Lump sat alone on a bench in the park

I rarely shave. Or cut my hair. But I did last night. It was too humid to go on with a thick, scraggly beard and a mop of hair. My friends can hardly recognize me. I tend to do this twice a year now. So I can see where they get confused.

I look like two different people. One is bigger, fuller, and seems to have a bigger appetite. The contrast between my eyes and beard, the way my hair never stays in the same place, these things, I think, help to create a persona. When my hair is short and I am (relatively) clean shaven, I look more severe. My head looks taller. I look more like the scholar-athlete I once was. Though, ironically, when I was a scholar-athlete I looked like a crazy hippy.

I go through two or three days of people running up to me to feel my face. I get compliments and comments. “Did you lose a bet?” “You look gorgeous!” And so on. It’s interesting, because I don’t see much of a difference. For me, it’s just hair, despite the apparent perceptions I’ve noticed above.

The one difference I notice is this: I pay more attention to my appearance. It’s a habit thing. I don’t often look at myself in mirrors. I don’t often pay attention to how I look. My self image is fueled nearly exclusively by how I feel. I feel great about myself when nothing hurts and I am full of energy. I feel down on myself when I feel sick or pained. However, when I have to pay attention (to make sure I don’t cut my ears off or something), and then double check to make sure I don’t have an accidental and asymmetrical soul patch, I pay attention to myself. Then, for the next few days, I look at myself in mirrors. I notice how my body changes throughout the day. I even wear clean clothes and pick them out based on how they look on me rather than on what’s closest to the top of the pile.

Strange, right?

I like the way I look. I understand that I don’t demonstrate many excessively aesthetic physical qualities that people tend to look for, and that’s not me being self-deprecating. This will probably sound pretty egotistical, but I don’t look for those things in other people, so I don’t look for them in myself either. I have never met another human being who agrees with me on who is beautiful and who isn’t. My girlfriend and I come close to agreement, but usually only on famous people.

I don’t give a fuck about the size of her tits or the shape of his ass. For me it’s about the whole. And how a person moves in and thinks of themselves. I am not physically attracted to someone who isn’t physically attracted to themselves, though I’ve made mistakes there in the past.

What I’m saying here is not that beauty is completely subjective or relative. I am just convinced that it is more comprehensive than the particular.

For example: types. What the fuck? “I only like tall blondes.” “I only like younger redheads.” And so on. What does that even mean? It sounds like something they heard someone cool say when they were young and decided was cool to imitate. Where do people learn this stuff?

For me it is a lot like only being attracted to one sex. Limiting and silly. Maybe you’ve never been attracted to anyone from the same sex, or the opposite sex. Does that necessarily mean that you are never going to be? I’ll never understand straight people. Or gay people.

What I’m saying is this – these designations are arbitrary. “Straight” really means “relatively straight.” Just because you are attracted to redheads doesn’t mean you won’t fall for a brunette. And in the end, I think that people will realize that their so-called types are really just what remain of their young fetishes. Maybe you like tall blondes with big boobs. What you are probably saying is that you are abstractly/generally more attracted to tall blonds with big boobs. In reality many particular people, of many different ‘types’, attract you to them – regardless of blondness or boobness. And there’s probably a pretty big psychological component. The social component makes sense. You seek to emulate those you look up to, and they say that big boobed blondes are the way to go, so you hold that up as the shining light of beauty.

I am, needless to say, not a big boobed blonde. I am a mid-sized, brownish-haired, athletic-ish, young man. And I like my body. I joke a lot about my enormous ego and inflated opinion of myself, but in reality I think it’s just the right size. I tend to judge myself by the same metric I judge others. And vice versa.

Those poor fucks.