IT Guys
Terrifically handsome men still unnerve me, even at my age now. I’m never sure why that is exactly, all I know is that in the company of one or more of them I have a hard time getting my thoughts to act cohesively in an attempt to at least sound like I’m on top of my game.
I think it’s the handsome part that does me in a bit. It’s distractive and it’s hardly lady-like to stare is it? We live with such double standards don’t we! I mean, a guy on the other hand has hardly any qualms about staring at a beautiful woman. In some respects, I rather admire their audacity.
Handsome men are also more likely to use the beguiling influence of their good looks to mesmerise a woman. I call that ‘using’ their masculine charm. It always behoves me to wonder why they feel the need to actually. Is it the idea of women falling at their feet, or under their power? Maybe! Why?
I’ve also often thought it must be a distinct disadvantage for some men to be so disarmingly handsome that having a decent conversation with a female they hardly knew might prove for them to be difficult because they’d always be wondering what her motives were? Well, wouldn’t you?
My friend El (short for Ellyot) is excruciatingly handsome. But the core of his handsomeness emanates from his unwillingness to capitalise on the external. Rather, his plan always seems to be to put you at ease in your own skin. I have always loved that about him from the first occasion I met him. Now that’s disarming in a positive way.
El’s brother Ash on the other hand is ruggedly handsome and adventurous. He’s a musician but known for going into places like the jungles of Papua New Guinea, up the Sepik river in search of tribes using unusual musical instruments and learning from them the art of playing this or that instrument. The thing about Ash is he’s always coming back from somewhere. He’s your itinerant everywhere man.
We all went one year to a World Music Festival out in the back of beyond. Like me, El and Ash are New Zealand born and we have as part of our cultural psyche this sense of regard toward the ‘manuhuri’ (visitors). And that regard is always extended to anyone by way of friendship wherever we are and to them wherever they come from.
Unbeknown to each other, we’d invited more than 60 people to dinner that night without actually realising we’d done that. It’s how we are. South American Indians, Irish, Brazilians, English and Scots and New Zealanders of course. The little restaurant out the back of Richmond NSW got a huge shock from the influx but we had a riotous time with the Scottish-born chef.
I sat next to the Chief, that’s what they called him. I came up to his waist! A hugely-built, softly spoken American Indian from the Navajo tribe. He was a most handsome man. And strong, you got that sense from the way he carried himself. He seemed purposeful in every action and every word he spoke. He seemed never to waste words as we are want to our marketing-driven world.
To go back to the beginning. I realise now that I don’t really know why some handsome men unnerve me, I suppose the reality is that I know a lot of them and the ones I know have a substance about them that waylays my more careworn thoughts about how I ought to interact with them.
Do externals matter? I think they do though I’m a hopeless case for an explanation as to why. I go back to distraction. It blind sides us, it blind sides me. What else is there to say?
