By Anthony Paull
Screw me once, shame on you. Screw me twice, shame on me. Screw me three times, we're dating! Yes, isn't it a wonder how fast we slip into relationships? Sure, we take our sweet-ass time in so many other aspects of our convoluted lives – forever pondering the purchase of a phone, car, or house. But when it comes to acquiring a partner, a life commitment, why do we so fall so fast for a beautiful face when we know the ugly truth: relationships are never perfect, and eventually, loved ones are destined to reveal a flaw, imaginary or not.
"But everything looked perfect on paper!" Drew drunkenly slurs, guzzling his third beer of the evening. Home from college for the holidays, he has his fancy, black Prada scarf coiling his neck like an anaconda – a gift from his rich, sugar-daddy boyfriend. "Well, perfect until I saw his pee-pee. For the love of God, it's so gross!"
Yes, meet Drew. He's um, well, special. Yes, since he was a wee, little bitch, he's earnestly portrayed the princess role, disturbed by even the slightest bit of an imperfection in each of his string of boyfriends. The problem is he finds the most trivial things to pick apart. For example, take his last boyfriend. Drew ended their relationship because of the poor chap's table manners. "He brought his face to his spoon instead of his spoon to his face," Drew attests. "You should see how he eats soup, with his nose to the bowl. How could I live with that?"
"But you can't keep sabotaging your relationships over stupid shit," I argue, as we depart from the pub, in route to the mall for some holiday shopping.
Fanning his face with his scarf, Drew silences me with a slap on the arm as we greet mid-day traffic. Gridlocked in between snowbirds and a semi-truck, he tells me, with a slight whimper, that his boyfriend's penis looks like a bonsai tree. "You don't understand. It's like, all crooked, and the hair is bushy, like in clumps. And veins everywhere. Really hard veins. Like his shaft is made of bark."
"How awful," I callously reply, with an eye-roll. "How ever will you make it work?"
"Not funny," he cries. Feverishly fanning his face, his baby-powder scented perfume filters throughout the car. "You need to help me. What should I do?"
"Turn out the lights and squeal when you feel it."
"That's not helping," he says, far from amused. Meanwhile, text upon text, his iPhone is lighting up with "I love you" from his boyfriend. "It's serious. We're not even having sex anymore. Well, at least, not naked."
Afraid to inquire about what that means, I remain quiet as Drew comes up with a bright idea as we head into the mall, surrounded by a sea of frantic holiday shoppers. "I got it!" he announces. "What do gays do best when presented with a problem?" Bored, I stall with a reply. "Decorate it!" he answers. "You know, make it pretty. That's how we raise the market value of neighborhoods. We buy a horrid house, hollow it, honor it with enhancements and reap the rewards."
"I'm not following," I admit.
"Well, maybe I can…I don't know…manicure it," he says, heading into Bath and Body Works, where he finds a bottle of mint exfoliating cleanser, moments after purchasing a grooming kit at JC Penney. Texting his boyfriend to check on his cats back home, he informs me, "I'll just, you know, prune his pubes with scissors and soften his pee-pee veins with this cream."
"WHAT?! Who wants a soft dick?"
"Well…," he begins.
"You're being stupid. This is fucking stupid!" I state, losing patience.
"Stupid enough to be in your column?" he bites.
"Ugh! Don't you get it?" I respond. "Everything in life can't be perfect. Life IS ugly!"
There, frozen in place, he torches me with his baby-blue eyes, deflated by a hit of reality. So to ease the pain, I remind him of beautiful things – like the gifted scarf around his neck and the "I love you" texts from a doting boyfriend who cares for his cats. And in my boggled mind I wonder if this is where the conveniences of modern time have led us. Are we so cushioned by our pretty houses – the labels on our clothes and our designer Starbucks coffee mugs – that we can't be bothered by the shadow of something less than ideal? So your boyfriend has an "ugly" dick. So what? Enlighten me;
when will we evolve to the point where we realize that we're human, and not every trivial thing needs to be fixed? Lately, it seems we've begun taking cues from the media, inventing problems during life's lulls or exacerbating small ones, leading us to a world where ugliness primarily comes from within.
"Fine! You're right. You win. So what should I do? Should I still buy this?" Drew asks, clutching the exfoliating cream to his heart.
"Nah, you better save your money."
"For what?" he replies, flustered.
And for once, I don't sugarcoat the ugly truth, because I know it won't help. "Therapy."
