I’m Sorry To Do This But Now I Must Also Write An Article About How Attractive I Am
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…Just the other day, I was down at the all-night saffron store, which is where I buy my saffron when I run out of saffron. Saffron is, per ounce, the most expensive substance on the planet, and I buy a lot of it because I am rich, wildly rich, one of the richest men in America, and OH NOES I DIDN’T MEAN TO MENTION THAT. Sorry; sorry. This was meant to be an article about how hot I am. Sorry. Didn’t mean to talk about that.
No. I meant to talk about my hotness. I don’t really want to talk about my hotness, but it comes up all the time when perfect strangers feel the pathetic need to once again mention how hot I am. My hotness is uncontrollable like that I guess, like an uncontrollable river, bursting through its levees. Or like another thing, bursting through another thing. I don’t have to be clever here because I’m hot.
Anyway, so, I was down at the saffron store, when a perfect stranger came up to me and said: “How do you do it, my friend? Tell me, how are you just gorgeous all the time?”
AND THIS HAPPENS TO ME ALL THE TIME. In my head I’m like: “I’m just trying to buy some saffron, yoes; please do not disturb me with your banal observations about my obvious beauty.”
But you can’t say that. So instead I turned to face the mouth-breathing peon and said: “Oh, my friend, if only you understood the pain that my beauty brings me. To be like the single perfect rose in Beauty and the Beast or something. As a matter of fact, I hate being a pretty boy. It sucks. It sucks balls, in fact.”
But this was not enough. The pathetic flawed-looking prole in fact leaned his chin on his hand and simply… stared at me, absorbing my great radiance.
“Please, my friend,” he said. “Do tell me more. Hearing an attractive person complain about their attractiveness is a topic that never gets old. And it is truly instructive for me — the brutish, the ugly, the less fortunate — to hear.”
I sighed and checked my highly expensive watch. “Oh well then,” I said. “If you insist.”
I flicked an imaginary speck of dust off the collar of my incredibly expensive overcoat.
“Attractiveness,” I said, “is a burden. A sheer drudge-ish burden. Of course you, with your non-symmetrical features, your caved-in cheekbones, your mawkish gape — of course you would not understand these things. …Nonetheless,” I added pointlessly.
“Nonetheless!” gushed my gawker. “Nonetheless I must hear more!”
“If you insist. Not a day goes by when I am not flocked by photographers, when I am not begged by some simpleton to appear on their ‘reality television program,’ when I am not begged by models to bone or ball them. …Tiresome, I say. Highly tiresome.”
“Tiresome indeed!” quoth my pathetic new friend.
“But it gets worse from there. No one cares about my brains, my vast intellect. And if I slip up — well, all is forgiven. No one cares if I use ‘they’re’ in a sentence where I mean that something is over there. My highly infrequent grammatical errors are all forgiven. Lo — if I were to write an essay bitching about my attractiveness for a major website — and fill it with errors of the grammatical type; why, even then I would be forgiven. Merely because I am so fucking hot and such.”
“Appalling!” said the ugly, ugly man.
“I receive advancement and praise from all sides, but this never allows me to suffer, to strive, to seek on my own. The world hoists me up on its shoulders, but its lifting blocks my personal growth. I yearn to know what it is to be so shitty looking — like you, my friend — but alas, I will never know.”
“Actually, that’s enough,” the man said.
But I blathered onward! “Yes, I’ve gotten tons of free sandwiches, shots, tickets, rides, dinners — I can, and have literally gone around a bar taking drinks from girls, paying with nothing but an enchanting smile — because I can. I once drunkenly stole a hot dog, stopped a random chick in the street and batting my long lashes asked her to pay. She dove into her pocket and handed over some cash before I could finish my sentence. Yesterday alone, I got a free bus ride, three free pints, some popcorn, some tequila shots – but this speech I am giving is not to boast about getting free things!”
“Please…” the man said.
“No, I say this not to boast!”
“…Stop,” the man said.
“I say this not to boast, but to share! Lo — an enchanting idea has settled upon my perfectly poised shoulders, my flawless forehead and other flawless parts! I shall go home — after eating all this delicious saffron — I shall go home, and write this up for a major website! It must be shared. You pathetic ugly peons must know the unique pain of being me.”
“Anything…” he said.
“And so, I am off! My brutish acquaintance, I thank you. Imagine! That one such as you could spark such an idea in my own brain.”
…But the man had strangely wandered off, perhaps beset with thoughts of his own overarching grotesqueness. And so I departed as well, shaking my golden locks, heading home, with my prettiness glinting in the friscalating dusklight. I headed home! To write this up for you, o sad reader! I did this all for you.