It’s not that I’d ever be in a relationship with someone that I find completely unattractive, but I don’t pick potential partners by how beautiful they are; beauty fades, and what remains is what matters.

That said, at the end of high school I dated for a while a girl who was extremely physically attractive. She had silky natural blonde hair the color of sunset on wheat, long muscular legs and a smile that could stun a rhino into submission mid-charge.

The thing is, she had fairly bad self-esteem because as lovely and frankly gorgeous as she was, her two sisters — well, they were two apollonian goddesses elevated into the apotheosis of physical pulchritude by benevolent aliens from planet Beatific Excess. The entire family was an inexplicable genetic freakshow in that sense, especially as none of them looked a bit like their parents. However, my girlfriend was always compared to her sisters by herself and by others, and she felt that she always came up lacking.

Don’t get me wrong — I was glad to be dating her rather than either of her sisters. Her personality was a match for mine. Neither of her sisters really shared many of my interests or tendencies, though both were very nice and I did like the both of them really quite a lot and we got along very well.

But as for looks, neither of the sisters ever wore make-up (And before any freak-outs occur, I know this for a fact — I was often there when all three of them got ready in the morning and it was a very hippie household, so doors were usually wide open, and in fact many of the rooms had no doors at all) and were so attractive that makeup would’ve actually made them look a lot worse. To bring it into the real world, the two of them both looked like Evangeline Lilly, but about twice as lovely and as physically fit.

My girlfriend “only” looked like Evangeline Lilly. Only. (Really, she did, but with blonde hair.)

She recounted to me once a story about an old man who had lost all ability to hold his tongue who had visited one day, and how upon seeing her two sisters he said something like, “My word, you girls are plum beautiful!”

And then my girlfriend walked up, and the old dude when introduced to her said, “But what in the world happened to you?”

Yeah, that probably doesn’t make one feel very good I’d imagine. Amazing how much creatures of relative rank we humans are since as I’ve my noted my girlfriend was prettier than about 99% of well-known Hollywood actresses easily. But next to her sisters to some people (but not to me) she looked like a cave troll.

I’m so tired tonight that I probably wouldn’t have even written the above if I weren’t about to drop, as it’s a touchy topic for understandable reasons. But I’ve never dated for beauty, and I don’t really have a “type,” a concept that I think is idiotic. My type is “intelligent and not too unhealthy to go hiking and outdoors with me” if I could be said to have one at all.

(Or rather, my type is my current partner — she is one of a kind in all the best ways.)

My point is lost, I think, in the exhaustion. But for a young, previously-unloved adolescent it was a whole different world sitting on the couch watching a movie with one barely-clothed girl on one side leaning on you (hippie house — no AC in Florida!), and her equally barely-clothed sister leaning on you un-selfconsciously and companionably on the other side because you are her friend and it feels natural.

Or all piling into a bed together because it seemed like the right idea and hey, there’s the bed and we’re all tired (not in a sexual sense but because, hippies.)

Why can’t I stop writing when I am tired? Ramble, ramble.