no.3 “through a mirror greasy”

When my friends kept telling me I looked different in every picture I took, my first thought was of course that I was a demon shapeshifter. But Father’s ancestors being from Denmark, and Mother’s from Hungary, the evidence that I actually was supernatural was pretty shaky. The next thought was that my friends were screwing with me. That they somehow set out to undermine my sense of self - unusually low in the first place - by way of doubting my appearance in pictures to cause my social downfall. But it turned out that I was not in the movie Mean Girls, that my friends were decent people and actually told the truth: I did look very different in every picture. I could see it myself now. In one picture I had a beak instead of a nose, in another black instead of dark blond hair, a third one showed my close blood relations to manatees and don’t get me started on the parade of lazy eye variations.

Hence when it came to picking profile pictures for the newly discovered dating app, my 18 year old self was at a crossroads. Should I present myself in the incoherent but more realistic way and choose five pictures from five different versions of me, ranging from a young Harvey Keitel to Gargamel the Evil Wizard? Or create a persona and carefully construct the romanticized visual narrative of something like an underage Aryan bricklayer who cooks four star dinners, obsessively plays the piano and feeds his body-temple on nothing but protein? Should I be honest and present an accurate picture or lie and sell the best version of myself? Opportunist pig that I am, of course I decided for the latter and once I started adjusting the pics and stats a little, there was no holding me back. In my online profile I grew several inches, lost dozens of pounds, started to speak Japanese fluently and had years of experience in the service sector. At the end of one afternoon on my computer I turned into a complete stranger. But a very attractive one. I was absolutely fascinated with the person I created. And so were „gayMaus84“, „theholinator“ and many more friendly avatars on the dating website. Alex, the only one without a nickname in his profile, immediately stuck out and caught my attention. He seemed perfect. Alex was 6’2’’, an active member of a rowing team, looked like a Persian Dream Prince, played the harpsichord for fun and as luck would have it also spoke fluent Japanese. That last information presented a bit of a problem, but I decided to cross that bridge when I got to it. If it actually came to a situation during our date when speaking Japanese was required, I could come up with something. I had seen hundreds of episodes of Sailor Moon after all. After a few easy lines back and forth, Alex and I decided to meet up in real life. He texted me his address and I was on my way.

Driving out to the neighboring town of Mössingen, famous home of the world’s most chlorinated public swimming pool, it finally dawned on me that Alex had done the same thing I did: He lied on his CV. How could someone living in the shadiest part of Grimm’s nightmare forest be something of an award-winning, harpsichord-playing Greek God? No way. I had been bluffed by my own trick. He had definitely lied in his profile. He had probably only flirted with taking up the harpsichord once when he was six, was on a fantasy rowing team which he made up of hundreds of miniature rowboat collectibles and 6’2’’ was the height of his mother, with whom he still shared a flat. I’b be lucky if he had teeth! Clasping my hands tighter onto the steering wheel, I pictured the worst possible outcome. When I finally pulled into his driveway, my expectations couldn’t get any lower. At this point I’d be grateful if he wasn’t gonna propose to cut off each other’s testicles and fry them. „Keep your head up!“ I told myself, that had happened several hundred miles away in a whole other part of Germany anyhow. 

I got out of the car and rang the bell. Just seconds later the neatly painted metal door revealed a casually dressed college student with dreamy eyes and a three-day stubble around almost Clark Kentian cheekbones. I got in and took off my shoes in the semi-darkness of the hallway. „So this was Alex, huh?“ I thought as I gave him the up-and-down. He was six feet one at the most, and his physique was nice, but was it princely as advertised? When he closed the door, led me into the living room and stepped into the light I had the shock of a lifetime and gasped a little: He was absolutely gorgeous. This was no Prince, here was a motherfucking King. While he prepared some drinks and casually asked me about my day, I realized that he was everything he made himself out to be. I looked around and inspected the medium-sized two bedrooms of his apartment, neither of which his mother lived in, and was completely intimidated by the tasteful interior. There was even a small rowing medal on one wall.

I was fucked. Here was this beautiful stranger inviting me into his home, and I wasn’t even sure I had told him my real name. I tucked away my belly fat and tried to place myself behind waist-high objects so he wouldn’t see my unshapely thighs. I made up a wild story about me being born on a Canadian oil rig instead of the local hospital that we could see from his house, and when he asked me how I found Creatine I told him I didn’t really collect rock-type Pokémon. I could tell he was starting to doubt the artificial persona I was desperately trying to uphold. But he didn’t say anything. He was too damn well-mannered. Polite perfect asshole… 

The charade went on, and as a gracious host he made light conversation for about an hour. At the end of the night he told me he wanted to show me something, and as we left the newly built modern living room led me through the old refurbished part of the house; with some parts dating back to the 16th century as I was informed. At the end of the half-timbered hallway we entered a room that had nothing in it except for a handful of old light brown dressers and cupboards. I wasn’t thinking much, as Alex sat down at one of the dressers and pulled up his sleeves. While I babbled on about high-strung subjects like the right temperature for pudding he folded out a wooden panel, exposed a white keyboard and with it the instrument that destroyed my last hope of getting through this night in one piece: a real-life harpsichord. After he stretched out his hands and played a wonderful melody by someone whose name I just can’t remember because my head is full of Miracle Whip jingles, the ever-smiling Alex asked me what I thought of his playing. In a desperate effort to save the last bit of my pretend sophisticated face I replied: „Watashi wa doitsu-jin desu.“ He looked at me nonplussed. „That’s Japanese,“ I said. „It means: ‚Your music fills my lung to the brim with magical breathe.‘“ (It doesn’t.) He put the wooden keyboard cover down and got up. „Sorry,“ he said, „I don’t really speak Japanese. But I guess everyone lies in their online profile, don’t they?“ He looked me in the eye and smiled, and in that moment I knew someone like me could never date a guy like him. Not because I was a 5’9’’ tall, unemployed teenager with an average body and hair in unfortunate places, but precisely for the reason that I acted like I wasn’t.

I left Mössingen and Alex and never met him again. From a young New Hollywood sex symbol to a grumpy old cartoon wizard, my significant other should get to know and like every version of myself, and not just the fabled Aryan bricklayer. But before that other person could do that, I myself should either master the Japanese language - or finally face some inconvenient truths.