Miss Perfect

So I’ve been thinking about Miss Perfect lately. Perhaps it is a bit misleading to refer to her in the personal fashion since she’s really more of an abstract concept in my mind, of which individual women I meet are sometimes instances. Nevertheless, she has (and her various incarnations have) been on my mind.

I’m a deeply relational person. Despite my shyness and general tendency to be reserved, I am rarely happier than when I am close to another person. Paraphrasing a character from one of my favorite films, if there is a God, that God isn’t some nebulous omnipotent force. Instead, God is found in the spaces between people.

My life has, on the whole, been a bit more without warmth and comfort than have the lives of others. I wish I could say that I regret that turn of events, but in reality, I feel that it has given me special insight into who I am, what I desire, how I function, and the extent of my limitations. When you don’t have someone else with whom to be involved, you tend to become involved with yourself to stave off the gnawing emptiness of being alone.

I don’t really ever recall being a child. From my earliest memories, I worked and was treated far more adult than most other children. My brother and I were set to cleaning the china collections. I had to push a lawnmower when I was barely taller than the handle. My brother and I were stopped from trick-or-treating on Halloween starting when I was in the fourth grade because according to my father, it was time to put our childhoods behind us and start to become men.

I don’t ever recall going through a period as a teenager or young adult where I sought to ‘find myself’ and, in a fashion troubling to perhaps only myself, I’m not sure I understand what people mean when they refer to this apparently ubiquitous phenomenon.

High-maintenance. If I was a woman, that’s what men would call me, I’m sure. I imagine slights at every turn (and I know they are truly imagined at the end of the day), and need constant involvement to sate my hunger for human contact. I believe that I correctly label these things as drawbacks to my quality as relationship material.

But Miss Perfect is always there in the back of my mind, and I’m only now realizing that she makes me a better person, seeking to overcome my disadvantages and flaws to build myself into the person I should have been all along.

There have been 5 instances of Miss Perfect in my life, and all share certain qualities in common. I have felt an immediate chemistry with each of them, and in many cases before I even knew their names. I’m not trying to suggest love at first sight or even that I simply found them physically attractive (I’m too much a scientist to admit the former, and too much an ascetic to put much stock in the latter). Rather, I mean to say that in a few brief moments, I could see some special spark in the way that the person approached the world. From the way she smiled to the way she talked to other people, from the way she walked to the way she reacted to some emotional stimulus, I have seen and been impressed. I hesitate to suggest it because I don’t know whether it reflects badly about me and the way I react to the world, but in those brief moments, it seems as if I can see through her and down deep into her soul to discover the hidden woman deep inside. Letting the scientist in me step aside momentarily, it is magical.

Each time I’ve met women like this, I have further gotten to know them. And each time I have plumbed the depths of my relationships with these women, I have discovered that underneath her outer disguise, Miss Perfect was waiting.

Miss Perfect has surfaced in my life five times: once in my early life, once in high school, once as an undergraduate, and twice beyond.

When I moved to Topeka from Pratt, Kansas, I got one monumentally lucky break. My first day of school fell on Halloween, and I dressed up that year (the last year I dressed up until I was in college). My costume that year was a gorilla in a suit. I know, it doesn’t make much sense, but a little boy in a formal tuxedo (with bow tie) and a gorilla mask on really looks fantastically adorable. It’s hard to move to a new school. It’s much easier when you don’t have to show your face right away.

What I remember most about that day isn’t my classroom, my peers, or even my teacher (whose name I’ve forgotten). I remember her. On the bus ride to school, I watched out the bus window at all of the children getting on the bus. At a stop not too far from my house, a beautiful girl wearing a pink princess outfit stood with a friend waiting for the bus to arrive. She walked down the aisle of the bus and as she passed me, she looked at me, through the eyes of the mask, and smiled. I’m sure she didn’t know who I was or mistook me for another of her playmates, but I immediately was smitten.

Her name was Kari (pronounced like Carrie), and she was my hopeless crush from that moment on. She was a year younger than I was but that didn’t get in the way of what you might be thinking was nothing more than a puppy-love scenario. Perhaps it was, thinking back. But simple crushes tend to fade over time, and last for days, weeks, or maybe even months. Mine lasted for a decade.

I knew her from the neighborhood. She went to my elementary school. Then she went to my junior high. When I was in high school, I entered the debate program, and a year later, so did she. I was assigned to mentor her and train her. Two years later, I still harbored affection for that little girl in the princess costume, even when she was soundly beating me in four-speaker policy debate. It wasn’t until my freshman year at college that I found the courage to tell her that I was attracted to her, but by then it was too late. She got married two years ago.

When I was a senior in high school, I met Jessica. Jessica didn’t go to my school (she was a T-High girl), but she worked at the general store in the historical park where I was the Soda Jerk at the old-fashioned drugstore/soda fountain. The great part about working at the historical park was that virtually nobody knew it existed, and of those who’d heard of it… well, let’s just say that historical parks aren’t all that big of a draw even among the NPR-listening crowd.

