Equalizing Forces

Note: The following is not deep, encouraging, enlightening, or otherwise intellectually stimulating in any way.

So. There’s this girl who lives in the apartment below me, and she is one of the few people in my building I’ve actually seen... She has this big giant dog that I see her taking out for walks all the time, and I can hear banging around in her teensy apartment during the day every once in a while (the dog, not her)... Anyway. She also has a SUPER hot boyfriend. He is truly one of the most legitimately gorgeous people I’ve ever seen up close… Breath-takingly gorgeous. “See-him-walking-down-the-hall-and-the-gasp-gets-stuck-in-your-throat” gorgeous. (For the record, she’s cute, but not THAT cute… Makes one wonder, you know?) ANYWAY.

It just so happens that approximately 9 out of the 10 times I see this gloriously hot man walking around my apartment building, I am looking SERIOUSLY SCHLUMPY. Now, lest you get the impression that I’m being overly humble, I’m not talking about, “Oh fiddlesticks! I forgot to put on my third coat of mascara this morning!” schlumpy. Oh no. I’m talking “This is the worst I’ve looked inside my own apartment—much less in public—in three and a half weeks, and I’m taking great pains not to look in the mirror because my self-esteem really can’t handle this kind of negative visual input right now” schlumpy. These are the moments that seem to cosmically draw Super Hot Boyfriend to me from wherever he is in the universe—almost some kind of equalizing force that senses the incredibly high levels of unattractiveness I'm registering and must bring supernatural hotness to my locale to balance things out. *le sigh*

Like, the morning I decide to dash downstairs to take out my three-week-old trash that smells like rotting fruit and old guacamole wearing my slept-in pajama bottoms and white tank top with the black bra showing through and unshaved armpits… POW! Really Hot Boyfriend is just getting in from his run around the block, and happens to be coming in the door right as I’m going out. Awesome.

Or the evening I’m getting back from my walk around the neighborhood, ratty, muffin-top-enhancing jeans and 3 year old sneakers on and my (unwashed) hair sticking to my (unwashed) forehead… KABLOW! Extremely Hot Boyfriend is doing his sweetie a favor and getting her mail right as I walk in. Great.

And then there’s today. No makeup. Deep, deep circles under my eyes from getting too much sleep last night. Hair looking like my cat did it with crazy sweat curls that have yet to see a brush making a Jerry Seinfeld-esque mullet against my neck while my bangs are curling into some sort of 1988 mall rat wave on my forehead, and the only reason I even CONSIDERED leaving the house looking this (truly) horrifying was because I was craving a kombucha REAL bad, and I figured the granola heads at Whole Foods wouldn’t care… (I was wrong. The checkout girl looked at me like I was homeless.) I’m walking up the steps to the front door, fingertips brushing the underside of my nose because I think I can feel a lurker creeping down the side of nostril #1, and… BAM! Super Hot Boyfriend standing in the lobby talking on his cell phone, stretching before heading out for a run.

Perfect.

What makes it all even worse is that he seems very sweet—he always flashes his gorgeous grin and politely says hello, and all I can do is blink my smudgy eyes and try not to smile so wide he can smell my (inevitably) unbrushed teeth as I try to figure out how to get upstairs, take a shower, put on a full face of makeup and come back down within the next three milliseconds.

This morning I couldn’t even look at him, but I felt his gleaming smile flicker at me as I hurried past him up the stairs, desperately fighting the urge to scream, “I’m hot too! You just NEVER see it!”

Ugh.