Hotness is a circle

Narcissus is the Greek tragedy of the man so in love with himself he drowned in a pond chasing his own reflection. What a fucking amateur.

I look into the bathroom mirror in Zarina’s obnoxiously large house, holding my minotaur mask in my hand. Gnarly bass, funky electronics, and easy laughter boil through the gaps in the door. I want to get one last look at what I’ve done before I show them. 

The kid is gone. Was it my T levels? Were my parents secret siblings? Just the worst possible sperm by dumb luck crawled fetidly into a really dumb egg?

It doesn’t matter now. I’ve rebuilt myself into who I was meant to be.

The real me, the best me—Alfonso—has returned, bitches. Nobody thought to invite little Fonzie to the five-year reunion party. To have it on Halloween was even more foolish.

They let me walk right on in with my costume: the Minotaur, a bull-headed brute cursed to wander a labyrinth and feast on men. He’s a bloodthirsty monster, and now I’m the inverse. The creature takes off his mask, and underneath is the most gorgeous man in the world. Me. 

That’s irony. The Greeks invented it.

I’ve got this.

I drop the minotaur mask to the floor and set my pageboy just right, like a dark-haired He-man. I look like God fucked Aphrodite—yeah, cross-religion pollination. I’ll show them all.

I walk out and slam the door so hard the bathroom mirror cracks.

Hello world. It’s been a while.

Come witness your new chosen one, mortals. My first target is ahead: senior Class President, Charlie Bogswight. He’s Looksmatching in the kitchen with some other Betabuxx. He’s just in a blazer, shirt tucked in, boat shoes on. Jesus fucking Christ, is his costume some kind of cosplay of his high school presidency? Pathetic beyond imagination. Child’s play for me. 

I step past a few low-grade Decaymaxxers I used to know, nodding to the dark synthwave rumbling from cobwebbed Focal speakers. I recognize Hank Zmerc and Addison Bellgrade who never gave me the time of day. They all turn as I float past. I slap a witch’s hat on a nearby table to the floor like we shared a grudge—little Fonzie wouldn’t have had the guts to do it.

In a flash, I’m next to Charlie as I sip plain club soda in the classic red cup. I know alcohol ages your face.

“Charlie, my boy, long time no see. What’s your costume supposed to be? Workaholic at a happy hour? Boy steals his daddy’s jacket?” 

My heart quakes as it all starts. Yes, look at me you mid-tier second-rate wannabe-politician. I smile and imagine the fluorescent white stings his bleary eyes. Straightened, bleached, upper-lip lift for proper tooth show. A better smile than his.

He sways. “Sorry, I’m not… church?” comes out in a slur, his index finger trying to point at me. How dare he speak this way to his Ubermensch. My face eclipses his view and his bleary eyes finally rest on me—they snap open.

“Let me revive what’s left of your memory, you fool.” I licked my lips. I could recite the whole thing upside down, underwater, anywhere. 

One quick slap on the countertop to announce my performance to the plebs, then I enunciate like a laser, letting everyone around hear: “Locker room: ‘Oh shit look at thiiiiis—Pizza face has a pizza back.’” I cup a manicured hand to my mouth like a megaphone for the people in the back. 

Some heads turn. A guffaw rings out like a drunken crow. 

“Remember that one, Charlie? ‘Yo Fonzie, get some extra pepperoni on that zzaaa, boy!’ For fucking years. How could you erase my humanity like that, replace me with a sick gag about my body?”

“F-f-Fonzie?”

“The name has always been Alfonso.” I say it louder than I have to, because I can. “You can’t imagine what it’s like, can you, when someone above you punches down? You weren’t just being a dick to me, you were the king of the school, top of the social hierarchy, and you used all that to make fun of the pimply geek?”

“Maybe you were right—I was cringe. I told myself I deserved it. It was in my control to change.” I raised my arms. Look at me. “I’ve mastered my body, and I can’t be humiliated by people like you who used to have high Sexual Market Value. Compare us now.” 

He tries to look, tries to grasp his dejected market value amid his drunkenness but I doubt he’s even smart enough to comprehend his own hopelessness.

I’m not done. I’m high on my own success. 