The long and short of the matter was that we rarely had to deal with customers, and if the weather was in any way dismal or rainy, we would go an entire 8-hour shift without a single customer between us. On those days, she would come over to the drugstore and I would make us frozen treats from the fountain. We would tell each other stories, talk about our friends, and our plans and dreams. As the weeks went on, I found myself losing track of our stories while losing myself in her deep brown eyes. Once, we even stopped talking for about a half hour and just stared into each other’s eyes, lost in a world of our own thoughts.

It was me who introduced her to my friend, Aaron. Aaron was the classic man. He was tall, had dark hair and a well-trimmed goatee, and was devilishly handsome. He played trombone and trumpet for the school’s jazz band. He was “that guy” from my high school on whom virtually every girl had a crush, and in no time flat he and Jessica were dating.

Our freshman year in college was difficult for both Aaron and I because while Aaron and I went to KU, Jessica opted for a more prestigious offer to attend Wellesley (it helps to have a father who owns several banks). I missed the easy camaraderie I experienced with Jessica and Aaron must have as well. Midway through the year, Aaron decided to drop out of KU and enroll in a college in New York. I’ve always thought that Jessica being on the East Coast was one of his main reasons for leaving his family and friends behind.

But then came Spring Break. Aaron wanted Jessica to come down to New York to spend time with him, but instead, Jessica flew to Kansas and spent part of her time with me (her family had moved from Kansas to the East Coast along with her). This infuriated Aaron and he phoned her during the middle of Spring Break to break up with her.

I’ll never forget that night. I’ve only rarely experienced so many conflicting emotions all at once. I was exhilarated (Aaron had broken up with her), and heartbroken at the same time (she was weeping into my shoulder). I was outraged (How dare Aaron hurt her this way?) and guilty because I liked it (I can still remember the smell of her curls in my face as she sobbed).

We talked, with her sitting across my lap, my arms around her shoulders and her face buried in my shirt collar. Eventually, she cried herself out of tears and, as she snuggled into my collar in the dark, she made me promise not to leave her during the night. I gave my solemn word and stayed awake until dawn, doing my best to keep her monsters at bay, while she sleepily traced the lines in my hand with her fingers, as if committing each tiny variation to memory in the dark.

There have been times in my life when I’ve felt as if I found my proper place in the universe. When I won the State tournament and was told that I’d be going to nationals in policy debate, I felt as if I’d found what it was that I was meant to do. The only time I’ve ever hit another person (It scared me that I felt good about it) was when I was in second grade and a little boy on my block was pulling the back-ends off of lightning bugs. When on a trip through a state park, I found a turtle by a stream struggling on his back, and I up-righted him, I felt as if somehow the universe smiled down on me for just a moment. Perhaps it awakened something very primal and buried deep inside of man, but for that night with Jessica, I was the protector. I’d have given a lot for her consider our friendship as more than platonic, but I’ll be damned if I cast aspersions on what I had now. I would have laid down my life to keep her safe and warm. I’d never felt so right before, and I’ve never felt so in tune with the heartbeat of creation since.

When I was a junior at KU, I met Kari (pronounced Car-ee). Kari came from a dark background. She had an alcoholic, abusive father. Her mother so insulted Kari over every perceived amount of trace fat that Kari became afflicted with an eating disorder to “become pretty” enough for her mother. She had wild mood swings, and could change from upbeat and perky to quiet and distant in a span of hours. Once she even cut herself. I saw to it that she took a month off of school to go to an in-patient hospital in Kansas City where they repaired a lot of what was damaged inside her mind.

Kari was the most playful and innocent woman I’ve ever met and how she could remain so delightfully childlike in her outlook fascinated and captivated me. When it rained, she didn’t stay indoors. She ran out into the puddles and danced. We would take trips to a local park so that she could sit in the swings and have me push her higher. During the Springtime (in what I’m sure was a violation of university policy) we wandered campus picking flowers off of bushes. When we had enough of them, we threw them in a small pile on the hill by the campanile, and she lay in them, pointing out clouds that looked like animals.

Even things that would be a bit more worldly if others did them (she was quite possibly manic, including the accompanying hypersexuality) seemed to be simple, fun-loving games to her.

What I loved about her wasn’t that she could manage to find silver linings in dark clouds, but that she simply didn’t see the dark clouds in the first place. She got married this last August.

So I do know that Miss Perfect exists. She’s out there, and I enjoy our games of hide-and-seek. She wears disguises and crops up in unlikely places, with unlikely characteristics, but sooner or later I find her again.

Miss Perfect plays an important part in my life. When I am too focused inward, and I begin to mentally accentuate my flaws more than recognize my latent talents and gifts, she is there to remind me that she does exist, and that in every single incarnation of her so far, she has found me to be a charming (if somewhat eccentric) companion and friend.

And that is far more than I’ve dared hope in a long, long time.