Warts and All

by Nicholas Allen — October 17, 2007

There are a lot of things I worry about women finding out about me after we've been dating for a couple of months. Actually, it's not that I worry about them finding these things out, so much as I worry what their reaction will be. I like, for example, to eat re-heated pizza in my underwear first thing in the morning. I have a subscription to Celebrity Skin magazine. Sometimes I'll spend hours watching 10-minute segments of different movies on DVD (one woman claimed this was evidence of burgeoning ADD, but I disagreed--so sue me if one movie makes me remember a scene in another movie and if I want to see said other scene right now). These are the kinds of things that often at least give the average woman pause, even if they don't drive her screaming right out the door.

It stands to reason that women must feel the same way, although I've yet to have a single one express such a concern to me. But there must be women out there who drink milk straight from the carton past its expiration date, or who sometimes tweeze their nose hairs, or who eat raw cookie dough right out of the tube while wearing a facial mask and dancing around lip-synching to the song "Material Girl" (okay, that last one is something I once saw my sister actually doing).

In an ideal world, love should be love--warts and all. I won't go so far as to say that a woman should love me for the eating-pizza-in-my-underwear thing, but I'd like to think that the right woman wouldn't love me any less for it. And I also like to think that I wouldn't love that right woman any less if I, say, discovered her picking her teeth with a toenail clipping (something I once saw a college buddy do, although I've yet to hear of a similar phenomenon among the fairer sex).

Patricia and I haven't gotten quite comfortable enough with each other just yet to explore any of this decidedly less attractive terrain. But I firmly believe, in my heart of hearts, that when that day comes, there's nothing Patricia will be able to reveal that would make me feel at all less attracted to her.

On the other hand, there's definitely no rush to go out and test that theory. I mean, there is something to be said for preserving the mystery in a relationship as long as possible.