Natural beauty...

I have to say, I'm a sucker for natural beauty.

I don't mean beauty post-plastic surgery, colonic weight loss cleanse and professional grooming. I'm talking about just truly stunning features people have.

Be they the hallowed high cheek bones, or startlingly insightful eyes, or the perfect curvature at the corner of a smile, I'm always an admirer of someone that makes me look twice. Chalk it up to insecurity, or whatever, but I genuinely can be stupefied by a guy with the most charming curl of hair that lazily spills across his forehead.

Hell, what are we all kicking about the planet for if not to embrace that which brings us happiness. (I realize this makes me sound like a sociopath who abducts and murders pretty boys because he likes the way they look. Not the case, but it makes me sound a little nuts, I agree...)

But what I find most difficult when dealing with these specimens of beauty is the most basic of interactions with them.

Take for instance one of the most striking guy's I've ever come face-to-face with. He works at Holt Renfrew (aka Selfridges Canada) in the men's department, must be around 25, has the lightest tint of golden brown on his skin, black, lanky hair and an angular face. I'd tell you the colour of his eyes, but I've never been close enough to see.

Because I'm too intimidated to even speak to him.

I'll casually shift clothes on their racks, thumbing through for sizes or whatnot, stealing the occasional glance at the shopboy. In some ways it feels dirty, like I'm somehow a lecherous old molester scouting his next grope. Far from it actually, but it still feels funny.

On his part, he has never spoken to me (bad customer service!). I highly doubt he is even aware of my existence. And while I'm not really stunned or silenced by celebrity, this gorgeous man leaves me at a loss for words.

I have no designs to ask him out, or much of anything really. I just find it fascinating that as a grown-up, mature guy, I get lost for words when confronted with natural beauty.  It's stupid. It's frustrating. And it always leaves me with that flutter of insecurity, that voice inside telling me I'll never look that way, nor wind up with someone that damn beautiful.

All in all, a total waste of time. But it is a pleasure to behold a guy, walking down the street or sitting in a cubicle, that hit the genetic lottery and stands head and shoulders above the rest of us. I get annoyed that confronting one illicits such a stupid response from me.

I just need to remind myself that perhaps there's someone out there thinking the very same about me.