the ugly effect

(originally posted 5/30/2012)

I was jogging the other day when I passed a baseball dugout and something caught my eye. In one corner there was this huge butterfly caught in a spider’s web. The thing was the size of a friggin’ bird. The most notable thing about it though was how amazingly colorful it was. Oranges and yellows and black and green. Of course I raced over to save it, but it was long dead.

I was suddenly filled with this huge sadness; this beautiful insect had met its end without anyone even knowing or being there to help.

That got me to thinking about ugly people’s weddings.

I’m not talking about normal people. I’m strictly thinking about the truly ugly among us. It’s almost assumed that they’re poor. The point being is that they spend their whole lives watching amazing weddings on TV and in movies. Spectacular affairs where great halls are rented, ice sculptures litter the grounds and the bride’s dress causes gasping and gaping from even the jaded wedding planners who are swarming around her like so many flies.

Then there are the couples that get married at the Days Inn banquet room.

Ugly people having their ugly weddings.

Bad food, hideous surroundings, and unattractive guests. The good looking guests sit there on the stained folding chairs with a look that says to everyone they’d rather be at a bowling alley eating nachos and they hate both bowling and nachos.

The absolute worst is the bride. Her $300 dress that hangs awkwardly on her, a stemless cherry placed indifferently on a pile of dog shit. What must be going through her head as she tries to con herself? That this is what she wanted, that this is what every girl dreams about? What does the groom think as this veiled nightmare lumbers down the aisle toward him? Do they know that they’re ugly?

Is there even a flicker of the romance that’s splashed on the silver screen as beautiful men and women fall in love?

Do they have any clue why people see right-side up when the images on our retina are upside down?

After all, the spider has to eat right? Do you think it cares about what color the prey that stumbles into its web is? Nope. In go the fangs either way.

So I sit there staring at this butterfly and picture a moth in its place. A big ol’ dumbfuck moth. It could be the size of Frisbee and nobody, least of all me, would give a flying shit. (The Frisbee made me think of flying otherwise it would have just been a normal shit)

What is it about beauty that has me mourning the glaucopsyche lygdamus? Or even looking up its scientific name. There are so many moths and so few butterflies.

So back at the Days Inn they’re throwing their handfuls of rice and watching the groom attempt to load his blushing bride in the back of their rented 1997 Town Car. In the background a TV is showing another vapid beauty leaving her half million dollar reception on the way to her three week honeymoon in Tahiti.

I continue jogging.

And the spider waits for the next insect, be it moth or butterfly, to get caught in its web.