Sexy Beast: The Intimate Adventures of an Ugly Man

The lack of nicotine is beginning to make me edgy. I’d kill for a cigarette. I’d maim and torture for a joint. But they’re right when they say it’s a gateway drug. If I had a joint now, by bedtime I’d be out of my mind on Maryland Cookies and Häagen-Dazs.

In response to the nicotine withdrawal, my fingers are twitching and I’m coughing like a consumptive, spitting up phlegm till I’m retching and short of breath. When my breath does come, it’s bad like a butcher’s latrine, and as I belch away heartburn, my mouth actually tastes brown. I feel awful. My mouth didn’t taste brown when I smoked. What’s going on? Nothing is right. I feel unhealthy, thick screams welling up in my head. I belch more brown and recoil from myself, shaking my wretched face and shivering.

‘Enough!’ I yell.

Pablo jerks his head and looks at me as if to say, ‘How many times have I told you not to do that? Jesus.’

‘Sorry, Pablo.’

But balls to January. I’m better than January. I’m better than one measly month, and I can beat these cravings. I made a promise to myself. I know I make promises to myself at a rate of two or three a week, and I know I really mean it every time, especially in January, but this time—I swear by St Münchhausen—it’s different.

This year I have eschewed New Year’s Resolutions in favour of the infinitely more grandiose ‘New Life Resolutions’, which are as follows:

1 Lose 8 Stone in Excess Body Fat and Become Fit and Healthy

2 Stop Smoking Cigarettes Completely and For Ever

3 Meet and Fall in Fully Reciprocated Love with the Woman of My Dreams

Furthermore, I have enlisted the help of the internet to keep me on the straight and narrow.

I have, as threatened, started a blog. As well as keeping track of my progress with the above resolutions—which I feel fall foul of neither trifling nor unfeasible—I hope that the blog will add monster strength to my convictions. Thus, I have confided in it in much the same way as one might confide in one’s harshest, most mean-spirited friends—friends you inform that you’ve given up smoking, just like that (you may click your fingers for emphasis), making a really big deal of it, shaking your head when they doubt your willpower, smiling all smug and wholly self-satisfied. You are Jesus. ‘O ye of little faith,’ you say, maybe even making a bet or two for good measure. You do all this knowing full well that if you fall from the wagon and fail, they will mock you and sneer at you and publicly humiliate you with a venom that will bring tears to your eyes. They will poke you mercilessly with verbal sticks of shame and cruelty until you weep openly, destroyed by their schadenfreude. Of course, this is exactly why you tell them in the first place. The fear you feel of your friends’ bitching and barbs spurs you on, perhaps even more than your fear of being eaten away by cancer.

So this is why I have started a blog. The blog will take the place of the mean-spirited friends I do not have. I have made grand claims on this blog. I am Jesus, smiling smug and self-satisfied, and fear of the potential opprobrium of feisty strangers is already keeping me focused and incentivised.

What this means, of course, is that I have to find readers. Apparently, the thing to do is to visit other people’s blogs, link and leave comments, create a trail of virtual breadcrumbs and ‘establish a presence’. So this is what I’ve been doing and, so far, I think it’s going quite well. People are coming. Also, interestingly, those that have come—so far, at least—are predominantly female. Which leads me to confront the very real possibility that if I blog well, which I fully intend to, there’s no reason that the Woman of My Dreams won’t happen upon my words and fall instantly, eternally in love with me.

No reason at all.

We shall see.

Of course, blogging is just one way in which the internet can aid me in my search for True Love. There are others. Which is why a few days ago I signed up to Love and Friends, ‘the online dating site for thinking people’. This sounds perfect. Not only does the term ‘thinking people’ describe me to a T, but also, almost certainly, the Woman of My Dreams.

Filling in the profile took me most of a long Sunday evening, but you can’t rush these things. Also, I think it’s essential to be honest, and if at all possible, brutally so. Asked to give my thoughts on the subject of ‘Sports and Exercise’, I wrote: ‘I’m a big man, but I’m out of shape. Horribly out of shape. In a word, I’m fat. In fact, I worked out my body mass index recently and I’m ashamed to report that I’m actually “severely obese”. But before you start sending me your salacious winks, you chubby-chasers, you should know that all this is about to change, just as soon as my coccyx is healed. Indeed, by the end of this year, my body will have become my temple, and I want you—yes, you!—to be first through the doors on worship day. (Friday.) And you don’t even have to take off your shoes. Although it would be the polite thing to do.’

I was, and remain, disproportionately pleased with that.