“One word: Accutane. Look at me now. How’s this pizza?” I pull the back of my shirt up, revealing pure smooth trapezii with nary the dream of a zit thereon. I don’t mention the piece of my liver the medication claimed. 

I’m close, bumping into him. He spills his drink on his shirt. I’m sure everyone is still looking at me, the champion.

“Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. The symmetry in my facial thirds? Done in Mexico. Those big ears are reduced, pinned back—China. I sold a kidney there to replace the savings I tossed. Your overbite, your front-tooth gap—they can't compete. Vote for me for Class President now, kids! You’re an insult to the Blackpill, alongside your chin’s weakness. I’m in another universe compared to you; I’m a Greek God and you’re one of the Sumerian ones nobody remembers.”

He’s pressed against the corner of the kitchen countertop, frozen in shock now, starstruck. Mission accomplished, another mortal crushed. 

“Mogged!” barks from my mouth as I push past the crowd triaging the wreckage.

My tour of vengeance demands more blood. Target number two, searching.

No doubt star quarterback Jayvon Williams is still upstairs with that strumpet. Oh well—I don’t traffic in the feelings of hasbeens and smalltowners. 

I'm beyond even the Hot People Bubble. I’m in my own Hotness Singularity. 

“Ohhhh Jayvon,” my sonorant voice rings out as I ascend the mahogany steps. I literally don’t care what happens next.

I know he’s in the master bedroom—he wasn’t afraid to take up as much space as possible. 

Never a conscientious one, he left the door unlocked. I saunter in, see him in his football uniform necking his peroxide-blonde tart between the four tall bedposts in the dark. What a dumb costume for a Halloween party if you actually play football.

Her costume is a demoness with a short red dress and a horned hairband. She’s barely a six—oh, time hasn’t been kind to these bozos and bozayzays. 

“Fourth quarter, red zone, beat it,” he chuckles into her neck as I approach.

“Jayvon, it’s been too long, fellow athlete.”

Still working on his bed-candy, he says: “Never tossed a pigskin with that dude.”

“Let me jog your memory.” I pretend to squish myself into the wardrobe like it’s a school locker, “Eeeh! Ehhh, no Jayvon, I’m gonna be late for drama class.”

Then I boom like Jayvon: “‘You’re already an expert, drama queen!’”

Greek tragedies were the best drama. Jayvon would be Ajax—the jock of the Odyssey. OK, technically that’s an epic not a tragedy.

His head pops up from her collarbone: “You’re that nerdy toga guy? Alonso?”

“Alfonso, you meathead; you can’t even remember my name. Of course you don’t recognize me. Look how I’ve transformed.”

“I put like three drama kids in a locker, I think.” 

The strumpet next to him titters into his chin. Party beats vibrate up through the floor.

“Three? THREE? Well feast your eyes on this one.” I click on the floor lamp next to me, bathing my assets in the gold. 

I stand tall; I flex. I can feel my shirt stretching under my mountains. 

“Four femur breaks, clavicle lengthening, sprints everyday to nine percent bodyfat. I built this brow ridge,” I run my fingers across the bone and scar, “hammer hit by hammer hit.” I let the ‘t’ at the end explode. 

I know they’re looking at my jackedness and muscular rippery. I’ll omit the 400mg of Trenbolone a week I blast in my ass.

“Look at my dominance. I’m not afraid of you anymore. I’ve won. I’m bigger and stronger than you. You can’t make me feel small; you can’t make me feel less like a man. Now I’ve exceeded your size and strength, I exceed your social value and can finally say to you what I’ve always wanted to.” It was true, I must have twenty pounds on him, though he didn’t quite make it to the college football level. 

She eyes me like she got the wrong order in a restaurant and whispers something to him.

Bringing up his social value gets his attention; he scrambles up from the sheets like they’re pages of math homework.

“Look Geraldo,” he puffs up. Was he ready to strike? I try not to back away. I’ve defused his power. Jayvon knows he can’t win this encounter with violence, right?

He glances at our spectator sitting up in the bed, calves tensing. 

