Dave is chiseled by the gods.

Hotter than the fires of hell.

Sexier than the devil pouring you a glass of Syrah.

He’s golden from head to toe, from the shaggy waves of his wolf cut to the sun-licked glow of his skin, the same color as the fried chicken he was raised on. From the thick chevron mustache sitting above his upper lip like someone dared it to be there, to the scruff dusting the rest of his chin and the workman’s strength of his jaw.

Nobody asks who Dave is. They don’t think they need to, because they know him as soon as they see him.

Bright reds and yellows of American traditional tattoos cover nearly every inch of Dave’s body, creeping up the sides of his throat like ivy, curving over the vein that pops along his neck when he laughs. Decorating the cheekbone below his left eye. He wears purple harem pants to the gym, purple high-top Converse to match. Sometimes, tiger print shorts. Always, a graphic tee with the sleeves cut off. He looks like an asshole. Everything most women pretend to hate. But if mostly any woman talks to Dave, if Dave blesses her with a smile, if she gets close enough to see the slices of jade in the raw umber of his eyes, she’s going to have no choice but to picture him naked.

Who knows what most men think of Dave. But they probably want to punch him.

Dave drives a shitty black Scion xB for the irony of it, and for a few months at a time, he travels between small cities for work. Not the big cities, the New Yorks, the Chicagos, the LAs. Dave can’t make a proper entrance there (too many Daves there already). In the small cities, he’s a program designer and helps businesses open new bars, throwing logs on the fire of an industry he refuses to admit is cooling off. He’s an older millennial, and no matter how sober Gen Z becomes, Dave knows first-hand that millennials will always need booze to cope with the fact that grocery stores now carry thirty-eight kinds of milk and simply choosing one feels like virtue signaling.

He has job satisfaction. Another luxury for people his age. And when Dave sojourns in these small cities, when he finds downtime, he doesn’t use dating apps. Doesn’t need them. It’s part of the entrance he makes. He gets a new girl easily, and honestly, it’s hard to believe, but he treats her well. Dave makes a mean chicken marsala. And once he’s marsalaed his girl for the days, weeks, or months that they’re together, somehow always long enough for her to tell him she loves him, he leaves her with a broken headboard and a broken heart and returns to Knoxville, his hometown, where Dave lights up his high school sweetheart’s phone screen with lime green texts (iPhones are yuppie) and knows she, without fail, will hide her wedding ring and ask him to rendezvous at their typical spot so she doesn’t have to picture him as she orgasms–she can have the real thing.

Dave lives a full life. A busy life. An exciting life.

But Dave is so lonely, the feeling of it pulls marrow from the soft parts of his skeleton. Some nights, he cries so hard his eyelids swell. Some nights, he leaves the lights on to sleep so darkness can’t find him, and it’s those nights that Dave pictures the life the soul of him wants.

He wants a forever woman. A house with a two-car garage. A garden with hard-to-grow basil and out-of-control mint. He wants kids but knows to have them will inevitably mean to hurt them in the same cold, quiet way his parents hurt him. And some nights, the only comfort Dave can find is in tall glasses of whiskey, is staring at the undecorated walls of his latest sublet, those same gray walls feeling too much like the box he’s placed himself into by living a life for the eyes of others.

Looking like an asshole, even being one sometimes, is a lot easier than having the things he’s afraid he’ll ruin.

So, nobody asks who Dave is. Not even Dave.

And Dave knows if someone ever did, he wouldn’t know how to answer.