Asked to describe an ‘Enjoyable Evening Out’, I plumped for the following: ‘Buckets and buckets of dim sum followed by a film premiere in a swish Soho screening room, accompanied by the woman I love. Oh, and she’s in love with me too—I’m fed up with all that unreciprocated nonsense. Incidentally, I wrote the screenplay for the film we’re watching—I may even have directed it—and when it ends, the whole audience jumps to its feet and starts cheering. We can’t hear them, however, because we’re too busy doing it.’

Seriously, what thinking woman in her right mind would fail to fall for that kind of pizzazz? Well—as it turns out—all of them. In the four days since I ‘established my presence’, I’ve received precisely no interest. Neither an unsubscribe nor an ironic poke. I don’t really know why I was anticipating some interest, but I was. I guess I’m really not as amusing as I think I am.

Or, of course, it could just be the fact that I didn’t put up a picture of myself on my profile. I did consider it, but then I thought that doing so would be rather like praying to be picked for the school football team while sitting at the edge of the pitch in a wheelchair. So instead I put up a photo of the Elephant Man. Which, thinking about it, is rather like praying to be picked for the school football team while sitting at the edge of the pitch in a wheelchair, dressed as the Elephant Man.

I know it’s potentially counter-productive—although not necessarily—but I’m really not ready to put my face on the internet yet. Actually, there’s more to it than that.

In a nutshell, it’s a reaction to the fact that all my life I’ve been judged and persecuted because of the way that I look, because of the way my face is put together. The magnificent thing about the internet, and establishing a presence thereon, is that, robbed of the physical fact of my appearance, people are finally forced to react to what lies beneath the surface. They are forced to react—if you will—to the real me.

I’m fed up with being a freak show. Done with it. I’m done with the titters and the comments and the endless opinions. I’m done hearing, ‘Oh, you’re not that bad,’ and I’m especially done hearing, ‘Yeah, actually, I see what you mean.’ I’m done with all of that.

Now I exist in a place separate from my unpleasantly misshapen face, and that’s how I like it.

However, what’s good for the blog may not necessarily be good for the dating site. After all, I know that when I search for the Woman of My Dreams, I always tick the box that says ‘Photos Only’. I suppose my hoping that the Woman of My Dreams is not quite as superficial as I am—as well as wickedly beautiful—is probably a tad unfair.

Oh well. Balls then, to dating sites.

Thankfully, the internet is not yet out of ideas.

Last week I began frequenting chat rooms in earnest. In case you’ve never dabbled in such things, let me explain. Chat rooms are basically online spaces packed out with young people, the vast majority of whom—if my intuition holds water—are wasted teenage boys pretending they’re unusually attractive, sexually active, lexically unsophisticated, and incredibly non-discriminating women. However, I am convinced that there are genuine women in there too, and if you happen to have your wits about you, you can sometimes track one down.

After a few hours on my first night on chat patrol, I tracked one down.

For the next few days, we chatted intermittently, and after a couple of hour-long sessions, I’d say we knew one another fairly well. It was only in the early hours of this morning that the conversation began to take a turn towards the spicy. Her name was Grace. Or, quite possibly, his name was Grace. No matter. Although if he was a teenage boy pretending, then kudos to him. He was good.

So here, with permission, is my virtual cherry, all popped and pulsating…

wicked.grace: So do you want to ‘cyber’, as I believe the kids call it?

elbows: But I’m eating my banana and peanut butter sandwich.

wicked.grace: Well hurry up. I’m feeling sexy.

elbows: Oh my.

wicked.grace: What are you wearing?

elbows: Oh god, lots of clothes. It’s freezing in here at the moment. I think the heating’s busted. I keep meaning to have a word with the landlord but there just aren’t enough hours in the day. And he’s not the easiest person to get hold of at the best of times, let alone when I want something doing. You still feeling sexy?

wicked.grace: You’re not taking this seriously are you?

elbows: I’m sorry. Am I supposed to? Are you?

wicked.grace: A bit. Well, I was going to try and give it a try.

elbows: OK, hold on. Right. Sandwich finished. Now I just need to establish a couple of ground rules here—I’ve never done this before you see and I really don’t know how it works. So—am I supposed to tell the truth? Or just tell you what I think you want to hear?

wicked.grace: I’m not sure. The truth I guess. Maybe with a couple of sexy lies thrown in.

elbows: Really? OK, here we go. I’m wearing a large T-shirt with an amusing slogan on it (‘Warning: this T-shirt may contain tits’—hilarious), plus a big fisherman’s jumper, plus a woolly hat pulled down over my ears. On my bottom half, however, I’m wearing skin-tight sexy rubber pants, and no underwear. Woof!

wicked.grace: Hmmm.

elbows: What are you wearing?

wicked.grace: I’m wearing leather boots and tight blue jeans. On my top half I’m wearing a green shirt and a green scarf around my neck.

elbows: Long or short sleeves?

wicked.grace: Long sleeves, pulled up to the elbows.