Back to me: “I’m sorry if I stuffed you into a locker once or twice. I was kinda going through a rough time, I mean, my parents were getting divorced, honestly, and I definitely took it out on people.” He shrugs like it’s all better with his made-up excuse, shifts his weight, then he finally looks me in the fucking eyes.

“Well, Jayvon, I’m impressed with your ability to spin up fairy-tales but—”

He looks like he’s seen a ghost: yeah, the ghost of Christmas Sexy.

“Fonz…eeee…” his breath died away and he grew pale. Maybe his tasty hanger-onner got scared; she wouldn't move a muscle either.

“Boom!” I explode with as much bass in my voice as I can muster. More than Jayvon’s. Vocal lengthening was worth the trip to Turkey. It was pretty fucked up that I didn’t get to finish my speech but I had a bigger fish to fry. He got the message, I think.

Back downstairs for le piece de la resistance.

I can tell I've made an impression on this party of leftovers. Goddamn, Charlie is STILL cowering in the kitchen. I blew his mind. Has he even budged an inch? He’s still got a gaggle of his beta buddies crowding around him, looking around, taking pics. Come take a pic of this. My cheekbones swish the air as I stroll by.

Ha! What’s this? They’re recording me, taking pics of me. Oh yeah, do it. They've taken notice of my absolutely retarded level of pulchritude, probably shat their pants. My fame will be etched in stone after all this, but there's one more score to settle.

Zarina—that Russian beauty. Head cheerleader. Five and a half feet of absolutely ice-cold bitch babe. This is her house, after all. Now we’ll finally have a date, in a way.

Nobody dares step in my way.

She couldn't possibly be—of course. She’s outside by the pool to show off maximum hotness. Even out of school, she's gotta flaunt it. Well me too, baby, me too. 

Party’s thinning out. Out the back door: the California sea breeze blows my bare chest as I rip my shirt open. I’m nine-percent body fat, dry muscled, v taper. A cheerleader will appreciate my devotion to fitness. Oh, where are you now, Zarina, Zarina?

They sense the calm before the storm. I see their silhouettes in pool chairs, shrouded away in the nearby tables. Watching me, getting up. A few leave like when the villain walks into the bar in a Western movie. Let them.

A slender foid exits the pool house, its lights on her back. She’s got a gaggle of ghouls alongside her: moids, toys, prey, a bae. I’m ready. I timed my Peak Week for this.

She almost walks past me before she speaks.

“Oh, I think you’re the guy? This is the Playa Dorada High School reunion afterparty, class of ‘2X. I think you’re at the wrong party and you’re weirding people out.” A wide man in a Playa Dorada Marlins shirt puffed out his chest behind her. Oh I see, he’s got some facepaint on his neck like gills—so lame.

“Zarina.” Even after all that time together, I'd never said her name out loud before with such manliness.

She steps a foot closer, and the light from the houses cushions her curves even as she crosses her arms. She’s still almost perfect.

“Uh ok, I don’t know you but you need to get out of here.”

“Beat it, freak,” Marlin-shirt barked behind her. I think he’s got one of those meathead names like Chad or Brad.

“Don’t you remember? Greek Studies elective, senior year?”

The tickle of recollection narrowed her gaze.

“Our final project? Mrs. Miukolos assigned us together. I was so happy to do all that for you, and you smiled at me when I showed you. Our project got an ‘A’ — I titled it ‘Orpheus Never Looked Back.’”

A pause like the space between Zeus’s heartbeats.

I step into the light too, closer. “Recognize me now?” I say amid the gasps and gawks. I make sure Zarina gets an eyeful of my visage. She sees my upward canthal tilt—pure hunter eyes. My lips are plumped with filler to perfection. The cleft of my chin matches the arc of my bubble-butt. I’ve exercised my masseters into jawline capstones. If they told me my face looks like a bicycle seat, or a cubist painting, I’d say ‘go harder on the poetry to capture my essence!’

She struggles for a second to absorb my aesthetics. “Uh, you look like the cousin of that guy, the mythology lover who always wore leather sandals, um—”

It’s like she’s trying to avoid acknowledging my rizz, my guap.

