(Not) on Love [Single White Nerd]

I’m supposed to write about love–pro or con or whatever–today.  And I find that, though I am the Single White Nerd and, as such, this should be right kablammo in the center of my wheelhouse, I do not want to.  Which is odd.  Because normally I’d jump at the chance to write some sort of screed against love that actually ends up being pro love and is vaguely moving. But today; meh.I guess I could write about Valentine’s Day.  Maybe Valentine’s Day in elementary school when you’d have to give valentines to everyone, but put extra red hots into the cards for your grade-school crush in the hopes that s/he would get the secret message and let you hold their hand.

Again; meh.

I could try to define love.  Wrestle it into the confines of rationality, peg it to a board like one of those dead ‘n dessicated butterflies that serial killers always seem to have in the talkies.  I could invoke evolution or Schoepenhauer or both.  Hell, I could write a whole philosophical treatise based on my experiences of love.  That would be . . . stultifyingly boring.

Mehsymcmehmeh.

Maybe I could write about the glorious torture of new love; the early days when your existence narrows its focus onto the other person.  Tumbling into a maelstrom of emotion and obsession.  Is she thinking about me?  What did she have for breakfast?  I wish I were a piece of toast; she likes toast.  Maybe I should call her, no I just called her, but she may want me to call her, what if someone else calls her, what if she doesn’t pick up, or does pick up, I want to throw up.  Reading hidden messages into the slightest cock of the head or curl of the lip.  Waiting for acknowledgement, requisition, rejection.  Anything.

Anything.  I could write anything about love because it’s sort of anything you want it to be.  Romantic, platonic, for food or puppies or people, sexual, asexual, pure, impure, licit or illicit, positive or negative.  It’s infinitely flexible.  Let’s play a game:  I’ll type a word and you tell me the first thing that comes to mind.  Ready?

Here we go.

Love.

What’d you get?

I got a hit of a surprise party I took part in yesterday.  A group of about 15 people gathered at the mark’s house while she was at yoga.  We made a bunch of food.  When she returned, we hid behind the kitchen island.  She walked in and immediately saw the food.  “What the fuck?” she said before we all jumped out and started singing Happy Birthday.  She smiled big as the world and started leaking water from her eyes.  That moment of realization and reaction and gratitude:  Love.

Ask me again next week and it might be something different.

That’s it.  That’s why I don’t want to write about Love–it exists everywhere, all the time, manifesting in infinite ways.  You can be all clever with it.  You can write about the manifestations and call them love if you want to.  You can write about stuff that you do and say that you do it “out of love.”  But, really, what does that mean?  It can mean buying someone a bauble or killing their kitten.  Trying to write about love or form a pro/con opinion on it is not unlike trying to sculpt smoke.  Ineffective.

So I think I’ll beg off this year.  No writing about love for me.  Except for maybe this thought I came up with while pounding down a mug of coffee in one hand and a mimosa in the other:

People hook up over alcohol, but fall in love over coffee.  Discuss.

Happy Valentine’s Day, kids.

 

featured image credit: _tris_