Because We All Know Pretty Is Good

Yesterday when I left Exchange Place (Jersey City), I took the wrong PATH train and had to take two connections just to correct. Although I recently learned a valuable lesson about taking the right the NYC crosstown bus, I never have problems with finding my way around with the Subway. Everything Jersey touches is crap (except Springsteen).

While I waited at the Pavonia/Newport Station platform, I saw a pretty girl who reminded me a lot of someone who really affected my life. The girl on the opposing platform was absolutely beautiful. I wouldn't doubt I wasn't the only guy staring, but at least I kept it undercover by hiding behind a pole, carefully peaking around and darting back at any sign of being noticed. I was really cool, man.

This girl looked like a blonde version of Amanda (pictured above on the day she moved out), someone who cost me a couple thousand dollars, a broken heart, and caused me to delay my plans to move to NYC by five years. To be fair, I cost myself these things by ignoring warning signs: her bullimia, her cutting, a trail of guy friends who treated me with distain, a worse-than-George-Harrison belief in every religion at the same time, an interest in becoming EXTREMELY close to me before she even knew me. And my friend Kevin said to me very early on, "Don't get too crazy about her." Yeah, he must have known something was up. Ever hear the saying, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me"? I still have to learn whom to shame when it's "Fool me every day for 8 months, then again 11 months later." I'd have to work out the math, but I think it might be back to shame on me.

Ah! But I didn't listen to friends or logic. After being her personal lackey for the Summer of 2001, I took complete responsibility for her for about five months, which is all she really wanted. I learned her M.O. much later - get a guy interested in her so he can save her for a few months and move on to the next guy at the first sign of his awakening. She was a pro at it, but she was beautiful, which is all that really matters. And don't get me wrong, I truly believe that beautiful people deserve to be treated better than everyone else.

I don't know how many times I've bent the rules and bent over backward for a pretty woman. Somehow it makes me feel better about myself if I think I've made a beautiful person's life easier, because you know that no matter how much they deserve, they never really get what's coming to them. And that makes me sad.

What makes me even more sad is that I didn't alienate enough of my friends during the Amanda era. I only distanced myself from one person, Michelle, a girl who truly cared about me. I know now that I didn't give enough of soul to Amanda because I still had several friends after she left. She was really beautiful enough to break all ties with friends and family, and I failed her.

On the other hand, in many ways I did show the signs of a man falling apart, which is a true tribute to her. I remember this extension telephone I had that I could just barely make out some words of her private phone conversations without having to pick up the reciever. It was a piece of garbage phone, but I learned a lot about other guys she was seeing behind my back by spying on her with it. Good old broken phone. Listened through that thing for hours on end.

I think my proudest moment happened when I was in her bedroom looking for... uh, something, and I "accidentally" read her private journal which detailed so much about her feelings and the people in her life including a new guy she was dating, and how she saw our one night of passion as traumatic. God! She was fantastic. And she certainly helped to make me a better man. I sometimes wonder what she's doing today.

Now I know that beautiful people aren't all as screwed up as Amanda, but that doesn't matter. Whatever they want they should get. I know now that the purpose of plain and ugly people like me is to make life better for the Hotties. This goes across gender lines, but it is better that ugly men become servants to hot women and ugly women do the same for attractive men. It's what they want really. What ugly man hasn't given an expensive present to some great-looking woman he barely knows. What ugly woman hasn't allowed a hot man to use her for whatever he pleased. This is what we, the uggoes do, and it is right for us to do it.

I haven't dated anyone as beautiful as Amanda since 2001 because I'm still paying off the financial debt from her. I think it's important to be debt free before meeting a gorgeous basket case, because it's going to cost a lot of money to make sure they know you're the one who's going to save them. In a few months, I'll have that Amanda debt paid off, though, and I'll be ready to get pathetic all over again. Hear that ladies? I'm going to need a project to make me feel like a hero again!