Confessions of an Ugly Girl (2 page)

Despite the fact that I have worked with computers for eight hours a day every day for about the last ten years, I have absolutely no idea what to do when they break. That is just outside of the area of my expertise. The only thing I really know how to do is panic. And turn the computer off and then on.

I turned the computer off, waited for it to reboot, and felt my stomach sink when the hieroglyphics reappeared. It looked like my only option was to call the Computer Helpdesk.

I hate the Computer Helpdesk. There are two IT guys who work for our company and they’re both horrible. The first is Todd, a little troll of a man, who talks to the rest of us peons like we’re not meant to walk on the same earth as he does. Every time I ask him for help, he asks me if I tried turning the computer off and on. Granted, the first few times I called him, I hadn’t done that, and it actually ended up working. But it’s been five years since then, and it would be nice if he could talk to me like an intelligent person. We can’t all have Master’s degrees in computer science from MIT.

The other guy who works at the Computer Helpdesk is Andy. Andy is from China and doesn’t speak a word of intelligible English.

I prefer Andy.

“Donna!” I called out. I stood up and spotted her over the edge of my cubicle.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. She was chewing on her ball point pen, which is a bad habit of hers that drives me crazy.

I momentarily forgot about the hieroglyphics on my computer. “Are you chewing on that pen?”

Donna removed the pen from her mouth and looked down at the damning gnawed cap. “I guess so,” she admitted.

“You know,” I said, “100 people
die
every year from choking on a ball point pen.”

Donna stared at me. “Is that what you wanted to tell me? Seriously?”

Well,
excuse me
for trying to save my best friend from choking to death on a pen. “No,” I said. “Actually, my computer just crashed.”

Donna rounded the corner of her cubicle so that she could get a better look at my screen. She scrunched up her nose. You’d think that between the two of us, since we work on computers nonstop all day, one of us would know what to do when a computer crashes. “Did you try turning it off and on again?”

“
Yes
.”

She shrugged. “Why don’t you call the Computer Helpdesk?”

I grimaced. “You know I hate those guys.”

Donna grinned at me. “You know that Todd has like the biggest crush in the world on you. Why don’t you let him have a thrill?”

“He does not,” I said, rolling my eyes.

(He really doesn’t. I don’t find it at all funny when Donna jokes that he does.)

Finally, I had to give in. I called the operator to get the number for the Computer Helpdesk, although I’ve probably called the number about a million times since I’ve worked here. I guess I mentally blocked it out.

The phone rang at the Helpdesk and I silently prayed that Andy would be the one to pick up. After several rings, I heard an unfamiliar male voice.

“Computer Helpdesk,” the guy answered.

“Um, yeah,” I said, momentarily thrown. “My computer is… broken. I mean, I think it is.”

“Can I have your name?” the computer guy asked.

“Millie,” I told him.

“Your full name?”

I guess he needed that for documentation purposes. Todd and Andy never ask for my name, because they know who I am. But this guy was apparently new.

My full name is Matilda Glockenfeld. I hate my name. So. Much. It’s the ugliest name I can think of. In Jewish tradition, I was named after my recently deceased grandmother, who was also named Matilda. I’m sure Matilda was a super-cute name back in 1920 or whenever she was born, but not so much in the 21
st
century.

My parents could’ve picked another name that started with the letter M and still honored my grandmother. They could’ve called me Melanie or Mia or something cute like that. But instead they got lazy and just went with Matilda, sticking me with the name of a 90-year-old woman.

A psychologist might say that I think my name is ugly because I think that
I’m
ugly, but I’m pretty sure it’s an objectively ugly name. Growing up, my name definitely didn’t do me any favors. It’s not like I would’ve been gorgeous had my name been Noelle LaBelle or something like that, but at least I would’ve had a fighting chance.

Anyway, Matilda Glockenfeld is just awful. Plus, the computer guy chuckled when I said it.

“Is that funny?” I was not in a good mood at this moment and not really liking the new computer guy.

“Not at all,” he said. He chuckled again, and despite the fact that I was pissed off, I had to admit that the new computer guy had kind of a sexy voice. “How do you spell your last name?”

“The way it sounds.”

“It sounds like it’s really hard to spell.”

I sighed and spelled out all eleven letters of my last name. Seriously, it’s not that hard to spell. It’s pretty phonetic.

“Thank you very much, Miss Glockenfeld,” he said.

“Millie,” I quickly corrected him. “You can call me Millie.”

“Well, Millie,” he said. “You can call me Sam. Spelled the way it sounds.”

He was flirting with me. The cute (voiced) new computer guy Sam was flirting with me. That’s because we were on the phone and he had no idea what I looked like. He probably thought I was adorable. I’ve been told that I do have a cute voice. So I’ve got that going for me. As long as I only speak to prospective husbands on the phone and never actually meet them.

“And what department are you in?”

“Actuarial.”

“An actuary, huh,” he said. “Interesting work.” He laughed again. God, he had a super cute laugh. “So what’s wrong with the computer?”

I explained to him about the black screen and the hieroglyphics, growing more and more hysterical as I described the situation.

Cute Computer Guy Sam thought for a minute. “Did you try turning it off and on?”

Oh, for God’s sake. “
Yes
, I did.”

“Okay,” he said. “I’d like you to turn off again.”

I waited for the punchline.

“Really,” he said. “Turn it off. I need to trust me on this, Millie.”

