#63 THE GORGEOUS TURKISH GUY I ONLY KISSED: WHO WANTED TO HOOK UP AT A RANDOM HOUSE PARTY

When that dreaded feeling of ‘shame’ hits and some bits I forgot in my post yesterday (eek)

Anita Bhagwandas and Allison Raskin recently wrote pieces all about how people who are attractive get better perks in life. (Anita’s whole book, Ugly, is about this concept and is a must-read.) The gist of it is this: attractive people are perceived as more intelligent, trustworthy, inherently good (moral), and even athletic – and make more money to boot. Naturally, Anita’s and Allison’s descriptions are more poignant and nuanced, so have a read.

How far will good looks get you?

(HOW MUCH) DO LOOKS MATTER?

Of course, those things aren’t inherently true about people who are ‘ridiculously good-looking’ as Zoolander once said, but do we all subconsciously think that about very pretty people? We have all met those people who truly are gorgeous inside and out and think it’s a little unfair that they hit the genetic home run, right? Or maybe it’s just me.

In my twenties, I benefited from ‘pretty privilege’ but I was too insecure to realise (thanks to the elder millennial problem of thinking anything above a size 0 was fat); however, I did know that after every breakup when I dropped that ‘relationship weight’ 20lbs, suddenly, I was perceived as way more attractive because I was ‘conventionally hotter.’ I joked with friends that life made me lose weight so I could attract my next victim (LOLs). My high school sweetheart (HSS) and my second long-term boyfriend The Stella Adler Academy Actor, Dorian, would certainly have agreed with that (the victim bit).

And Oscar Wilde certainly played with the theme of how attractive people weren’t always what they seemed in The Picture of Dorian Gray (or the Victorian mantra was that ugly deeds spoiled the face and body and the kicker was people in society didn’t think Dorian could be so horrible as rumoured when he was so outwardly lovely). I didn’t nickname Stella Adler ‘Dorian’ to associate him with OW entirely – or maybe only jokingly.

For reference, this is what I looked like somewhere in the realm of ages 23-28. Of course, being an American size 10 (UK 14), I absolutely thought I was fat. Anita B also talks about this in her book Ugly which was super relatable to me. And no, I did not live in any Instagrammable-worthy locations in graduate school – and my housekeeping skills rivalled that of a teenage boy because I'd rather go out partying.

Meeting Aslan and Alara

Around 2011, when I was in graduate school in Georgia, I somehow met this gorgeous Turkish exchange student who I’ll call Aslan (because I was a fan of The Chronicles of Narnia as a child and apparently it’s a Turkish name). We must have met at a party amongst the ‘International’ and the ‘Gorgeous Tennis Players’ crowd and somehow he added me on Facebook first, which NEVER happened to me because I was a prime FB stalker and I say this because my first message to him was: “You found me! It was nice meeting you.” That was a very CHILL message for me because I was usually very flirty and very un-chill. 

He replied, “Yes, it was easy to find you because of our mutual friends. It was nice talking to you too. We should do that again.” I don’t know if we were talking or making out at this point but you know how grad students have all those ‘deep’ conversations where they think they are saying the most fascinating things ever? 

He came as a pair with another Turkish international exchange student, a beautiful and charming Turkish called Alara (as I’ll call her). Based on my FB stalking of her back then, I surmised she was the Turkish equivalent of a Gossip Girl. Her house back in Turkey was a mansion and she seemed to attend fabulous parties in ballgowns. 

Alara and I became fast friends. I loved her honesty and openness. She had no social filter and I remember her telling me once about hooking up with a frat boy and how terrible it was. I now document all my hookups on my Why We Met journey, but back then I would never have dreamed of spilling the tea, ever. (Maybe Bible Bet upbringing? But also I was English so not afraid I’d go down in a fiery pit for said indulgent ‘sins’ but the culture rubbed off on me.)

