TheBeef.

VELCROED: You know, when you think about the fact that, like, 45,000 US casualties died during ‘Nam, the whole Iraq thing isn’t soooooo bad.

MONIQUE: I guess. Why are we even there?

VELCROED: Uh... we aren’t.

MONIQUE: Oh. We’re somewhere though, right? Where are we then? Iran?

Yes, folks, that’s my highly educated runner-up best friend, Mo-neek. She’s actually pretty smart.

***

We saw 28 Weeks Later, which I wanted to walk out of, but no, I’m strong, I can handle anything. For some comic relief I moved all of Mo's and my stuff five rows back and on the other side of the theatre when she went to the bathroom. Always a hilarious trick. Anyway, the movie was pretty good, but an entirely different movie than 28 Days Later, the latter being an absolutely fascinating, yet terribly dark view on human nature etc., starring the most beautiful man Ireland has ever squeezed out. I watched it alone last night, in a foreign house—I was cat-sitting for some friends this week-end—and managed to not be scared thanks to the FREAKING ADORABLE three 2-week old kittens crawling all over me. It’s like I’m catnip or something. Cats love me. Yet another clue as to me being destined to become a Crazy Cat Lady. Which kind of sucks. ‘Cause, you know, litter boxes stink.

types

The presence of a man’s hands on your body, when you’re paying him, doesn’t necessarily mean anything. No matter how young and attractive you are, and no matter how young and attractive he is, it is still a business transaction. I should have been somewhat aroused by the experience, but I wasn’t. Is it the medication? Or the fact that the encounter was costing me $65 and therefore could not be sexual lest my subconscious mind were to feel like a john? Did he get an erection, or part of one, seeing me, touching me, like that?

His name was Liam, and he was incredible. He is, according to Marie, “really hot”; that is not how I would describe him when I first saw him. Not my type, I thought.

He talks all through the massage; our conversation was almost entirely natural. We touched on matters that could have been risqué: racism, fate, and foreign policy, but we talked only in the way people talk when they’re not interested in having a serious conversation. They could have a serious conversation, if one party wasn’t naked and the other wasn’t getting paid to touch her, but instead they simply imply intelligence and wisdom.

I suspect he saw my breasts, some pubic hair, and two stray hairs on my leg I somehow missed in my last shave. I hope his sight of the first redeems the possibly disgust he may have felt upon seeing the latter two, but I don’t know, and don’t really care.

As I’m cooking some spaghettini alfredo for dinner, it occurs to me that Liam is the Liam in the pictures Marie sent me, in a joking attempt to show me all the hot friends her "boyfriend" could set me up with at some point in the future.

See, this began about one year ago. Marie and I, acquaintances, officially became friends about a year ago. At this time, Marie also signed up for a fake identity on a local free internet dating site, and became acquainted with several men. It was all kind of a joke thing on her end, but there was one guy she really had a thing for, after a while, called Nick. Nick and Marie started e-mailing constantly, and chatting, though Marie was never forthright with him regarding her name, age, or physical appearance. As in, she lied about these things to him.

Scared to confess that their cyber relationship was predicated on multiple lies, Marie was certain she would never meet Nick.

Then she goes to Sweden, for school, in January. She comes clean with Nick about her identity, and sends him pictures etc. He claims to not care, given that he is so in love with “the real her.” Nick is a late-20s soon-to-be-divorced man with an 8-year-old daughter. Marie believes that she and Nick are in love.

Things are pretty serious between them now, as far as cyber relations go. They chat online for an average of six hours a day, and usually talk an hour or so by phone daily as well. They have cyber and phone sex regularly. I’m extremely worried for Marie. She’s, for all intents and purposes, my best friend. She’s never been in a serious relationship before and, though Nick is fairly physically attractive, he’s not very well-off, may or may not be even remotely intelligent, and seems to have poor judgment in the ladies department, given the fact that he’d been married for, like, 6 months when they decided to get a divorce. This implies that he either did not know himself, or the woman he was marrying, or both, before entering marriage. Anyway. You don’t want to hear my antiquated views on marriage, but this whole divorce/8-yr-old thing rubs me the wrong way.

So Nick’s best friend is Liam, who had his unbelievably strong hands all over me (except, regrettably, my feet. Oh well). When I relay the experience to Marie, she quickly informs me that not only is Liam not-single, but he’s a “dog.” Apparently he makes regular trips out of province to get laid by women who would have no possible connexion to his girlfriend. Yeah.

Anyway, this is 3rd-hand information (Liam tells Nick, who tells Marie, who tells me) so I’m not putting too much stock in it but either way, you know, he’s not really my type anyway.