Long story short, I shut the computer off, Sam had me wait for two minutes while he teased me about being an actuary, then he had me turn the whole thing on again. And damned if it wasn’t fixed that time. He explained something about how you can’t just turn it back on again after you shut it down. You have to leave it off for a couple minutes so that the hard drive can reset.

I was incredibly embarrassed about the whole thing, but I was relieved that my computer was at least working again. I was also relieved that Sam the cute computer guy didn’t have to come down here and realize that the girl he was flirting with on the phone wasn’t nearly as attractive as she sounded.    

July 14:

When I was five years old, I remember thinking that I was beautiful.

Maybe I
was
beautiful back then. I had baby fat instead of just
fat
and an adorably round face. My hair fell in soft reddish curls around my face. In about 90% of the photos from my childhood, I was posing in either a ballerina tutu or a princess dress. I looked like I thought I was hot stuff.

When I was about ten years old, I realized that I wasn’t pretty anymore. It was obvious from looking in a mirror, but if I had any delusions otherwise, the boys in my class made it quite clear where I ranked. I was “a dog,” I had too much “junk in the trunk,” you get the idea. One boy creatively demonstrated how looking at me made him lose his erection (with a pencil subbing in for his penis, thank God).

I complained to my mother about how the boys were giving me a hard time at school, although I was too embarrassed to tell her exactly what they were saying. She told me they were just bothering me because they were
in love
with me or some other mother lying bullshit.

By high school, the boys had matured enough to stop commenting on how hideous I was. Instead of negative attention, I got no attention. Nobody asked me out on a date. I was unkissed. On prom night, I sat home with my best friend Regina, watching scary movies while we both wished we had a guy to cling onto during the stabby parts.

(My mother informed me that I was a late bloomer.)

College was probably when I realized that I was uglier than your average girl. All my friends, even the ones who weren’t particularly pretty, started dating. Not me. I went to parties, did my best to awkwardly flirt, but most guys took one look at me, and three seconds later, decided they weren’t interested. Thanks to alcohol, I hooked up a few times. But that was about it.

In my twenties, my friends genuinely tried to help me. Every engagement party, every wedding, every social event was a mission to Find Millie A Guy. I feel bad for all the poor
schmucks
who were dragged in over the years as potential dating material. There were even a few repeats, after literally every man they knew had already been used up. I remember one tall, skinny guy named Dave who was brought to a party specifically for me on two separate occasions. Needless to say, Dave and I never got hot and heavy.              

You can see why I got sick of it.

When I got home today, I discovered that somebody had replied to the online dating profile I put up. Considering the website guaranteed at least a dozen replies in the first week, it was definitely a testament to how bad the photo I put up was that I only got one reply.

The message was from a guy named Harry that said simply, “Liked your profile! Sam Smith is my favorite singer too.” Then I checked my profile and I discovered that Donna (who wrote my profile) had listed Sam Smith as my favorite singer for some unknown reason.

Harry’s profile had the headline, “Do you like to collect things?” He went on to talk about all the different things he collects, like baseball cards, superhero action figures, comic books, and concluded by creepily stating that he would like to include a woman in his collection. It makes me seriously worried that he could be a serial killer who is murdering women he meets on the Internet and then putting them in some sort of plastic collector box in his basement.

I once read that women are most worried that every guy they meet online will be a serial killer. That’s really unlikely though. Only 3% of men are psychopaths. And of those, only a really small percentage are serial killers. So it’s pretty unlikely that Harry is going to murder me and put me in a plastic collector box in his basement. Although not
impossible
.  

(In contrast, men are most worried that the woman they meet online will be fat.)

I ended up replying to Harry, mostly because I was worried that Donna would be really upset if the personal ad she wrote didn’t result in even one date. Of course, she’d probably be more upset if Harry murders me because of a personal ad she wrote. But like I said, that’s pretty unlikely.

I should probably listen to a Sam Smith song before we go on a date so I at least know who my favorite singer is.

July 15:

I made the mistake of admitting to Donna today that I found the new computer guy’s voice sexy.

She was so excited. It was actually really embarrassing. She looked him up on the personnel directory, which was surprisingly easy to do considering all we knew was his first name. Within two minutes, we were loading up a photo of Samuel Webber, age 34, of Information Technology.

“Oh my God, Millie, he’s so cute!” Donna squealed when his face appeared on the screen.

Actually, she was right—he was really cute. Despite the sexy voice, I had expected some typical nerdy computer guy: really awkward with thick glasses and probably balding. But Sam Webber was objectively cute. Well, he did have glasses on, but even behind them, I could see he had really nice blue eyes. His brown hair was kind of tousled in an endearing way. And his smile was just the right amount of crooked.

What’s funny is that I was actually disappointed. He was flirting with me the other day because he was a cute guy, and cute guys flirt with everyone. For him, flirting was probably like breathing.

Even worse, it definitely occurred to me that it was just as easy for him to look up my photo. My ID photo is just awful, even for me. I had just rolled out of the shower, so my hair was sopping wet, and I was having a really bad skin day too. I look at myself in a mirror many times a day, so I’m used to looking at myself, but I always wince when I see that photo. It’s bad.

“Maybe you should give him a call,” Donna suggested.

Yes, calling the Computer Helpdesk and asking for Cute Computer Guy Sam with the intention of asking him out on a date is absolutely something that I would do. And by that, I mean that it’s something that I would never do in a million billion years. (Actually, a million billion years is really a
quadrillion
years. A “million billion” isn’t a real number.)