Three More Ways of Looking at Love/Unfinished

You said, ‘I love you’. Why is it that the most unoriginal thing we can say to one another is still the thing we long to hear? ‘I love you’ is always a quotation. You did not say it first and neither did I, yet when you say it and when I say it we speak like savages who have found three words and worship them. I did worship them but now I am alone on a rock strewn out of my own body.

from Written on the Body, by Jeanette Winterson

I wish I could write about it. Sometimes I fear I have never really felt it, although this cannot be true. I have been warmed by this thing called love, I’ve been burned by this thing called love.

I’ve written about it, obliquely. I’ve circled it, and I’ve hinted at it, and I’ve called it possession, I’ve called it desperation, but I’ve never named it.

Every song that’s ever been written has been written about it. Every book that’s ever been written has been written about it. Every movie that’s ever been made has been made about it. Everything you’ll ever do will be done because of it.

I’m circling it again. I’m edging ever closer, though, ever closer to the edge, to the dizzy heights, the cliffs of love.

Jeffrey Dahmer loved his boys. He loved them so much he tried to keep them with him forever. I’ve tried to keep love forever. I’ve tried to bottle it, but love sours fast.

Love soars, love is vast.

Love is a vampire, drunk on your blood...love is the killer you thought was your friend.

from ‘The Beast’ by Concrete Blonde

It’s better than ice-cream, it’s better than an orgasm, it’s better than Christmas and kittens and sleeping in. It’s all of these things and none of these things and it’s more than the sum of anything, it’s everything. It’s walking in the rain and crying and being unable to tell the difference between tears and rain. It’s listening to your favorite song twelve times in a row. It’s memorizing a poem and reciting it to yourself quietly while the world around you collapses. It is not words, it is not sound, it is not taste or touch or smell. It is waking up to sunlight on your face. It is sunlight. Love soars, love is vast.

Jerome was sliding and climbing on top of me and it felt like it had the night before, like a crushing weight. So do boys and men announce their intentions. They cover you like a sarcophagus lid. And call it love.

from Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

I have loved him for eight years. He hurt me; I hurt him. We played the game that lovers play. We worked hard to destroy each other. We did it well. I didn’t speak to him for years. I thought about him every day for years. I hated him; I loved him. Even while I hated him I loved him. Even while I loved him I hated him. I wanted him to suffer. I wanted desperately to see him suffer. I enjoyed my suffering.

This is an old story. You’ve read this story before. You’ve lived this story before. This is my story; this is his story; this is your story. This is our story. This is the only story that’s ever been written.

When I was young, I thought that love would save me. I thought that if only I loved and was loved in return, I would be happy. And now I have loved, and been loved in return, and I have been happy. I have also been sad, scared, hurt, bewildered, amazed, scarred, bewitched, and I’ve soared. I’ve reached the staggering heights of physical and emotional delirium. I have lived every adjective. I have tasted the word ‘love’ on the air, and I have spelled out ‘love’ with my fingers in the sand. I suppose I was saved by love, then. I suppose it is everything I hoped it would be.

This is me circling it, again. Why can’t I write about love? Fuck all this poetry. Love is not poetry, or it’s not all poetry. Love is storyline and dialogue and specifics, too.

Try again.

I have loved him since I was twenty-one. When I was twenty-one we met in a strange place, at the top of the world. The sun never stopped shining, or it never shone. The days were endless in light, endless in darkness. A fairy tale beginning. I would like to avoid poetics, but the place where we met is too perfect – too unbelievable - to describe any other way.

A place of extremes. The coldest cold you have ever felt, and the fattest sun you have ever seen. Liquor and cigarettes and money, and the longest nights. Long nights waiting for the sun to set (and it never does), or waiting for the sun to rise (and it never does). You wouldn’t believe how easy it is to fall in love to the tune of a vanished sunset, to the song of a sky that goes on forever.

This is not what I meant to write.

Try again.

