The unhappy truth

So... what's
your sign, babe?

I guess most guys figure out by the end of high school what kind of women are 'attainable' by them. i.e., not likely to laugh out loud if they flatter them or accuse them of stalking if they say 'good morning' to them.

But I had insufficient feedback in that area. I knew in high school I was nowhere near the top of the ladder, but I couldn't accurately estimate how far down I was.

I'm not an ugly guy, by any means. I am just extraordinarily ordinary-looking. Mine is a face that would disappear into a crowd, except for the fact that it's parked atop the 6-foot-tall slab of beef that is my body.

(I am overweight these days, but even when I'm not, I'm anything but thin. I sort of resemble Merlin Olsen, the late football player/actor, in body type.)

I entered college confident that I was somewhere in the broad middle region of looks and charisma. I was no Ryan O'Neal, who was the gold standard of hotness at the time, but no Ron "Horshack" Palillo, either.

Evidence began to mount that I had overrated myself. Women I approached inevitably rejected me and often took up with guys that I thought were a lot less interesting and attractive than me (although often wealthier or with a better supply line of drugs).

But then college ended, I entered the workplace, and I soon found myself on television reading (and hysterically hyperventilating over) the news. I was the least good-looking newscaster in town – that was obvious. But still, I had made the cut, hadn't I? That ought to count for something.

But it didn't.

I kept approaching women who were, frankly, much too hot for a shambling, beefy sloth like me, and I kept getting rejected. And then I started looking in that broad middle region of looks and charisma. What I saw were hundreds of women to whom I was not the least attracted.

I am aware that a lot of people end up married to people to whom they are not attracted. It's called "settling," and I eventually did it myself. It wasn't fair to me to have done that, but moreover, it wasn't fair to her, either. She loved me, but she would have been better off with a simple, slow-witted Baptist youth minister than she was with me.

Now, in my senior years, I am able to sort of comfortably say that which was evident from the late sixties to the present: I am really an unappealing, unattractive guy. I'm a lot lower on the ladder than I wanted to believe. That is mostly just the way the genetic cards were dealt – the Tao of mcarp, if you will.

But I'm still not going after the 'Aunt Bee' types, whether I'm 'supposed' to or not.