Page 2 of RAKEish

If she could encourage just one listener to be okay with their appearance, one listener to decide today was the day they’d no longer twist their true self to fit another’s mold, one listener to walk away from a bad situation, then it would be worth spilling her problem.

Not that the plan to share her results for the benefit of all made what she was about to do easy. God, no! It had all the markings of a topic that could go more viral than the infamous peek-a-boo granny-panty incident.

By nature, she strived to keep her failures private, her planners organized, and her vibrator fully charged.

But sometimes, nature had to take a backseat to the greater good.

Here goes my limping dignity.

She unmuted. “Now that you’re awake, turn up the volume, because you won’t want to miss a single word of today’s show.

“I’m calling today’s episode…Once Upon a Second Glance.” She smiled as the title rolled correctly off her tongue. Practice indeed made perfect.

Once Upon a Second Glance gave today’s topic the façade of a black-tie affair.

If only it were that civilized.

She always titled her broadcasts and her lectures and…well…lots of things. She was a strong believer in the value of titles. The right one would do the heavy lifting for you. The wrong one would sabotage your plans.

“Are you wondering what that title even means? Wondering if it’s worth the brain power to figure out?” She spoke slowly so her words had a chance to soak into Monday-morning tired brains.

“No worries. I’ll help you decipher.” She readjusted her coffee cup. It had the words “KEEP TALKING. I’m diagnosing you” scrawled under an image of a therapist listening to her client. It was her favorite mug—not too big, not too small. In fact, now that she thought about it, she was holding this mug in her photo on the dating app.

“If hindsight is twenty-twenty, does that mean we should mindfully pay more attention to things or people we’ve dismissed at first glance? Should we make it a conscious practice to give things not one but two or even twenty additional glances before judging and moving on?”

The answer is yes, people. Absofudginglutely yes!

Three thousand, two hundred and fourteen.

“In a world where instant judgments and surface-level interactions reign supreme,” she continued, “we must challenge these prevailing narratives. Our worth extends far beyond our physical appearance.”

Mother had taught her this all too well. Not by good example—quite the opposite. Mother lived her life under the impression a woman should do everything in her power to remain beautiful. Beauty, according to Mother, was what kept a man in your bed. Well, that and knowing how to give a mind-altering blowjob.

No one had ever accused Mother of being parent-of-the-year material.

“As a therapist with a small private practice, I’ve witnessed the complexities of human nature firsthand, and I refuse to accept the notion that love can be won through superficial glances. Love begins upon a second glance. There is no such thing as love at first sight—just lust at first sight.” Lux had purposefully lived her life downplaying her looks. When she won a man’s heart, she would rest easy knowing his love was not all wrapped up in his admiration of her outer shell.

This way, when her looks faded, his love wouldn’t.

“Think about it,” she said. “How many times have you said or thought, ‘if only I knew then what I know now?’”

As a rule, Lux lived by the edict regret not, which basically meant always look forward. After all, it’s not like looking back would change the dysfunctional environment in which she’d been raised.

“I know it’s Monday, and your brains don’t want to think, so let me give you some examples of times a person might have wished they’d given another person a second glance.”

Of course, her examples needed to focus on dating, since that’s where she was headed with this show. “For instance, all you singles out there, think back to the last would-be-suitor who offered to buy you a drink or a cup of coffee, and you declined their offer because they were too big, too small, too tall, too short, too ugly.” She paused as she silently counted to three, giving them time to recollect. “Now, I want you to imagine what might have happened had you taken a moment and given them a second glance. I shot down my guy in this scenario because he wore a T-shirt with the words: ‘Why read when you can watch the movie?’ to a Literacy Bowl event. My forever man will love reading as much as I do. That being said, given today’s Once Upon a Second Glance topic, I can’t help but wonder what if…?” She’d filtered through several what ifs on the dude last night while not sleeping. All but one of them ended with her deciding she’d been correct.

“For instance, what if he’d been wearing the offensive shirt because someone had spilled something all over him, and the bartender had offered him a replacement from their lost and found bin?” She rubbed at a kink forming in her neck.

“And before you scoff, let me point out in romantic comedies things like that could and would happen to thwart a couple from falling into insta-like, let alone insta-love. And, while I don’t believe in the latter, I strongly believe that if funny meet cutes can happen in a book, they can happen in real life. Thus, I should have given him a second glance.”

The realization humbled her already belittled self-esteem. She was no better than the gazillion men who’d swiped past her profile picture. Hell’s fudging bells.

“If you’re wondering what the why is behind today’s topic, it’s because of something that happened over the weekend. You see, I received not one, but two emails from a dating app I joined in January. The first provided me with the number of men who glanced at my profile picture and, in under one second, swiped not interested.” She paused, swallowing the emotions welling inside of her. Emotions she could normally control, but on little-to-no sleep, they were all over the place.

“I’ll be honest. That email was one gigantic ouch to my ego.” And that had led to her second-guessing her long-standing stance to underplay her appearance until after she’d caught the heart of a guy.

“The other part of the unfortunate email listed the names of those men.”

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