We'll Be Back To Pick You Up Later

I'm probably good looking. It's hard to say for sure seeing as, out of all the things, that's the thing that is the most subjective. Well, among regular people it's subjective. The subjectivity of attractiveness exists on a couple of different scales. There's the one down here for us yahoos, with our body hair and our measurable body fat, doing the best we can relative to the people we happen across. And then there are the billboards and the swimsuit issues and the perfume ads and the superhero movies... all the two-dimensional spaces where we keep our Platonic ideals of morphic symmetry and golden ratios. It's a world populated by exotic, endangered species like Thandie Newtons and Kate Uptons and the entire gaggle of Hemsworths. They exist in an ethereal space separate from the rest of us, only occasionally let out of their pens to skitter into the wild, usually at the Farmers Market on Fairfax in LA. After that they're huddled back into captivity and put to work doing what they were born to do: remind the rest of us of our inadequacies and sell us mouthwash and moisturizer and bar soap. We know it won't really help, but you let yourself imagine that at least you can smell like Audrey Hepburn, even though deep down you know that plebeian brick of tallow and lye would never touch her impeccable skin she probably only lightly cleanses in a bath of fresh lavender petals in first-press unicorn milk.

I don't have to be better looking than Brad Pitt* to be actually attractive down here among us Normals. I don't even have to be comparable. We're all running around out here with our Picasso-esque lines, eyes and noses and mouths and hairlines all scattered and askew. To pull it all together into inducing something approximating the involuntary rush of laying eyes on an actual, objectively attractive person, we're forced to fill in the gaps and shore up the wobbly physical foundation with personality.

And now we've thrown objectivity right out the window. Now we're talking about the weird interpersonal alchemy most usually and inappropriately called chemistry. Just to be clear, chemistry is a science with testable propositions and measurable results to either confirm or rubbish the initial theorem; it's definitive. It's progressive, and further, self-progressive as the triumphs and catastrophes of chemistry push other chemistry (if not all of science) forward. Murder enough designer mice and eventually you get to grow a dying boy some new skin.

Human attractiveness does not work like that. I won't say it's less methodical as any woman on an online dating site will tell you: you get all the attention from literally all of the men. There's a method at work, to be sure. But it's certainly less rigid in its approach and produces far, far fewer quantifiable results. Software algorithms pool users by compatibility, the idea being they will find their covalent bonds through the sharing of the outermost ring of foundational ephemera. I'm not sure how many people had their first sexual encounter as a couple with an episode Game of Thrones on pause half way through, but I'd bet it's more than one.

See, we're all, in our own ways, weird looking and just weird as people, so we're forced to rely on our quirks and tendencies to make us attractive to other humans. And all this even though we know in the long term the goal isn't to be attractive, it's to be tolerable. But that's another blog post.

Those of us not blessed with an undeniable aura of human beauty have to measure out a series of patient steps to gauge our subjective attractiveness exactly as is demanded, according to the conclusions of the subject. They have to see, they have to watch and, most importantly, eventually they have to say, one way or another, yes or no.

Options that should not be on the table? Jerking off in front of people not in a position to safely withhold consent. And not "even" if you're a beloved entertainer, but especially if you're a beloved entertainer. Does it suck to be weird-looking and fat even while everyone is telling you how great you are? Maybe. But frustrated and lonely is a way better way to go through life than "registered sex offender."

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*Thelma and Louise Brad Pitt I'm thinking, not current day Craggy Sad Old Stoner Brad Pitt. I know my references are dated, but I let my subscription to Tiger Beat expire in 1990. I'm a little behind the times.