On days when the world is ugly, there's no shock quite like the appearance of a beauty.
So on days when the world is beautiful, as it was this past Saturday, an apparition as delightfully solid as this one is just the extra egg in life's rich pudding.
I was photographing the Summer Dream Literary Arts Festival (not very successfully, I might add, given the gloomy skies and rain) when very early on I noticed this guy. Aside from the obvious, there was something in the way he watched each performer which betokened a being as beautiful inside as out.
Naturally, I was scared to death of him.
There is an annoying little subroutine trapped in my cortex that tells me to run like the wind away from men like this. Try as I might that little snippet of code continues to elude me, and as it does so it manages to disrupt even a brain as prodigious as mine. I think of it as an elephant being brought down by a mosquito.
I kept hoping that, having heard him speak, the spell might be broken. Until, that is, he got up on stage and read a few of his poems in a voice as sweet and smoky as maple-cured bacon. Then came the hope that perhaps he might be less impressive up close, a phenomenon known by the technical name of "Long Distance Misake" or LDM.
Alas, the closer I got the hotter he burned. At one point he was within five feet of me, and though I couldn't bring myself to talk to him (or face him at better than a 45-degree angle) I still felt like I needed sunscreen on that side. Of course, by that time I was blushing so hard I wouldn't have noticed a sunburn. In fact, I might have welcomed it as a pleasant alternative to death by embarassment.
Normally, that would have been it: a few nervous minutes talking about God-knows-what to the nearest person that wasn't him, followed by an afternoon of studious avoidance, which I could do professionally. In this case the nearest person was a total stranger, and despite my best efforts, at least a dozen times in the next four hours I would casually turn and find myself standing next to him.
Turns out something else I'm very good at is disguising shock.
Not helping matters any was the fact that I was surrounded by straight women, all of whom found my crush very endearing. To the point of having to be begged not to dragged over and introduced to him, which, given the circumstances, would not have been very endearing, either of them or me. It must be all those fairy tales girls are raised on, but they cannot resist one of those old "Troll and Prince live happily ever after" stories.
Any more, I guess, than I can.
All I know is, his name is C. J., and it's my most fervent wish that I never see him again.
2 comments:
I believe I was the "complete stranger" you were speaking to, but I understand as I could tell you were periodically blacking out. I also suffer from BIF (or "beauty inspired fear") from time to time and was struck by an unexpected bout of it when I walked up to CJ and started talking. What came out was ridiculous nothing, and normally I think myself quite adept at speaking (however, not so adept at "shutting up"). My mind went blank and my palms got sweaty. Funny I could tell that since it was raining so hard my mascara probably looked like Tammy Faye's. My point being, you are not alone, my good friend. The man is brutally hot. That's the beginning, middle and end of the story. I, however, look forward to seeing him again. Even if I make a fool of myself.
~LP
What's funny is how my palms went blank and my mind went sweaty talking to him.
Post a Comment