My type is Jean, a teacher at the school I teach at who is unbearably gorgeous and funny and just-a-bit-not-too-much-just-enough dark (personality-wise, that is). He has a thick French accent—normally I dislike all accents, but on him it sounds terribly awesome—and a girl-friend he’s been dating for three years.

So this is a roundabout way of saying I have no news and no prospects. But Michael Ondaatje has a new novel out, and when I was reading it, I forgot it was Michael Ondaatje and thought I was reading Alice Munro, which was extremely pleasant. Life’s not so awful after all.

sexuality (one)

I’m struggling with a couple of things. Mainly because I spent the last little while reading and reflecting on certain things in the new testament. Like, depending on the translation you’re using, it may be imperative to a) not have sex before marriage or b) not engage in sexual immorality. But what is sexual immorality?,

Most religious types, whether Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, or even Buddhist (not so sure about Jewish people, or Hindus, but regardless...) would claim that any sex before marriage is “immoral.” But what exactly does that mean? Coitus? Oral sex? Anything involving an orgasm? What about masturbation? The hard-liners, I suppose, would argue that any conscious activity resulting in orgasm prior to marriage is, in a word, sinful, though finding the textual back-up for that (in the New Testament, that is) is a lot more difficult than you may imagine.

So I’m kind of struggling with that, I guess. I feel nothing but repulsion when friends and acquaintances tell me about their casual sex encounters. And I feel guilty over some of my own experiences, as though they’ve tarnished me in some way, even though I’ve always felt what I would describe as love with the men I’ve been with. I can’t figure out if those guilt feelings are legitimate, though.

Other times I feel that my sexuality is something that should only be shared with my future husband, even though I suspect I will never marry.

If one wants to take the New Testament literally, which I am inclined to do, then one cannot be a feminist. A woman, upon marrying, is to become almost completely subservient to her husband; he is to be her master, though he is also obligated to love and take care of her. I spent a long time being a die hard feminist, but now... something has changed in me. I am ashamed to admit to any of my friends that I do secretly long for said subservience, though at the same time, in my own personal history, I have always sought after power in my romantic relationships; I have always wanted some degree of control. When we will see each other. When we’ll be physical. What restaurants we’ll eat at. Etc. But deep down, I think I’ve always wanted that power usurped from me. I mean, I do admit these things, in part, to my friends, but telling them the whole truth—that I would not only be willing to but want to, eventually, subjugate myself, to have another as master—is something I cannot say out loud in any medium but this.

line expansion

So Monique and I have plans to go to O’Leary’s for open mic night. We’re trying to get out more. She asks her friends Nicole to come (who can’t), and a man she just recently met, Mike. I kind of object to Mike coming, given that he’s my 2nd-last ex’s best friend (we never met; Nick and I didn’t date for that long). “Why Mike?” I ask.

“I thought we should expand our circle of friends,” she replies.

“You mean our circle of two?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s kind of more like a line then, eh? You’re expanding the line?”

Anyway, we have some Cabernet Sauvignon during Lost pre-O’Leary’s [CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT JOHN LOCKE’S DAD IS THE ORIGINAL SAWYER OMG OMG!] then head out. The cab driver recognises me from a previous trip, which surprises me. I ask him why he remembers me—is it because I was so beautiful, or because I was so charming? “It’s because your name is ‘Mercedes’” he replies. Mercedes Black is the name I give strangers when I don’t want them to know my real name. Anyway, Monique and I are a little drunk, so apparently this gives the cabbie license to try to joke around with us. This ends in disaster when, upon passing two pedestrians who appear to be of Middle Eastern descent, he says “Hey, look—it’s the Taliban!” This is where the fun ends. My sense of social outrage becomes exponentially defined when I’ve had a couple of glasses of wine, and I tell him in no uncertain terms how ignorant his comment is, and point out that I’m 1/4 Arab (total BS, of course) and therefore take special offense.

Monique tips the bastard.

The rest of the evening goes pretty well. I run into a few old friends at the bar. One of them, Ben, was on the street up until very recently; he was on crack, or heroine, or both. Having cleaned up his act, Ben’s looking pretty hot, which Monique quickly picks up on, trying to get me to work some magic between the two of them. I try to dissuade her as, you know, this guy was a crack-head the last time I saw him. “But I’m desperate,” Monique shamelessly admits.

I know, Monique. I know.

