I am the last chance at the last chance saloon. Like, I am the last guy the chicks try and get with. I am the one after the ugly guys, bar tenders, waiters, and kitchen staff have all been picked up. I am so hopeless even hopeless people laugh at me. Girls run for cover. I buy them drinks, they throw them in my face. I light up their cigarettes, they burn holes in my shirt. I get on the dance floor and the music stops. Addis, my only friend, won’t even be seen out with me. And he’s a mop!
It’s so bad I even tried disguising myself as someone else but nothing changed. People see right through me. The problem, I realise, isn't my looks, it’s my smell. I reek of failure. If my smell is a creature it would be the lovechild of a wad of toilet paper and a doormat. And it gets in everywhere. Dowsing it with handfuls of Old Spice only adds to the crisis - Old Spice is the scent of arthritic pedophilia. Girls started calling me ‘granddad’ and I’m only twenty eight.
Addis says I should try getting dreadlocks. He calls it a mop cut, says it sweeps the women right off their feet. Still doesn't answer my question though: -
Why is the smell of failure so bad? It’s not like we’re all so perfect. It’s not like as children we move from crawling to walking in an hour. We try. We fail. It’s what learning is about. And yet, the older we get the more adverse we become to being allowed to get it wrong until we’re so aware of getting it wrong we don’t even try to get it right. We become immobilized by the thought of failure and suddenly the prophecy is fulfilled – our failure to act means we’ve failed. And it smells terrible.
Addis says that’s why it’s great being a mop. There’s no expectation. And maybe he’s right – mops always get into those tight spaces. Still doesn't answer my question though.
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