“I’m the mythology nerd: Alfonso. And you were, you still are, like Aphrodite. And I forgive you for not wanting to talk to me back then. I’ve fixed all that. I just remember, I was so excited to get that time with you, and I wasted it being such a quiet Beta. Maybe I shouldn’t have worked so hard on that project, I don’t know—but since I did—”

“Oh, thanks I guess, that was nice of you to work so hard on that project, but I did take the Greek class as my Pass / Fail, so I only needed like a C. I didn’t want anything wasting my cheerleading time.”

I forget to maintain Alpha posture for a second. 

“What did you do to your face?” She asks in unblinking wonder.

They circle around me like a gaggle of tourists at the Louvre, taking in my delicious new proportions from the spread of my lats to my facial symmetry. Call me Roadmap with these veins. Call me Rocky with these muscles! 

Call me David. I casually match the posture of the Italian statue.

“What didn’t I do? From the ear-pinning to the double-jaw surgery, I’ve remade myself. That ‘sad ancient-religions nerd’ is gone, as you can see. Witness me now, mortals. I’m like Adonis, I’m like Achilles, I’m hotter than fucking Gigachad.” 

I flex my biceps, fists up in the air like symbols of rebellion. I squeeze my stomach, and my ten-pack snaps into razor sharp detail. I give ‘em a stomach vacuum pose.

One goon by Zarina is howling with laughter so hard he chokes. He turns away as if he can’t bear to see someone so goddamn handsome. Forget him. 

“Zarina, didn’t you hear me? I’m a new man, a real man. You were too nice to tell me off when I didn’t deserve you. I’m really more your type now, equal status, someone you’d … you know…”

She’s weirded out—a woman of her caliber doesn't get candor often when she’s surrounded by desperate, thirsty fuckbois. She’s adjusting to my alpha energy, inhaling my pheromones. Installed those in Rome.

Her head vibrates like she just heard something ridiculous, as if I told her Jupiter was the king of the gods instead of Zeus. 

“Ok, look, Alfonso—I do remember you.” Her voice goes gray, deflated. She sounds smarter, which is strange, like this is really how she should sound, and everything before was the act.

“Honestly,” she drops the blow, “I felt kinda bad for you, seeing how miserable you were outside Greek Studies, so when your face lit up when we got paired together, I just went with it. I let you do the work because you were drooling all over me and I didn’t know what to do.”

I feel like I’m in another universe. She keeps going and I try to stand upright.

“And now you’re back.” Somehow, the words echoed like we were in a mountain valley instead of a suburb. “The most fucked up thing you could have done.”

What.

“Even if I weren’t buried in calculations at the SoCal Tokamak all day—what’s happened to you? Why didn’t you just find some, I don’t know, liberal arts major nerd who likes mythology?”

“A liberal arts nerd? Her sexual market value would never match mine—”

“Instead you—what?—got plastic surgery, and came back here a few years later? Like I’d want this from some guy I forgot? Did you even go to school?”

“Forgot?” Cue the dolly cam zoom away from me.

“I’m sorry, Alfonso.” The pitying disgust in her voice is the most awful thing to ever touch my ears.

“All right, asshole, get outta here, she says you’re not fucking invited.” Chad Brad grabs me—and I panic. I’m built for beauty not brawn. I’d never risk this face. Would you fight with the Mona Lisa?

We struggle for a second, and he seems to grow stronger and stronger. His other hand grabs my lapel and I can barely budge him. Is he going to try to toss me in the pool? A dozen old classmates including Billy Bronco and Feather Hathernash are up around us, hooting and hollering.

Zarina screams off to my side. The laughing-coughing fit ceases, and I realize Chad Brad is now silent.

I freeze. He’s frozen.

I wrestle my arm out of his insane python grip—no, stone. He’s stone. Rough, textured, gray, like a plebian version of museum marble. He’s a statue in front of me, the final look on his face of half-rage, half-fear.

I’m free.

He looks like Charlie, has that same look in his face as Jayvon did before I walked away. 

A few feet away, just far enough that I can’t smell her, Zarina’s having an utter fucking meltdown. She’s standing in shock, feet caught in slow motion trying to back up. The look on her face—she finally, truly sees me.

Her jaw drops.

