Prince Caspian (part one)

Cropped from "Statue of Mithras", Jade Koekoe, used under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

People think that the measure of an individual’s attractiveness is how many people desire them carnally. That’s a misconception. Sex appeal is really about being attainable and many people have it. Having an unearthly beauty is something else entirely, and in my experience the way you know you have it is that people keep trying to give you things. When I was a child people would trip over themselves to offer me sweets and toys. It was like one long cautionary roleplay about stranger danger. As a child you expect the world to orient itself around you, but as I got older I began to suspect there might be something different about me. When I was fourteen a guy kept trying to give me his son’s mountain bike until I had to tell my parents that it was making me feel weird. A woman whose lawn I used to mow wanted to give me a lithograph by Picasso. I still don’t know if I talked her out of writing me into her will. Guess I’ll find out when she dies.

It’s not like it was a grooming thing, despite my sister taunting me about it to this day. “Remember when we left you alone in Paper Plus and the sex traffickers came for you?” she says, the traffickers in question being two septuagenarian women who were trying to buy me lunch. She refers to me mockingly as Prince Caspian after the titular character in the Narnia book, or just “the beautiful boy”, even though she’s just as beautiful herself. I always felt she was better equipped to handle it. It’s more expected for women to be gorgeous and she was very self-possessed from an early age. I sometimes retaliate by calling her Bella, which was originally a reference to her Twilight phase, but now it’s also because she gets compared to Bella Hadid a lot. There’s not really any resemblance, but we’re ethnically ambiguous so it’s the first thing people’s brains fart out. She hates it. My sister glides through the world in a cloud of invisible boundaries and seems to be able to control how people react to her. Despite having her example to learn from my entire life, I’ve never been able to master the skill myself.

The unwanted gifts thing is very awkward. People never want anything from me in return. They just hand things over like it’s a reflex, like it would be unnatural to charge me. I think the way I look makes them panic and they forget that they’re meant to be a barista or whatever. My mother has always been adamant that I don’t coast on my looks, but I can’t say I’ve never taken advantage of it. You have to try the forbidden fruit at least once and sometimes it’s just easier to say yes, but for the most part I’ve had to develop some very firm but gracious strategies of refusal. It’s a relief to find people who are completely unmoved by me, and I’ve become loyal to some very jaded and unfriendly shopkeepers because of this. I like to believe that I’m not too avoidant, but now that I think about it my habits might suggest otherwise. I shop online whenever I can and I work remotely in a small team of nerds in a non-customer facing role. I’m a wraith at my gym, appearing only in the middle of the night when the most locked-in bros won’t break their focus to notice me. I used to go earlier, but a couple of women got distracted and injured themselves and I felt terrible about it.

If you’re assuming that girls are something of a problem you would be correct. Other men are often confused that I’m not an absolute monster of a womaniser. I guess that’s what they would do in my shoes, which is dismaying. I hate it when people are too comfortable taking a prurient interest in my personal life, but I’m trying to explain my situation here so here’s the truth. I do like women a lot, but the way they react to me feels like I have an unfair advantage. It disgusts me to think of using a girl for sex or attention, especially when she’s in that early phase of being intoxicated by my looks. For a while I tried to tone it down by wearing fake glasses and worn-out baggy clothes and not washing my hair, but it didn’t work and fashion people kept begging me to model for them. I tried dating women on the same level of attractiveness as me and they were all lovely (truly beautiful people are often also very nice), but I found that what I really wanted was some escapism from my whole deal rather than having it reflected back at me. I’ve slept with a few guys and concluded that it’s not really my thing, but I will say that I’m less remarkable in the context of the gay community and that was a relief. Eventually I developed a workable strategy, mixing with the opposite sex in a light and cautious way and making connections with women who could appreciate the way I look without being overwhelmed. This has led me to be pretty open in terms of things like age or physical type, which has honestly been enriching.

And yet despite these positive experiences, insecurities still lurk. I’m imagining my sister calling me “the beautiful sadboi” right now, but sometimes I wonder if anyone can really see me for who I am. I’m not proud of this, but sometimes when I want to escape an interaction with a stranger I try to shake them off by acting like an idiot. I don’t mean being boorish or inappropriate, I mean like pretending that I think birds go underground at night, or proselytising about effective altruism. I know I bring it upon myself, but I’m kind of offended by how easy it is to believe that I’m a dolt. Maybe everyone assumes the worst about me and just cuts me huge amounts of slack. Maybe the worst is true about me and I’m not aware of it because my existence is so cushioned. What happens when I’m ready for a life-changing relationship with big feelings? How do I get someone to take me seriously and how will I know that it’s the real thing?

That’s why I started catfishing.