The Dateable Dork

The face of a monster is very well hidden, masquerading around busy city streets as an attractive, successful 30-something man with military-cut blond hair and radiant blue eyes.  He captures your gaze as he walks by in his freshly pressed suit, he charms you with his innocent-sounding midwestern accent, and he impresses you with his financial prowess and Ivy League education.  His smile has been known to bring grown women to their knees, and his eyes will bore right through you as he greets you with that inquisitive, endearing expression on his perfectly clean-shaven, perfectly disguised face.  But the monster lies underneath, scheming and plotting and expertly manipulating the muscles of his face and the light in his eyes and the gentleness of his tone.  The face of a monster is a complicated machine, skillfully concealing its inner workings while effortlessly gaining complaisance from its unknowing victims.  The face of a monster is deliberative, malicious, deceitful, completely in control of its surroundings, and the only signs of something amiss are the monster’s omissions, for its deliberative actions are always flawlessly executed.

The face of a monster leaves his colleagues with a satisfied grin after a long day at the office, slaving away into the night hours, earning that outrageous salary with skill and finesse and pride.  The face of a monster greets me at my door with a smile from ear to ear, a heartfelt embrace, and a cheerful “Hey babe, you look great!”  He buries his face in my neck, breathing, thrusting, writhing, screaming, collapsing.  The face of a monster arrives home after “another late night at the office,” greeting her with a smile from ear to ear, a heartfelt embrace, and a cheerful “Hey babe, you look great!”  He buries his face in her neck, breathing, thrusting, writhing, screaming, collapsing.  The face of a monster sends me a late-night email detailing all the delicious things he wants to do to me next time, and then climbs into bed with her and makes her coffee in the morning.

The face of a monster greets me at a crowded upscale restaurant with his usual smile and embrace.  “It’s so good to see you!” he exclaims, offering me a seat at a reserved corner table, ready with bread and wine and the promise of mouth-watering food and shadowy, flirtatious conversation.  He expertly glides his way though talk of work and school and family and friends, but the monster hesitates when asked about his personal life.  A rare move, a blatant omission.  Curious, I press him for a response.  Again, and again, until the monster’s adroit fingers become weak, and their expert precision in manipulating his facial muscles and the gleam in his eyes becomes amateurish, and the monster’s face begins to slowly emerge from behind its perfectly constructed layers.  Opaque slowly becomes transparent as the layers lifelessly fall away, resting on the table with his almond salad and my creamy parsnip soup.  His glance is focused downward, perhaps lamenting his coveted, discarded disguise on the table, and he offers a hint of a confession: “I’m living with someone.”  And I begin to see the monster’s true countenance for the first time, although for some reason I feel as if I’ve had an unobstructed view all along.  Funny how the eyes only see what they want to see.

And as I sit there, eating my soup, sipping my wine, the layers continue to fall.  I feel as if the air between my face and his thickens to the point at which I feel as if I’m miles away from the man I thought I was sitting across from, yet at the same time, my view of his face, his true face, has never been more clear.  Who is this creature?  Who is this man who I thought I knew, who is now telling me, bit by infuriating little bit, that he has this whole separate life from which I had been completely shut out, and that his encounters with me (and the countless others, for all I know) are completely hidden from the girl he’ll curl up in bed with at the end of the night, the girl whose boyfriend has been fucking around during their entire relationship, the girl who does his laundry and makes him dinner and tells him that she loves him.  The girl who will never know that he took me out to dinner that night. 

The face of the monster is finally revealed in its full infamy, and the man I thought I knew is irrevocably destroyed.  Only a monster is capable of pulling off such a delicate juggling act, such a deliberative, malicious, deceitful operation.  And the true revelation of the monster’s character is not simply the unveiling of the scheme, the peeling back of the layers, the dimming of the gleam in his eyes and the relaxing of his smile… but the utter apathy with which he executes these acts.  “She doesn’t need to know.”  “I like that my relationship with you is separate from her.”  The stone cold look in his eyes when I asked him how it was possible that the fact that he had a serious girlfriend and had moved in with her had not come up in conversation over the course of almost an entire year of late-night visits and countless emails.  The face of a monster offers no apologies, for with all its skill and cleverness and unlimited capacity for manipulation, it fails to recognize its offenses, seeing only success in its constantly evolving ruses and machinations.

The face of a monster is cowardly, weak, and childish.  It is violently protective of its true identity, offering me only a glimpse into its true nature that night – who knows what else lies beneath the many layers yet to fall, clenching their fists, clinging for survival to that perfectly chiseled face and brilliantly glowing eyes.  The face of a monster walks among us, hiding and writhing, festering and fermenting, withering and rotting, while its outward mask shines in the sunlight, greeting his colleagues, his family, his girlfriend, his sluts, with that same warm, midwestern embrace, pulling the sheets so far over our eyes that only softness remains, and we can’t help but succumb to his seemingly innocuous guile.

With all its skill and expert precision, the face of a monster doesn’t need or deserve the protection of its victims, a courtesy more appropriately reserved for decent human beings, those with real feelings, real emotions, real vulnerability, those who show respect and who are deserving of respect in return, those who unabashedly show their true face to the world, proud and honest and genuine.  A monster doesn’t deserve my help, my respect, my courtesy.  In fact, a monster isn’t deserving of very much at all, with the exception of whatever punishment is reserved for such base creatures, and in that respect, I hope he gets exactly what he has coming to him.  May the gods unleash the full fury of their wrath upon this loathsome beast.

I’ve always considered the term “Hot Marine” to be a compliment, one of which this particular monster is no longer — and apparently never was — worthy. 

So David, if you’re out there reading this, please consider yourself exposed for the monster that you truly are.