T!LAP!A:

I am NOT unattractive. I speak two languages, going on three. I write in more than that. I can play about a dozen musical instruments. I have known a nationally renowned professor (incidentally a woman!!) to tell others that I was the smartest person she had ever MET. Professional musicians (childhood heroes to many) have praised my work, and a professional programmer has commended my code. Just the fact that I can WRITE Music, and everyone listens to that, and that I can WRITE Code, since everyone uses computers, should make me a prime catch in this World. I make it a point to learn something new everyday, and about everything, not limited to my own fields, but neither to their detriment.

And I WORK HARD. I am not too arrogant to be a dishwasher, putting in ninety hours or so every two weeks, burning the midnight oil only to go to college first thing in the morning. What money I lose spending on my monthly gym membership (for which I have no time remaining) I make up for in the raw APPLICATION of physical strength in service to my company of friends. Yet muscular health is of absolutely no consequence in choosing a mate, any way. I don’t expect it of you, and if you were to be as thin as I have been my entire life I would not hold it against you, though much less would I hold you to it. (And don’t think that if I do not hold you to it it’s because I’d frown upon it!!) You’re eager to level with me, accusing me of essentializing you, all because you’ve objectified me and rejected me. But *I* have not rejected YOU, and I’ve only objectified you to that same extent that I ADMIRED you, and I fell in love with you PRIOR TO my having noticed any PART of you, some parts of which were brought to my attention by those ingrates who deserve your company much less than I do.

This is NOT bad form of me to sing my own praises, because you KNOW, as well as I do, that the values that I live by are objective. Working harder will not solve the problem. Some of my fellows might spend three hours at the gym, perhaps a week, perhaps a day, but what does that show of their work ethic, since their jobs require often LESS exertion than does mine, and any man who finds that kind of TIME to “build his body” is not scrubbing dirt from grates at five in the morning? What would it matter to you, any way? We are not being trained for battle in some Coliseum, so why would you treat love as though it were some sort of Stadium? What business of YOURS is it how I appear? Can’t you see past that to my SOUL? Because here is the thing: in spite of all I’ve been through, and perhaps because of it, I LOVE PEOPLE. I don’t approve of all they do, but I forgive them. I forgive you, too.

So cut the crap. I am a ten, whether you say so or not. Even if I had the vice of gazing on you as an object, it would not excuse you doing so to me and with disgust which I’ve not found towards you. And I don’t!! I see you as a person capable of seeing me as one, and what is sex if not the dissolution of all boundaries between us?

What are they if not illusions? So what if I have a fast metabolism, so the time I spend exerting myself does not show? Who the fuck cares? So what if I only make enough cash to get by, and I still live at home and splurge on games and music? It’s not like I won’t give BACK for what I took, and if you want to see the evidence for that right now, you can.

You tell me love is not entitlement, but rather a function of what you put into it. I put IN more than a lot of other “men”, and I am NOT rewarded in full. You know why? Because I AM a man. Because I’m not some boy amused with his own figure in the mirror, taking more time to refine it than he spends admiring yours. You love the body? I would spend a day just painting yours. Would he?

You see: this is the thing about love, and it’s both the reason you can never give TOO much, as I have been accused of doing, nor do I expect reward for it. The fact is: it has NOTHING TO DO with how hard you work or how GOOD, in the truest sense, you are. It has nothing to do with past experience or personal accountability. It’s Unconditional, and THAT is why we’re here.

If I were “rich and handsome”, and I will be some day, unless God wills otherwise, you would still be intimidated by my gaze, and you would rationalize that you are a lesbian or something just because you can’t handle the love of MAN.

I am a man. I am my own man. I don’t need to impress you. But FOR YOUR SAKE, and the Love of God. Learn some compassion. See beyond your own projections onto me. And love me. Not ONLY because it’s TRUE that I deserve it, though I’ll love you unconditionally at whatever rate it takes for you to notice that, but because the status of your OWN Heart in the Eyes of God, or Love, if you prefer that term, for they are interchangeable, depends upon it.

Yes: I do deserve your love, if only because all the pain of loving you, without a choice, regardless how you treat me, is too much for one man to deserve, though he might handle it with Grace. If that is not attractive, YOU know not what true attraction is. I will not be made to feel inferior to those who try less and towards lesser goals. It never will be easy for you. But why would you let your Soul decay within a mire of ease?

Dm.A.A.