The gorgeous duo (with me sandwiched in between): Aslan and Alara

His handsome face sucked me in

If you’ve ever read any of my posts, you’d know that I was an absolute sucker for a handsome man. I guess, isn’t everyone but some people were legit not as shallow as I was and valued things like ‘kindness’ and ‘humour’ and ‘personality’ FIRST. I mean if the person had looks and these other things, it was like gold dust, obviously. (Captain Cotillion, Starbucks Guy #2, and Hot Jewish Doctor spring to mind.) 

Not to knock hot people (I love them) but if you’ve been hot and/or popular forever (or so my theory goes), you don’t always have the good formative years to buck up your personality. People will just watch your mouth move because you are beautiful. 

Aslan also happened to be intelligent so that was fine but it was around this time I was busy never getting over my obsession with Bramwell (or The Red Haired Sex God as I’ll call him) who was the person I met after I’d spent time getting over my obsession with the sexy Air Traffic Controller (or ATC for short) with a boyfriend I’d regret (Dorian).

In our early exchange, Aslan told me that he wanted to see me after spring break but I told him I’d dropped my phone. He asked if that was a ‘protection’ against giving my number to a guy I just met. Reader: I was never that cool. I never would even have thought of not giving my number to a hot guy. I’ve said it before, thank goodness no one was a legit stalker or axe murdered.

Then our messages turned into a series of near misses where he wasn’t going out or I wasn’t going out or we were going to this party or that party that the other was or wasn’t going to. But then in April, I sent a message apologising for the weekend before last because I got very drunk and wanted to go home, which must have been the night of that staircase makeout session to a non-hookup.

Photo by kevin turcios on Unsplash

The non-hookup party night

On the night in question, we had gone to a party together, gatecrashing someone’s house party. I am not sure if I heard about the party or he did but somehow we ended up there and if you held a gun to my head and asked me to remember where it was located, I’d never have been able to tell you.

The girl whose party it was was the girlfriend (or ex-girlfriend) of someone I was friends with in high school (a super hot popular boy who was never interested in me incidentally – not that I ever told him I had a crush on him) and I think she was getting weary of all these ‘strangers’ turning up to the party. I remember being very smashed and Aslan trying to lead me upstairs, presumably to a bedroom.

Now, I may have been the blackout drunk type but I was not the ‘let’s hook up on a stranger’s bed type.’ I had my ‘classy’ or ‘not classy’ limits. Yikes! 

We had started drunkenly making out, stopping at various points along the stairs for him to press me up against the bannister and make our way slowly upstairs. He grabbed my hand, finally, and started to lead me to the top of the staircase by which point I was like ‘no, we really shouldn’t’ or the drunk body language equivalent. 

Side note: I would have been totally fine hooking up with him if it had been later at my house or his but not this random house party. 

Before my drunk brain could make any definitive decisions, though, the girl whose party it was came marching up the stairs shouting ‘oh, no, no, no, no’ to scold us like naughty children and to say something along the lines of how despicable (or ‘nasty’) it is to try and hook up at a party in a stranger’s house, which was absolutely not what was happening. It’s not like a) we were near a bedroom or b) any clothes had been removed.

I think after that point, humiliated by the whole situation, I found my way home. Hence I sent the apology message and he just shrugged it off as fine and arranged to meet up another time. I guess he didn’t find the whole exchange quite so embarrassing as I did.

For me, it was probably more to do with there were rumours circling around my small Georgia hometown (I have two hometowns: one in Lancashire and one in rural Georgia) that I’d ‘gone wild’ in university from my goody-two-shoes high school image. And it’s true, I legit was well-behaved in high school and in undergrad before I broke up with HSS and discovered drinking and sex with other people (I seriously waited until legal age 21 to start my binge drinking career) and it was downhill from there (jokes). But since the girl whose party it was was connected tangentially to my hometown, I didn’t want her to know who I was and let rumours get back (sigh, the dreaded societal expectations).

