The Business End of My Attention

I have a mirror face. It's a face that I make every single time I look in the mirror. One eyebrow slightly raised, eyes a little squinty, lips pursed. Like I am being coy. I am not sure why I developed that face, but I did. Here's the thing though, I didn't know that. I just thought that's what I looked like. How was I supposed to know any differently? It wasn't until my 11th grade production of a sketch comedy show in high school, in the dressing room when Ben Kultgen said "Dude. Seriously. What the fuck are you doing?" that I even realized I was making a face. 

Do you know what it is like to see what you really look like after being mistaken for 17 years? Well, I do. I am balding more than my dad's 58 year old colleagues, and my forehead seems to have taken the manifest destiny approach to aging. My eyebrows have caught on and seem to be taking to the coasts. That, or they've just grown bored of each other's company. 

Strangely, when you break down that one image you have of yourself you see right through the other veneers you had. Speaking of which, my teeth are fake. Insert cut-and-paste from my Myspace blog for a story of my teeth-

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Some of you may know this, some of you may not. I have fake teeth. The front six are all fake because when I was younger I would grind my teeth so bad I would wake myself up thinking someone was using a rock tumbler in my bed. In general, I like them. I smile in family pictures instead of making a weird pervert-looking closed mouth smile. They're good. Except, I still grind my teeth when I sleep- so I have to wear a night mouth-guard. Which isn't really all that inconvenient except that means I have to carry a fucking football style mouth-guard with me at all times in case I want to pass out. 

I remember a time when I went out drinking and I caught 3$ Long Islands. I was all fucking excited because the bar was close enough to where I could walk back to my buddy's place and crash on the couch. Except that walking was a big fucking problem for me following 21$ worth of Long Islands. (That's 3 Long Islands and a drunk guy tip for the bartender with the nice rack.) I get halfway home, entirely without being mugged or hobo-raped, and I manage to find the only fucking puddle in the city and step in it. So now my socks and shoes are fucking soaked and I take them off. I roll up my pants like Huckleberry Finn because somehow I figured that would make me look like I had planned the puddle situation and nobody would think I was drunk. 

Finally after like 20 minutes walking home trying not to puke in the shoes that I am holding I make it back to my buddy's place. I manage to pull out the extra key he loaned me and get inside. I was fucking pumped so I walk over in front of the couch, drop my shoes on the ground and put the socks in my pant pockets because I didn't want to lose them. That's when I remembered - I grab my clear mouth-guard out of my pocket and put it in my mouth. Then I tried to take off my pants. I say "tried" because I only got them to just below my knees.

Then I puked. 

At this point I am hunched over with my pants pulled down below my knees and rolled up above my ankles in the complete darkness, trying not to wake up my friends who graciously allowed me to puke on their carpet - and I have puked out my mouth-guard. Which means I can't sleep. Unless I want to wake up with a hangover and huckleberry teeth to match my pants. So, making the best of my situation I took off my shirt and tied it around my head, in my mouth, to keep my teeth from grinding together. Ignoring the puke taste, reinforced by the gag which probably caught some of the puke, I tried again to get my pants off. This time I got them almost completely off before I tripped and slammed my gagged face into the couch- at which point I decided that I had made it. Fuck it. My head is on a cushion- I am home free. And I went to sleep.

When I woke up I had my mouth-guard, a trashcan, a blanket, and I was laying on the couch. Which means that one of my friends took pity on the man they found black-out drunk, stinking of puke, pants wet and around his ankles, gagged on his knees with his face buried in the couch. 

None of them ever said a word about it.

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So, all of a sudden I start to see myself.

And today the abs I had in high school are now covered in what must be the world's least graceful accumulation of black curly hair. And, it's not even the 70's thick manscape that I could tend into some kind of Zangief chest-wolf. It's closer to if Will Ferrell took some of Colin Farrell's hair dye and artificially added a bit more comedy to his man-tle. So, often times I shave my chest and stomach. If I am lucky and I don't develop the ingrown-hair herpes look, I get to rock the adolescent chubby guy style.

I know you're already turned on, but let me toss one more oyster on the proverbial crotch-fire. All of this, all of my chubby, gag-mouthed, naked chested, chrome-doming glory... it has made me more confident. Because every time I look in the mirror and see what I actually look like, I realize that all of you have been seeing that the whole time. And with just a sarcastic, fake-toothed smile or witty. bold-faced statement I managed to get you to ignore all of that. I've gotten many badass friends, and given the business end of my attention to women completely out of my league. 

I guess there's still something left to what I've got underneath all that forehead.