Tell Me It's Real(2)

Dr. I Don’t Know When To Shut My Mouth almost rolled his eyes. “You? A bear? You have, like, three chest hairs,” he said, reaching out to pull on one. It came off my bare chest almost immediately. “And this one’s a cat hair!” Which was weird because I don’t have a cat.

“It’s a new thing,” I said, insulted. “No-hair bears. We have monthly meetings and talk about how smooth our skin is and how our leathers start to chafe because of it. We’re thinking about switching to denim chaps and vests. Sort of an old-school look. I suggested we also get denim gloves, but it was agreed upon that was too much denim.”

“Paul.” Dr. Not As Gullible As He Looks rolled his eyes and said, “My partner is very active in the bear community. There’s no such thing as no-hair bears. Trust me. I would know.”

“You’re a homosexual?” I screeched at him, trying to put my shirt back on as quickly as I could. “I demand a straight doctor so he won’t judge me!”

“Can you even grow a beard?” he asked me, obviously judging me.

“It takes a few weeks,” I admitted. “I thought puberty would be the end of all my miseries, but it just gave me zits on my butt.”

He looked like he could have done without that information.

Story of my life. I tend to say things without thinking them through. It is my gift. It is my curse.

“Not anymore,” I told him hastily. “I’m almost thirty. I don’t get butt zits anymore. Or zits anywhere else.” That was a lie. I’d gotten a zit the other day in the middle of my forehead that I glared at in the mirror until it went away. You don’t need Proactiv when you have the sheer force of will. Justin Bieber is a liar and a fat mouth.

“Uh-huh. Paul, I just want you to be healthy. It won’t hurt you to get some exercise.”

“Well, it would hurt you if I punched your face off,” I grumbled.

He stared at me. “What?”

“What?” I asked innocently, batting my eyelashes at him.

So, seriously. I’m not fat. I could stand to lose a few pounds. There’s just a bit more of me to love.

Wow. That sounds way lame.

All right. So you know I have an average penis and I’m not a ripped Adonis, nor am I hairy bear man. That’s a good start, I think. What else is there?

Well, I have black hair that I keep short because it starts to curl when it gets longer and looks like a homeless poodle died on my head. Sometimes, when I’m feeling really adventurous, I spike it up with gel, but usually, I don’t do a whole lot with it. I don’t have dandruff, which is good. And my hairline is not receding (yet), which is even better.

I have blue eyes and I could tell you that they’re the color of ice that covers a frozen lake in the Himalayas, but that wouldn’t be exactly true. I bought contacts to give myself ice-blue eyes one time, but they made it look like I had big cataracts in my eyes, so I took them out. Nothing says “Hey, would you sleep with me?” like milky cataracts. But mine are just a plain old blue, like most everyone else in the world.

Um, what else. Oh, I’m five foot ten, though I like to tell people I’m actually six feet tall because it sounds so much bigger. I don’t wear my glasses like I’m supposed to because I think they make my face look too wide, so I tend to squint a lot. I can be shy around people I don’t know, unless I’m drunk and then I can’t seem to shut up at all. I like video games and loud action movies that pretend to have plots but really are about blowing shit up (oh, and just between us, I’ve probably seen every romantic comedy ever made—hello, I’m gay. It’s a requirement that we pretend to like Jennifer Lopez when she’s playing a maid in New York who still happens to look like Jennifer Lopez. J-Lo, no one believes you when you try to play working class, so knock it off). I tend to have a bit of a swish when I walk, and sometimes I wave my hands too much when I talk. I’m a homo, but sometimes I can be a big homo. I’m not effeminate. I’m just… animated. But I can be totally butch if I wanted to. Like, way butch. Like “going outside and taking off my shirt to chop some firewood for winter” butch.

As you heard earlier, my name is Paul and I’m almost thirty years old. My last name is Auster. Family legend says that our last name was Austerlitz, but it was changed after World War II because my dad’s parents didn’t want anyone to think they were Nazis when they fled Hamburg to come to America. I suppose I should thank them for that. I don’t need people asking me if I’m related to Hitler.

That would not be a good start to a friendship.