Around this time, I got a job through my father’s friend who ran a magazine for men. I set up photo shoots and wrote small articles about products: razors, nail clippers. Occasionally, I got to test a sports car and write about it, but mostly it was photo shoots and men’s clothing. There were lots of parties: launches of products, festivals, charity events. The women at these events were Eights and Nines, with long hair and long legs, bouncy tits and firm asses.
It was too much at once. It was time to settle on something. Someone. I couldn’t keep fantasizing. I’d atrophy my confidence and end up in some PUA basement.
One evening, I said to a Nine, “You’re nothing like those model types.”
She was definitely a model. Pouty. Honey-blond hair, big eyes. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, you are. But there’s something else about you. You look…too real to be a model.”
She widened those big eyes. The large forehead wrinkled and stayed that way.
I knew enough about beautiful girls to know that their beauty destroyed them.They would fall apart at the smallest thing. I knew that my girl would see real as imperfect, perhaps even fat. I knew that from then on, she would think I held the answers to what she was. A model? A real person? Fat? Imperfect? I was subtler than Jason. I only served doubt, a delicate weapon like a long needle.
We dated for a month. Sandra. It was exhausting. I quickly realized that with beauty came demands and neediness so disproportionate to what I had to offer that my feeling of dread had me in its thrall almost the entire time.
“It’s not you, it’s me.”
“You can’t even try to come up with something more original, can you?” she said.
I could, but why bother my brain?
I went on dates with more beautiful girls, and it was always the same thing as it was with Sandra. The demands remained baroque, just like their beauty. Demands for more time, more attention, more everything, more me. I had no me to give. I’ve always hated sharing.
I reflected on how beauty affected girls. Beautiful women live beautiful clichés: models and moguls. Favouritism in the family, the pretty sister always somehow better than the plain one. Free drinks, free dinners, weekends in chalets. Free trips to Europe and free cocaine, free everything.
Beauty can be a ticket to a better life. Beautiful women expect more. It’s no surprise that they become indignant if more takes its time, become bitter if more isn’t happening, become tragic if it happens and disappears. Because once they understand their advantage, there is no turning back. There is no extracting Cinderella from her Louboutins and stuffing her back into clogs. As soon as they catch a whiff of their advantage, beautiful girls become obsessed with getting their ticket to a better life punched as soon as possible. And as a boyfriend, I was not punching the ticket. I dumped them. I left them open-mouthed in disbelief that I even dared. In the beginning, occasionally, it seemed the joke was on me and I would get confused, thinking it was stupid to let the Good Thing go.
But then I would remember the one rule of beauty: its simple presence made you feel as if you were receiving something special. Beauty’s greatest deceit – the same one I take advantage of – is that you shouldn’t disregard it. It is exactly how I use my own gift with women.
It was a relief, an expansion of space, when I went back to what felt most natural – being with girls to whom I was God’s gift. I had a rabid taste for plain girls. It came from the imprint of my first sexual experience. And, naturally, plain girls are easier to handle. Although there was some effort required, I was not resentful of it: I enjoyed seducing plain girls. They adored me. I remembered the power that I had with Caroline. I had to prove nothing to her to be everything to her. It was so easy to let go of her.
I decided to turn the seduction of plain girls into a lifetime pursuit. At that time, it wasn’t a conscious decision, but it became one later, once it was clear what gave me the most satisfaction.
My life opened to grateful girls. Girls with weight problems and with bad skin. Girls who had dreams, but who could forsake those dreams because they understood from the time they were born that the world would not give into their demands. The world was unapologetic about loving beauty, and it ignored the plain girls, if not downright rebuked them.
I had the power to be the world to them.
Unlike Sandra, I don’t remember the name of the first plain girl I dated, but I do remember her gratitude and her lack of expectation. Even dumping her seemed easier. There was some resignation, some offhand comment, but that was that and it was done with. Months later, she sent me a nice letter saying that I was really special, that I had created one of her most treasured memories.
Katie. Cathy?
I suppose I should remember her name, but it didn’t really matter. She might as well have written on behalf of all the girls who followed and who declared me some kind of deity that – even temporarily – relieved them of their insignificance.
Then it was just a matter of time: getting used to their sloppiness and neediness, learning how to navigate properly so as not to set their hopes too high yet leave enough lovely memories and magic in their lives to make them forever indebted to me. It was back to, “So you want me to leave?”
“Do you mind letting the dog back in when you do?”
“Sure. Here’s my number just in case.”
I didn’t have to feel badly about them, or even act as if I felt badly. They were always grateful. And knowing this made sex with them more meaningful. What happened in the beginning, with Caroline, and with all the easy women after her, was gone. There was no dread, no self-torture about how to keep it going, how to maintain the façade. I no longer lied to myself that this should mean more than it meant. No one would hold me accountable for not sticking around. The plain girls simply didn’t expect it. I pleased them. The end.
5
I WATCH THE BEACH FROM THE LIFEGUARD CHAIR I HAD installed in front of my beach house. I watch to see if I can find Dolores among the beach people. Even if she were there, I wouldn’t be able to tell her apart from all the others. All the sweet, chubby girls with round shoulders and bad dye jobs.
I picture her walking slowly, her feet splayed, sleep still clouding her lovely eyes, her cheeks getting red from the effort. Thighs rubbing against each other. There are many Doloreses on the beach today.
Later on, at the beach house, as I set the table, I see the actual Dolores. It’s her and the other two girls walking by, looking in. I back away from the window even though there’s no way they can see me with the light reflecting off the glass. Dolores’ mouth is slightly open. Eyes scanning the window.
I could go out, say hello, but the guests will be arriving any minute. I don’t want the girls, Dolores especially, to get the wrong impression. And she’d get the wrong impression seeing Gloria and her magnificent figure, the way she seems to be cut out of one of those luxury magazines about yachts. There’s little chance Gloria will be affectionate – she’s not the type – but you never know with Jason, who may say something about us, about me and Gloria being lovebirds or something like that.
The girls pass eventually, and I go back to making lunch: a salad with goat cheese, red pepper strips, spicy glazed pecans, apple slices on a bed of mixed field greens. Ryebread toast.