There is no such thing as unrequited love, no sirree, just a classic poetic myth, let us all flush it simultaneously out of our thought processes. Don’t misunderstand me, there are a variety of other forms that love assumes and costumes that love adorns itself with. It’s awfully childlike as it were. You can catch love opening up that leather chest hidden in the second story playroom some late weekday night, slipping on spurs, Levis and an embroidered brown shirt –Backcountry Love, starring Paul Newman – or love in a Suit and Tie, swirling wine glasses and touching the exposed lower back of a done-up neighbor – Sultry Love – or holding onto the banister of an extended staircase, heels and leopard print shirt and some kind of iridescent pants painted on thick thighs – I’d love you but I have a terminal neurological illness Love. Maybe we’ve confused it for unrequired love which is the closest we can get to our dear invented unilateral friend. Yes, love for strict loving sake, mostly and unfortunately misunderstood. This is a self-deprecating kind of love, a big-picture thinker that loves to watch misery from afar and coo at the cliché moments of the twentysomething lifestyle. Relationships guided by sentiments such as these force themselves into the constraints of ambiguously popular terms like "love" or "hate" or "beauty", and whether or not they fit a little too snuggly around the waist or hang oddly off the back, we zip up and walk out, proudly displaying that this is in fact the perfect word tailor-made for our relationship. Well I’m sorry buddy, but it just so happens that we trust too much in the mannequin, and while window shopping may turn us on in a variety of ways, those who are truly in touch with their emotions know that shits not one-size-fits-all. Sometimes the brand name isn’t quite right. Sometimes it just aint love.
You see, the entirety is surprisingly mutual – love, like, lust, and its other alliterations – but we, the twenty-first century amantes, courtesans of the modern day, forget that too much time spent on self-awareness may leave us increasingly disconnected from our place in the duo (or trio, right… who am I to judge). Have we just foregone our sense of sex, upstaged by the other fortune five? Let me tell you here and now that if you’ve ever touched, tasted, smelled, seen, and heard simultaneously, you are closer to your sex sense than you may give yourself credit for. I’m dedicated to tuning on in, honing the ends of the erogenous, perfecting each and every randy strand of hair on my head so that they too shoot up with excitement like those on my arms legs and elsewhere do when stimulated just right. I’m entirely more concerned with the variety of other flavors that a connection comes in; base my toppings off the core, hot fudge and sprinkles shouldn’t coat a bubble-gum sorbet, even if it is all icecream in the end. Let’s think of it on case by case shall we? Cut open the cardboard and riffle through the innards see what was once stored in each box, try to get a feel for that pesky yet important “inside” which is supposedly what counts.
This is the recounting of a relationship that never quite was. The kind that my stomach still jumps to, one that is continually running fictional script across my eyelids, a midnight showing of wouldas and couldas. I’m not so sure I ever started it, or really ended it for that matter, but this seems like just as fine a form as any to find out. It was not love, nor did it ever put on the appropriate heels to even pretend itself something closely related, but it was charged, both chemically and emotionally, that’s for sure. And like all good theater pieces, it comes with a variety of costume and scene changes, so much so that you as an audience member may lose sight of the stage. Pay close attention to the stage hands, for they play just as integral a role as the main actors/resses if not more, dare I say it. It’s them, dressed in all black with headsets and walkies strapped closely to their bodies, that really run the show, narrate the game, and make the entire performance run under the pretense of fluidity. And they were the ones who made it all up, for this never happened – not quite as I am about to detail – but what ever really does? Because, you see, much like the notion of love, we spend much too much time misunderstanding, and far less appreciating the variety of shapes and sizes that interactions come in, forcing them into specific get-ups when in fact they’d be much better off running naked through a field than fully dressed standing on a 5th ave corner hailing a cab. Sigh; such is the nature of domesticating our sensations. I’ve got a house heart that never quite knew the outdoors; it shits, eats, and sleeps in the same pantry closet. So this is my attempt to take it on a walk, breathe in something fresh. I always thought a prologue to be much like the lacing up of the authorial sneaker. Just grab that jacket and get out the door, but as you do, please remember to check the mailbox, because there’s a note in there from Her, that star of the show, the republican, and coincidentally it works to kick off all that is about to unfurl, with just the right disclaimer. Let’s title it “epigraph” and call it a day, shall we?
"I've never quite done this, and the rest to follow is wild, unfair, and much too much but, just allow me my nerves"