Mike and his 19-year old room-mate arrive. Mike’s pretty cool, especially for a banker.
Turns out he’s not so close with Nick after all; Nick was a slob, and got on Mike’s nerves in other ways he doesn’t specify outright. He is subtly trying to find out why I broke up with him. The real answer is, of course, that Nick simply wasn’t the one. This was obvious in the most important way (intuition), and smaller ways: he wasn’t overly intelligent, I wasn’t really attracted to him, he had this habit of thinking he understood what I was saying when he never really did—you know how it goes. Plus, he “chair’d”—Nair’d his chest, that is. There’s nothing less sexy than chest stubble.

Then Evan, my most recent ex, shows up. This encounter would have been exceedingly awkward had I not been pretty much toasted. Our conversation, regrettably, is quite long. There’s only so much catching-up you can comfortably do with someone you really have no desire to ever see again. When I escape to go talk to this guy in a super-hot Astroboy t-shirt, Evan tries to start a conversation with Monique (who’s a geologist, by the way). His opener is... are you ready for it?... “So...what’s your favourite element?”

Yeah. And I had a pregnancy scare with this guy.

While Evan’s being his smooth self with Mo, I’m harrassing a complete stranger. This is the (anti-)climax of the evening. Nights on the town that involve six or more drinks always end the same way: me completely mortifying myself in front of a male stranger. The last time, it was a very attractive German man named ‘Jonas.’ I asked him, pretty much flat-out, to make out with me. It was awful. I vowed never to pose that question to a man I’d just met again. No exceptions.

Anyway, I’m complimenting Astroboy on his super-fine t-shirt, elaborating on how Astroboy was my first love (my second love, Pee-wee Herman, ended up being far more romantically significant, but I find that people get very squeamish when I bring up my age six attraction to Pee-wee, so I’ve stopped talking about that). I want his t-shirt, and ask him to sell it to me. His price is $100, which is out of the question. After a few more charming moments, I start begging him to let me just try on the shirt. For some reason, he’s not budging. I then resort to the always-a-winner “I deserve that shirt more than you and therefore you should give it to me” tactic. I start quizzing him on his Astroboy knowledge, and then suggest a “Knowledge-Off,” in which he, surprisingly, refuses to participate.

“Okay, just tell me one thing about Astroboy, then. Just one thing!” I challenge him.

“He has fire that comes out of his feet,” he offers.

This is more infuriating than even that dumb-ass Taliban comment. “The fire doesn’t comes out of his feet! It comes out of his rocket-boots, you asshole!” I yell at him.

AND SCENE!

water

I can’t decide whether everything is perfect or completely empty. From a zen perspective, everything’s going pretty swimmingly, except for the messy apartment—or, to be specific, the dishes I just can’t get around to doing, and the clothes in my room I really can’t find time to put away. I mean, I’ll do all those things tomorrow. I’m a busy girl.

So I have a conversation with Brad that is either awkward or good. I suspect I like him, in the way you like someone you’ve spoken a full 2 conversations with, both of which were short but polite and containing above-average amounts of possibly meaningful, soulful-style eye contact. I appear absolutely smooth and cool until I start speaking; then it becomes obvious that I don’t really know what to say most of the time, even if my jackets are always gorgeous and my posture is pretty hot. Unfortunately, it’s the words that spew from my mouth that are the problem—actually, the problem is not the words they are so much as the words they’re not. It’s the position of weakness from which they originate.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t like Brad.

It’s that whole zen/empty thing. I’m not sure what to blame: my medication, my psychology, the fact that I haven’t been reading much lately, the fact that my best friend is currently on another continent and let me down in 2 ways so symbolic, the time of year, God giving me a break from decades of ridiculous emotional drama... I can’t tell anymore.

This is good, right? This time last year I was less than a fortnight away from the worst emotional experience in my life. I would become so gloriously happy so easily, yet so disastrously depressed as well. I was not “bipolar.” Just ... easily polarised. I fell in love easily and recklessly. I wanted desperately. I suffered from insomnia some weeks, extreme lethargy marked by beautiful 12-hour sleep-sessions the next. I was not happy, but I felt. There was no doubt I was alive.

And now. I know I’m happy—I tell myself I’m happy. I seem happy. I’m okay with dancing in public now. I still love a few things with certifiable passion: ‘Lost’, running, Jesus, vodka/cranberry combos, sleeping in. Et cetera.

I haven’t cried in months, unless you count a couple of tears on account of Lorelei singing that damn song to Luke tonight—I hope you saw that, ‘cause it was possibly the most beautiful moment in Gilmore Girls history (and trust me, I’ve seen every. single. episode. Like, thrice). So it’s a zen trade-off, right? This is healthy, this stillness inside, this calm.

I used to be an ocean, see: deep, polluted, pulled by forces utterly beyond my control. Now I am a lake. Freshwater. Clear. Still. This is better. This has to be better. It’s the only water I have.