If I had a superpower for a day, it would be the ability to resist charm.

                Flight, invisibility, telepathy.  These are all bottled and uncreative at best; they are only really useful in a few choice situations against a few choice nemeses.  Charm resistance would be a life saver, a bank saver, a flushed-with-embarassment saver that every human would find themselves grateful for.

                I am not completely jaded, not suspicious of every seeming altruism, not cold nor cynical.  Nor do I hope to be any of these things.  But it would be nice not to fall for everything .  I can’t count on fingers and unsocked toes how many times I’ve raised eyes roof-ward in search of a seagullible.

                I must give myself credit where due.  At least in relationships, I still allow that intoxicating tonic of compliments and confident smiles to wash over me warmly, to turn me on or to make me think about someone’s self-assurance as I lay in bed at night.  However I’ve learned, perhaps through the careful observation and therefore avoidance of the pain of others, not to act when the charm-going gets dangerous.

                But let’s not be flippant, it gets real shifty sometimes.

                An example, you say?  Well, my mind mustn’t wander far, he’s charmed me just today so these flighty thoughts have a fresh branch on which to land.  We work together.  And he is man that I wouldn’t approach romantically inside or out of the workplace.  Except on my first day, just over a month ago, he says, “You’re beautiful.  The most gorgeous woman I’ve ever seen,” with laser precision eye contact boring into me, muddling up my frontal lobe and translating why-nots into jibberish.  Just afterward, he made that sort of guttural sound men seem to have selfishly perfected, the one that means “I’m thinking about things I’d like to do to you right now,” but in a tame enough way that if done within earshot of authority, would only merit a quick repercussive glance or finger wag.  Still, he says markedly forward things, heavy with innuendo but still innocently empty of profanity or smut.  He is never not smiling at me, buoyed perhaps by the mutually understood impossibility of any “us.”  Regardless, I am a cartoon character with each new spell he lances my way, newborn and batting my eyes, weak-kneed and wanting to stay close so that maybe he’ll be tempted to toss more treats in my direction.

                Except today, I saw him mouthing a come-on I had reserved as my own at one of our other co-workers, a thin pretty girl with thick attitude.  Here she was, batting my eyelashes!  Giggling off his advances the way that I was supposed to do!  The nerve, the sheer audacity of it.  This man and I caught eyes at the exchange, and a hot feeling flashed to my cheeks with icy speed.

                What was this?  Was this jealousy?

                Having patted myself on the back so often for abstaining from the tempting charms of so many lonely or lousy or just plain horny exes, I had come to believe that I was immune from the charms of courting men.

                Untrue.  My undying love of being wooed slapped me full in the face today.  I had been leaning on this assurance of my own resistance so heavily that I failed to see it was built quite flimsily on tooth-picks of past choices that, while I stuck to them, I still sometimes regretted.  I would never date this man, never kiss him or hold his hand, certainly I wouldn’t do any number of the things he halfway innocently suggested we do.  But I still thought of him as somehow mine in a way.  I gave myself the credit for the charm, feeling I deserved it instead of seeing it as a function of his own clever assertiveness or blatant sexuality.  This man did not get off on charming me.  He got off on charming the world.

                This was an arguably innocent revelation.  One that came at very little cost.  I wasn’t even visually embarrassed for a moment, but rather, greeted this discovery about myself with a bewildered giggle.  My non-relationship with my coworker has bounced back to its innocuous and constant flirtation, although perhaps fitted with a new pair of clearer lenses magnifying reality, at least on my side.

                But I fear that for many people, women and men, this kind of revelation unmasks itself when the stakes are much higher, and the consequences much more dire.  I see charm as the kryptonite of any human being’s ability to look out for the good of the self and all that that entails: one’s family, one’s health, one’s friendships, one’s financial security.

 It is a most dangerous weapon because it was not invented to be one.  As a subscriber to the belief that original sin is reserved for Milton and there is some innate goodness to be found in every body, I believe that charm in its purist form represents an instinctual need to simply be… charming.  As we grow older, we understand that those who are charming are well-liked or favored, and the well-liked and favored get what they want.  Thus, the birth of teacher’s pets, well-tipped waitresses and Casanovas. 

So, allow me to continue my self-inventory, my extensive list of grievances easily corrected by resistance to this complicated weapon.  There is one arena in which the charmers have and, it seems, will continue to dominate me.

They’re really good at taking my money.

When I was 16, I was picky enough to eat plain cheese quesadillas for dinner roughly four nights a week.  I also didn’t believe in gyms or working out, and had never lifted a barbell in my life.  But one day a college guy cornered me on my way out of Old Navy, infusing my shopping high with comments about how old I looked, how pretty my hair was, and how fit I appeared.  He was selling health and fitness magazine subscriptions.  I could have cared less about health and fitness magazines, so naturally, three winks to the wind, I bought one.  See you later, two months’ allowance.

At various points in my life I have donated portions of my monthly income to any number of grassroots organizations with any number of lofty causes because the canvassers were equipped with toothy grins and just enough body contact to almost make me blush.  I’ve saved whales.  I’ve saved homeless children.  I’ve donated for peace action, and for political activism that perhaps turned out not to be so peaceful.

These are arguably good causes, at least in my moral handbook.  But the problem is not that I’m giving my money away to them.  It’s that I’m charmed into doing it on a street corner, without any investigation into the organization who’s done so well in hiring such cajoling petitioners.  Saving whales is great, but the World Wildlife Fund is probably better at it than a for-profit PAC with a political agenda.  A good philanthropist knows where her money goes; she is unbewitchable.

I, on the other hand, am beguiled right and left.  And I don’t think I’m the only one.

So here lies the true danger of charm:  it stops us thinking things through the way we normally would.  It lets us believe that the bad guy in the leather jacket who never calls when he says he will was actually really just busy, that he’ll be back tomorrow with roses and a white horse.  It convinces us that a certain politician or social leader has the smarts and the innovation to lead a city, state or country in the right direction.  It allures us into doling out cash and coin for causes that perhaps are not worthy of our support: under-developed, mislead or even just outright immoral.

                So to save the world, I will not be flying faster than a speeding bullet, nor will my fists of steel punch through bank vault walls to apprehend slimy villains.  I’ll just retreat to my secret lab now to work on a way to dominate charm, maybe a laser gun to blast it into a thousand tiny slivers, too small to seduce.

                But wait, what’s that you say?  You think I’m cute, and you’d like to take me to lunch?  Well, I suppose… Oh stop it!  You’re making me blush!

                I think I’ll just work on that gun thingy tomorrow.