Sorry, Boyfriend: The David Cook Edition

Sorry, Boyfriend, but I am in love with David Cook.

Also, another apology: I'm sorry, Chris Daughtry, for I have sinned. I have loved another American Idol rocker. I did not mean to do it. When this new season brought us two "rockers," I scoffed. I wanted to know just who they thought they were. Did they think they were you? Did they think they could somehow come out on stage and level a look at the camera that would make me flop on the floor and scream, Make out with me!!!! Did they really think that? Because that's what you used to do. But you know who's doing that this season? Jason Castro, yes, but someone else, too. And that someone else is David Cook.

David Cook is cute in this horrifically elfin kind of way. He's got all sorts of pointy angles. His hair is awful. His clothes are awful. But, man, do those makeup people know what to do with him. I've never seen a boy strut out on stage in prettier eyeshadow.

David Cook is no beauty. Sometimes I look at his face and think it looks a little tight--you know, in the way celebrities' faces look tight after they've gotten a lift and tuck. There are times I look at him and think, You sort of look like a girl. I don't think this would make David Cook happy, since he's trying to be badass. But I think he's badass. I do. I'd totally let him buy me leather, take me to cruddy little bars, and pump me full of cheap beer before we make out over near the amps his band is setting up.

I love David Cook because he usually saves the night on Idol. Say what you will about this season being one of the most talented ever--there are an awful lot of bright-eyed hippies on it, and they like to sing songs about peace and love and holding hands and becoming one. Yuck. A girl can only take so much of that (I'm talking to you, Archuleta. I'm talking to you, White. I'm talking to you, Castro. And I actually like all of you. But grit it up, okay? Seriously.) But after all the kumbaya is done for the night, there's David Cook and his guitar and post-sex hairdo and razor blade of a voice. And everyone breathes a sigh of relief because--whew!--no more songs about all the planet's people being brothers and sisters forever and ever, amen! Suddenly there's a man onstage, and he's singing about stalking and sex and disillusionment and other titillating things. Bless you, David Cook. Bless you. Now come on over to my house and sing me that slow version of Lionel Ritchie's Hello. It freaks me out and excites me all at the same time. I couldn't ask for more.

David Cook has suddenly become the show's dark horse darling, and that makes me happy. That means he'll stick around for a while, and I'll get to keep watching him grab that microphone like a lover and put his mouth so close to it I feel like I'm inside his voice when he sings. I want to kiss his tightly-stretched mouth and pull on his stupid, stupid hair and tell him he's a beautiful badass elf-boy. And I hope he would take that as a compliment.

Rethinking My Hatred of the Dreadlock

When I was a sophomore in college, I was taking a history course in this stifling little room in Fenton Hall. I really liked this history course, but there were two things that bothered me. The first was that the teacher insisted we sit in assigned seats that lined us up alphabetically. (I eventually forgave her this, though, because I loved to listen to her talk. She had an accent and the tendency to say things like tree! for three or spaghetteeess! for spaghetti. Adorable.)

The other thing I didn't quite like was the people I was forced to sit around, thanks to the curse of our last names. I especially didn't like the guy in front of me. He looked like Egon Spengler with dreadlocks. Really disgusting, dandruff-filled dreadlocks.

The desks in this room were set very close together, which meant that his long dreds dangled on my desk. Their ratty ends scraped across the pencil-holding spot on the desk. And when he tossed his hair--which he often did--a rain of dandruff and dirt fell down across my things. And he smelled. He smelled so bad. His hair smelled like pot, like dirty bathroom, like old socks, like sweat. So I spent a lot of the hour and a half of this class holding my breath and wondering why, why, why anyone would ever do this to himself. What was the attraction? What statement did the dred-wearer think he was making? Why was that important? Why did he have to smell so bad?

But recently I've begun to rethink my hatred of the dred. Why? Well, behold American Idol's Jason Castro:

Listen, I am still mildly disgusted by dreadlocks, but there is a part of me that is finding some sort of beauty in them. Not on the Egon Spengler look-alike but on Jason Castro. This is mostly likely because he is beautiful, and if you shaved his head, he would still have all that gorgeous bone structure and the world's best eyelashes and cheeks models would murder for.

And, sure, his interview tape from this week--you know, the one Seacrest throws to right before the contestants sing--discussed that his most embarassing moment was when he was on a date and one of his dreadlocks fell off his head, and, sure, that might've made me stare at the screen and say out loud to an empty apartment, "That's repulsive, Jason Castro," but he assured us it all worked out okay--he and the girl went on another date.

That is a strong girl. If that had been me on the date and part of my date's hair fell off, I might've had too many flashbacks to college, to Hippie Egon Spengler, to the way his dandruff and hair dust would speckle across my all my quizzes and exams, making a part of my stomach tumble over on itself, making it almost impossible to remember all the important historical dates I'd committed to memory.

Still, for Jason Castro, I'd be willing to endure a lot of things. I might have casually suggested we ask the waitress for a pair of shears that were surely housed somewhere back in the kitchen, and I might have just as casually suggested we go into the back alley and cut until all those things were curled on the pavement like the molted skin of a snake. But I probably would've been okay if Jason Castro smiled politely and said, "No thanks," and then laid a napkin on his lap and started in on his potato chowder. After all, I would know that at the end of the night I might have the chance to get up close to those eyelashes and cheeks and lips. And maybe--just maybe--there would be a chance he would ask me out again, fall in love with me, marry me, and spend a lifetime singing me this song whenever I asked:

(Ignore that last note. The rest was beauty.)