Glasses!

I’m so fucken excited—tomorrow morning I’m getting my first ever set of glasses! I don’t need them for the sake of my vision, but for other equally compelling reasons.

Tomorrow I start work on a job assignment that will take up about 25% of my time. Though it will only last for two-three months, I will have to work closely with a bunch of women—usually equal or greater than me in rank.

Most of them will be unattractive, a bit disgruntled, and pride themselves on their intellectuality. This situation of course spells trouble as it has in the past. Athletic, attractive, and god-forbid intelligent men are known for being assholes—especially to this subset of the demographic.

Now, I wouldn’t have a problem if these women could figure out somehow that I was gay and not a threat. However, I have to act professional—aka, straight—and often many women cannot seem to tell that I veer left anyways.

None of this course would be a problem if more women were in powerful positions in society. Women would be more accustomed to dealing with such men in inferior positions. However, society generally deals the contrary hand. As such, when women are in charge of men like me, if I were to so much as sneeze and perceive that I look down on them in any way—I’m in for it. Likely, because I’m new, they will quickly also know where I went to school—which will cast me as the annoying typical spoiled brat who’s always gotten their way.

Its happened in the past and its not been a pretty sight. So tomorrow I’m going Dork, Geek, REJECT! I get my glasses tomorrow morning. I’m disheveling my hair and wearing the least clingy over-sized business shirt I could dig up, unflattering trousers, and Ronald McDonald-like shoes. To top it all off, I’m adding the large, clunky, obfuscating, bottle-bottom glasses.

When I open my mouth and at some point involuntarily give away my verbal acuity, it will no longer come from some annoying ass—but instead from some geeky dork who has probably undergone rejection in his life as well.

See, it’s sort of hard to cover things up without glasses because few things speak of the opposite of the stereotype like glasses do. Business attire makes it hard to cover up an athletic body. Shirts have to be tucked in and unless I want to look like a guy who cannot properly fit his clothes—generally, business clothes means that when the suit comes off—they know what you like.

Likewise, hair can also only dissimulate so much. Yes—there are two ways to shaggify. If one has soft features, general dishevelment will do. In the case of pronounced features, you may not be able to fully mask the underlying facial symmetry, but you can effectively limit its immediate effect, i.e. comb the hair asymmetrically along one of the important lines on the face-head such as the cheekbone to temple line or the eye-to cheek-bone line, and with longer hair along the sides, even the jaw to temple line. The key is LOPSIDEDNESS. This is harder to pull off in professional settings—hence the glasses.

Of course, the alternative way to shaggify is the tossled look that makes you look fly, does not refrain the intrusive effect of striking features, and if you’re not in the right social context, just blares—“I know what I’m doing.”

I’m excited. A friend said to me that I don’t need glasses if I can just learn to make people feel respected. I said that generally for some people that’s an uphill battle. While some people struggle to gain respect, others struggle to not be overly intimidating or threatening. It’s reality. I just have to work with it.