This Charming Man

He was Peter Perfect: Head Prefect at school, fast-tracked superstar at work, ideally partnered with first-love spouse, the only absent father that other kids actually wanted as their own, the man who never pissed in the shower.  His eyes were bright, his teeth were gleaming, his balls were golden.  He was every mother’s dream, but he was every father’s nightmare, because most fathers, having either known or been one themselves, are perfectly able to spot a shit when they see one.  Julian Trite (in real life he was, of course, not named after a Wacky Races character) whilst being superficially exemplary, was actually nothing more or less than superficial.  If his visage was very much P. Perfect, then his character was decidedly D. Dastardly.  His soul was a black hole that had already sucked the life out of his personality.  A flawless smile under a mop of hair that took no more than three hours to primp into shape and could not be allowed out in the rain, Julian had all the charm of a weekend in Chernobyl and the charisma of a whelk.

Yet like a Mr Whippy ice cream on a sunny day, he looked so good from a distance and with the sun behind him he could almost be mistaken for intelligent, or, at least, sentient, although he was in fact neither.  He was a vacuum: a perfect hologram in unspotted underwear.  To remain engaged in conversation for the full four minutes he allowed himself to be in the orbit of anybody who might see through him (virtually anybody with an IQ above that of a frozen pea) was a Herculean task.  He gave ‘small talk’ a new emphasis.  He offered the mental stimulus of an evening with Idi Amin and the conversational acumen of Marcel Marceau.  In short, his dental implants had greater depth of character than whatever it was that loitered, fecklessly between his ears.

Now, I know that by this point you will have decided that I must have a personal axe to grind with Mr Trite, but I do not.  In truth I have seldom been in his company, although we have quite commonly shared the company of others, and I have observed him from afar.  You see he is the very quintessence of making the best of his own bad job whilst making the worst of everybody else’s.  Men clustered around him because they felt, with some justification, that alongside him they would appear to have the magnitude of intelligence that could not help but persuade any unattached females in attendance to ponder the possibilities of exploring the contents of their trousers.  But the ladies gathered around him because – oh what the hell – he looked so good, and when, in the morning, they discovered that he was nothing more than an empty vessel (a married empty vessel) the living embodiment of a Mexican Meal – all about the wrapping – well… nothing ventured… isn’t that what they say?

Well, that’s why you must never feel sorry for young Mr Trite because, deep down inside, he knows that he has a pickled walnut for a brain, but he is bright enough, at least, to know that he can always spend his evenings in the company of men alongside whom he always looks amazing and women (as well as a not inconsiderable number of other men) who may yet be prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt, at least for one tedious, depressing and disappointing night.

Do not feel pity for him: he has more notches upon his bedposts than Elton John has had hair transplants and his conscience, like his IQ, has taken a permanent gap year trekking in Cambodia with a trainee taxidermist from Wolverhampton.  Julian is a happy man and as for everyone else… well, he neither knows nor cares.

You may even feel that you know Julian yourself, but if you do, please keep it very, very quiet, because frankly I thought I’d made him up…