Needing Seth

I’d always known I was a geek. Well, since a pretty young age. I loved science fiction, collected action figures, loved cool science facts. The usual.

And as I reached puberty I also realized I was gay. So, yeah, I was a gay geek. With glasses and long stringy hair. I went through a phase for a while where I didn’t want to shower, which, thankfully, didn’t last. But a gay, greasy geek.

Plus, I was shy. So, needless to say I went through my high school years without even my first kiss. By college, I had at least decided bathing was preferable so I rid myself of one strike against me. I’d made a few friends during my normal school years and I still had them when I got to college. That was good. But two of my friends, Ruby and Victor, were straight and a couple. My other friend, Jesse, was gay but way too cute and perky to notice me. I don’t think we were each other’s types, really. Though I wasn’t sure I had a type since I’d never been with a guy.

Then Jesse got himself a boyfriend, his roommate, Gilbert, and I was seething with jealousy. Not over Jesse. But the plain fact the only gay guy I actually knew had a boyfriend, and I had nothing.

“Maybe I need a do over,” I said to Ruby one night when she was over having cappuccino with me. I had a small, tiny, studio apartment. I struggled to pay for that, let alone any bigger place. I was barely making over minimum wage at the doctor’s office I’d gotten a job at as an appointment and file clerk recently. Most of my college courses I was taking now were night classes.

“A do over?” Ruby scrunched up her face. She was painting her fingernails purple, her cup of cappuccino sitting next to her at the dining room table. “Do you mean a makeover?”

I waved my hand. “Yeah, whatever. There has to be something I am doing wrong. No one will even lookat me.”

Ruby eyed me critically. “No offense, Landers, but you’re kind of um…”

Landers. Everyone called me by my last name. It started when we were kids and they never grew out of it. I found myself even introducing myself that way now. It had gotten to the point where sometimes I had to stop and think when someone asked me my first name. Seth, oh yeah.

“Ugly?” I offered with a wince. Because honestly, that is exactly what I feared. That the reason I couldn’t get a single person to notice me was because I was as ugly as sin.

“No, no,” Ruby said quickly. She had the grace to look shocked I had even suggested it. “I was going to say nondescript.”

And that was better? “So in other words, I’m invisible.”

“I think you’ve lived your life trying to be invisible and now you don’t know how to stop.”

Did I mention Ruby was a psych major? One of her quirks was analyzing all of us.

“Even if that is true, how do I become visible again?”

Ruby reached for my long straight hair. “You could get a haircut. This look dates back to 1970s stoner dude. And maybe contacts.”

I shook my head. “I could probably stomach the hair chop, but I scratched my retina badly as a kid and they’ve always told me I can’t wear contacts.”

“How about the operation then?”

“Oh, hell no. No one’s slicing my eyeballs.”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, the drama. Well, then better glasses than those. You look like that old singer, um, Bobby Holly.”

“Buddy Holly.”

“Whatever, that was years and years ago. They make modern eyewear now.”

“I can’t afford designer stuff on my pay,” I said glumly.

“Don’t you have insurance or something at that place you work?”

“Not vision.”

“Well, we’ll go to one of those eye doctors who are in the department stores. See what we can get you.” She leaned back in her chair and stared at me in an assessing manner. “What do you think of having brown hair?”

I frowned. “I have brown hair.”

“Yeah but it’s like mousy. I’m talking something richer, deeper. Like mocha or dark chocolate.”

“That sounds like food, not hair,” I said.

She rolled her eyes. “They all have names like that. I think a dark chocolate would go great with your coloring. Your eyes are gray.”

I’ll be damned if she didn’t say that in an accusing tone. Like I could help the color of my eyes, so I ignored her.

“How about an earring?”

“No way,” I objected. “I’m not doing holes in any part of me.”

Ruby laughed and grabbed her own ear to show me she had earrings all up and down her appendage, at least half a dozen. “It doesn’t hurt, you know.”

“Bullshit. Any time someone puts a damn hole in your body part, it hurts.”

“Don’t be such a baby.”

“No earrings.”

“Okay, fine. Let me see your teeth.”

“My what?”

“Teeth.” She grinned like a horse to show me hers. “Teeth are important. Show me your choppers.”

I showed her. I’d had braces so I knew that my teeth were straight and likely my best feature.