We exchanged the odd few messages of ‘I miss yous’ ‘I miss you too’ etc. He went back to Turkey for the summer. When we were in the same place, we kept missing each other but we’d message from time to time. In 2012, he wished me a happy birthday on my FB wall (back when the number of messages you got on your birthday still meant something). He wrote: ‘Happy happy bday. Hope this age will bring everything you want.’ That age was 25.

Us on a night out where I'd gone to a 'pirate party' and that was my interpretation of some kind of pirate get-up. I can't say that was my most fashion-forward night. And the pic with Aslan is terrible. I look like a sweaty mess but with was South Georgia and often very hot. Many of our university bars had tables outside on porches and we'd sit on benches drinking in the night air (both imbibing and enjoying cooler air).

Where are Aslan and Alara now?

Now he lives in New York and has a very glam life, travelling, taking amazing photographs, and looking gorgeous, confident, and model-like in his curated photos. He’s some sort of account direct for a media agency. His face has matured and become even more handsome, his jawline still chiselled, his black hair luscious, and his deep brown eyes inviting (just a description, I love my gorgeous green-eyed husband which also shows I didn’t get over the whole shallow quality of being with hot people). I’m not sure what Alara is up to these days – she seems to have become a FB ghost. Our last message exchange said she was doing a Master’s in ‘renewable energy’ in Lisbon but she doesn’t have a job listed on her profile. Maybe she truly is an UES Gossip Girl and doesn’t need one. In which case, lucky her!

Like all people who remind me of a time in my past, I wish them both well, a good life, and an abundance of happiness – and should I wonder if their sparkling good looks got them ahead in life? Maybe that’s something to ponder another time.

Coming up next, the ‘angry painter,’ my brush (pun intended) with perceived social class distinction – southern gentility versus ‘white trash.”

Don’t forget to check out the other sixty-two posts I’ve written, including the one on why I’m writing this newsletter/blog in the first place – and the odd “present day snippet” of what I’m up to lately.

Have you ever been ‘scolded’ as an adult? Did you also feel utterly humiliated or does shame never touch you? And did you ever notice people getting ahead in life because they were super attractive? Let me know in the comments.

Some bits I forgot yesterday

I don’t usually post two days in a row but yesterday I posted a present-day snippet and thought I’d diligently checked my post that I’d included everything, but somehow at 5 am this morning, I realised I hadn’t done the bullet-y bits for Katie Lee and Alejandro Lopez. Oh dear! But instead of updating the post retrospectively, I figured, it’s a good opportunity to add their names to this post – also because people who read the post via email will have missed any new bits.

PRESENT DAY SNIPPET: EARLY JUNE REFLECTIONS

• Katie Lee
  is incredibly hilarious. I’m not sure how I even found her – maybe the follow – but I’m glad I did. She’s only getting started and her posts are top-notch so subscribe now and you can read them all. This post on her secret book project and this one on ‘being boring’ definitely made me chuckle (and I can relate to loving ‘boring’ things).

• Alejandro Lopez
  lives in Lisbon, living the kind of life that is successful yet free from traditional constraints. He writes about freeing our lives with wealth creation so we have time for the things that matter. Check out his latest post about how to work smarter, not harder. I found him via Amarita Roy, who has a very popular macroeconomic newsletter, which I also read.

Also, my declutter lady, Sarah at Clutter Cleansing, a former journalist for many popular newspapers, helped me with the script (see present-day snippet for details) I’m working on and her insight was invaluable. I came up with the pilot concept and further episodes but I think she’d be a valuable co-writer if, in my super dream world, the script gets optioned. And another shoutout to my friend, Sam, from my uni days for helping me with the title. I retrospectively updated these bits in the last post so I’ll mention them again here. I’ve appreciated all the friends and family who have been willing to read my projects. 

P.S. I’ve been loving Ms Writer’s of

Life Matters Newsletter

posts these last couple of weeks on Jungian psychology.

More on Jungian Archetypes

P.P.S. I feel very lucky because next week Michael (husband), Grammy, and I will be off to Madeira.