A Beauty

David Brooks gives out the Sidney Awards, the best magazine essays of the year, and includes Robert Boyers "A Beauty", of which Brooks writes:

It is about Boyers’s late friend, the writer Charles Newman, who was astonishingly handsome...Seductiveness was his daily currency. Women — even waitresses three decades his junior — were constantly flirting with him and he was constantly flirting with them.

My girlfriend used to get miffed because waitresses would shamelessly flirt with me, never realizing it wasn't because I was "astonishingly beautiful" but rather that as a  fucking fat  somewhat husky fellow they knew I'd be ordering a ton of fucking food, therein putting money in their pockets via a higher tip.  Which is fucking depressing.

Also depressing is just how incredible this guy must've looked, according to Boyer:

The most beautiful man I ever knew was Charles Newman, the founding editor of the journal TriQuarterly, a gifted novelist and man of letters...I had known other men who seemed to me too beautiful, men  whose beauty overshadowed every other feature—of character or wit or intelligence. Charlie’s beauty did seem that way to some of  our friends. I’ll not forget the words of a colleague who said, half  seriously, not a minute after she had set eyes on him for the first time,  that no man had a right to look that good. Who does he think he  is? she asked. Others, by far more numerous, were impressed, struck  dumb, or amused.

On one hand, good for him; obviously we all wanna be that..."beautiful."  Apparently he was SO great-looking and his beauty so matter-of-fact that you wouldn't bother to waste time being envious; it'd be like fighting time itself.  On the other hand he's dead, so fuck him - no matter how pretty he was, I have a better chance of getting laid tonight than him.

Fuck YEEEEEEEEEEW, Pretty Boy!*


* Speaking of pretty boys I still haven't given up this goal, btw.  You're welcome, ladies.