For a second, Zarina’s wailing makes me want to hold her. I lose control, and think back on our time in Greek class. Cheesy romance-montage music plays. I dash away the tainted memory. I am Alfonso, Looksmaxxed to Hell and Back! Fonzie is dead.

Jesus Christ. Holy Moses. Great Zeus—

They’re all turning to stone around me, screaming. Petrifying. I spin in a circle, watching the small crowd around us morph into Stonehenge.

It hits me; I see it now. I ignore the screeching and crying to turn to the pool, gaze upon myself. A face to shock Poseidon stares back at me. I see a being like no one ever before on planet Earth, like I came from the stars.

From the stars.

I turn.

“Zarina, I don’t think I desire you anymore.”

She trips on the edge of the patio meeting the grass. I bear down on her trembling form. I step past the cougher—stone too. My mind is racing like Mercury’s boots but I must settle things with the Cheerleader Who Got Away.

“Zarina, listen to me.” I feel like I’m Prometheus, bringing the Gods’ fire to earth.

She’s screaming for help now, calling me a freak. I just need to show her how far I’ve come, so I can let go. She scrabbles backwards like a crab, and I can’t help but think how strange it is to see a beautiful woman scurry away like a brainless bottom-feeder. Huddled against the pool house wall, she squeezes her eyes tight together like she’s ignoring the apocalypse. 

Her hands grip at the grass like I once imagined she’d grip the bedsheets.

I’m serene; she trembles. I kneel before her, float above her. Gently tracing a manicured index finger from her earlobe to chin, I lift her face to mine. Oh, if only I could go back in time and tell the Old Me about what I’d accomplish.

Something smoldering inside me burns thermite bright.

“Look. At. Me.”

Tears crack open her eyes, and they lock on mine, and she starts to harden like all the others. She screams into my face; I can taste her fear and confusion. 

“Shhh.” I don’t look away as she petrifies into a statue as beautiful as she was in flesh. My cock is hard.

I see the truth now. I can tell myself. 

Beauty isn’t just a line. I thought it was, and I had reached the end, the peak, the ultimate form of gorgeousness. I was wrong.

Beauty is a circle, from horrific to beatific and back again. From awkward and pathetic, to dangerously handsome, then beyond, to divinity. I’m not Narcissus. I’ve ascended past the Gods, past the clouds, past Mount Olympus. I can feel my humanity slipping away, like I’m so far above them, like how Apollo felt skinning alive that satyr Marsyas like he was nothing.

Zarina, your statue will adorn my palace some day, next to the Venus de Milo and my David. The sky is glowing. Is that dawn? I stagger past Chad Brad, now silent and still, and shove him over. He explodes. The music cuts out from the house. I’m in a dream. Someone locked me out, so I rip the door off like Hercules and step inside. A few classmates like Bertrius Fiddlesdell and Shawcricki Biggs are still wandering around, capturing memories on their little misery bricks. They’re so interested in all their stoney friends—maybe they would have liked all the Greek Studies classes I took. Maybe they can try out the latest fashion trend I invented.

I’m on autopilot. I appear before them, grab Shawcricki. I make him look at me; someone is screaming. My looksmaxxing power stones him as well. Bertrius is next—easy. Look at me, look at me. I feel like strobes are all around me. Were they here earlier at the party? I see my minotaur mask lying on the floor by the bathroom; I slip it on Charlie’s rocky fucking head. I turn around and slap into another statue. The house is full of them now. It’s quieter but brighter, lights flaring like the Gods were battling. People are outside, fleeing like the Titans are making planetfall. Oh run, mortals. Flee. Your god is here; a chiseled man.

Look at me. You’re all hideous; you make me sick. Look at me, you all.

I chase them, Mercury’s wind at my back, Apollo’s bow in my hands. I’ll catch them; I’ll make them all look at what we’ve created together. The grass is wet—when did it rain?

I run into the river Lethe. Hephaestus’s hammers ricochet between my ribs.

An iron minotaur screeches at me—agony explodes. I’m in the air until I’m not, and the asphalt eats me alive as Hades takes me.

Thanks for reading!

Check out my Substack for my ouevre: https://substack.com/@zerenner

Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/Narcissus-Caravaggio_%281594-96%29_edited.jpg