Despite everything, despite the ways we have destroyed each other, we remain together, somehow. A couple, of sorts. A couple of misfits, a couple of freaks, a couple of outcasts. Despite the fact that he makes me angrier than anyone I’ve ever met. Despite the fact that he disappoints me and has always disappointed me and will continue to disappoint me. Despite the fact that I did my best to destroy him. Despite the fact that I cannot be around him. Despite all this, I still love him. He still loves me. Two people who will never be happy together can still love, despite the impossibility of it. This is love. This is what soars, this is the vast impossible sky of love.

That is what I meant to say.

Love soars, love is vast.

***
A caveat:

I cheated this week. I read ‘Beloved’ last Friday, and it was poignant and sad and full of ideas and imagery; writing a ‘reply’ should have been easy. I started something, and I even figured out how it fit, snugly and succinctly, next to ‘Beloved’. I wrote 519 words, and then I…stopped. Those 519 words are jostling against each other, restless as tiny nervous birds, in a file on my desktop. The file has a name; the words have a purpose; there is a story there, somewhere. Somewhen.

I’ve not found it yet, so this week you got an old piece, 'Three More Ways of Looking at Love'. It was written many months ago, and although it was not directly inspired by ‘Beloved’, it was written in an attempt to write about love the way Zach writes about love; clearly, sincerely, and unequivocally.

***

Fuck it. This is an experiment, right?

Here.

Read it.

Unfinished, or In Through the Red Door

Yeah, there are a few clubs here, in the City. The usual mix, I guess; lots of filthy dives like this place; an exclusive trans-bar that’s almost im-fuckin-possible to get into, believe me; a rain-blow dance club for the queer kids – you know, the kids looking for cheap sex and even cheaper drugs; a couple of your classier S&M joints, where everyone wears Carnival masks and drooping feathers; and the Red Door.

Well, to be precise, the Red Door used to be here. Now, it’s no longer. I mean, the building is still standing, and the sign is still there, but that’s it. No more lights. No more music, unless the clanging of bones against bones against splintered table legs counts as music.

It was the place to be, the Red Door. Everyone went there, and I mean everyone. Kids from every scene imaginable (even the Vampire kids, who are way too fucking elitist to ever mix with City scum), every kind of trans-creature, even City men in suits and slicked-back hair.

I guess the big twist, and the reason we all went there, is that the Red Door was all about love. Yeah, the front door was red, but if you looked closely you’d see that it was actually a hundred different shades of red, made up of interlocking hearts, some of them the ‘O’ in love, some of them just perfect little hearts, like the ones you make when you’re a kid: fold a piece of paper in half, draw a wing, and cut. The walls inside were painted red too, and we used permanent markers to write on them. Management allowed one love story each; other than that, there weren’t really any rules. I guess there was a whole city’s-worth of love stories written on the walls.

I mean, it’s no fucking wonder the place went insane.

Can I remember what I wrote? Jesus. I actually wrote a lot of things on those walls, to be honest. I don’t remember them all. They were probably mostly long strings of drunken expletives, anyway. I mean, that’s what I do. You’ve figured that out by now, I bet.

I think it was around the time when I first met Fresia that I wrote something coherent. I don’t know. Ask her if she remembers.

Personally, I remember a lot of stupid fucking poems.

Have I ever been in love? Wrong question. Moving the fuck on.

It was a nice place, the Red Door. Not like this place, just another goddamn dive in a city full of goddamn dives. The drinks were good and strong. They had names like ‘The Beatrice’ and ‘Temporary Madness’ and ‘Ophelia’s Cunt’ (yeah, that was my favorite). No black lights to pick out the lint and semen on your dress; they wouldn’t have worked with the red walls. Just dim lamps on each table, and a few rippling spotlights on the dance floor.

I actually remember the song that was playing that night:

I can't forget I am the sole architect
I built the shadows here
I built the growl in the voice I fear

Hey pretty, don't you wanna take a ride with me
through my world