They've been dating for four days. And that's when I realize,
they're looking for something they probably won't find here.
He doesn't elaborate on where he slept last night:
simply that it wasn't his dorm. A fire of
lust but it's mutual lust, and we talk such wonderful foreplay.
We're only animals; we have our instincts. But the glow of
the sun beneath the horizon; the warmth of discovery, gain of knowledge:
all of these are a form of love. Such a strong instinct has its place, but
the look on her face as I lay on top of her, that perfectly relaxed smile no one else sees.
What else could make life worth living? She presses my hand against her breast,
and for once I'm not thinking of anything but her heartbeat beneath it. “Can you feel it?
It beats for you.” Such a cheesy line, and I pull her closer onto my lap as my penis makes known
Four days and his Facebook status already mourns for her presence. When she returns, it reads
is whole again, for once since the depression my life has meaning. Do I love her? She said it first,
and I said it back, partially because I was too scared to deny it. But I love her. I grew to love her.
And that's why it was so painful to let go of the feeling that this is your last shot. You have time. I promise.
I've been there before, I think. Not too long ago. I thought the world could go to hell if it wanted to take her away.
They didn't understand: I wanted to kill myself, not too long before. And now she was with me, and whenever
I felt the tendril of hopelessness, I had a partner, someone to hold my hand as I fought, and that could never be a bad thing.
“He makes me so happy,” she gasps, the whirlwind not stopping. But it will stop. Most likely, it will stop. And it will deposit you
on the ground I thrust into her, so happily, so blissfully, because of course I had been programmed to do it from birth. And
of course this wasn't a bad thing. Those scientists who tried to reduce love to reproduction and neurology would take her from me too.
I would never let them take her. I would never let me take her. Even when I had second thoughts, she was the only lover I'd had, and maybe
the only one I'll ever have you thought of why they warn you, “Take it slow. Take it easy.”? They have been there, too. I guess
the mutually incompatible feelings that they knew nothing and they knew more than I could imagine, more about love and life and I wanted to know it all,
wanted to feel the way that they said brought you closer to God. I was impatient. Too impatient. I tried to force it, too. But when you meet someone you really
care about, no coercion or desperation, no irresistible lust (or at least not until afterwards), that's when you'll know. You have time. All the time in the world, really.
So get to know her first. And get to know others, as well. Four days is much too short to think you know someone well enough to love them. I mean,
I thought I knew her too. I thought I knew everything, that and the mutually incompatible feeling that I knew nothing. Cognitive dissonance, they call it,and I guess that was a good way to describe how I felt then. I had days when I thought she was the best thing that would ever happen to me, and
days when I dreaded the decision I knew I'd eventually have to make. Many people say they'd give up their lives, their well-being, for their lovers.
Did you ever get to test it? She was bipolar. She started calling me more and more for help, talking about cutting herself and killing herself,
saying I was the only one who cared, the only one who'd listen. I made her so happy, she said, the whirlwind never stopping. Sometimes I
was the cause of her depression, or so I imagined – but of course depression doesn't need a rational cause. “I love you,” I said, and
meant it so badly, but sometimes she wouldn't say it back. She'd withdraw into herself, telling me how her parents didn't know her,
her classmates didn't know her, everyone thought she was stupid because she didn't do her classwork because she was too
worried about how everyone didn't know her, worried that I'd dump her, and of course I, too, was worried the same thing.
But then we had one of those nights where we'd lie next to each other and stare for ages, until my dad finally called
me up and ordered me to come home, and then I'd give her one last kiss and tell her everything about how much
she meant to me, and she'd give me a whole new reason to love myself. And I'd do anything for her.
No matter how harmful it was to me, if it earned her a split second of happiness, it was well worth it.
Just don't think those who warn you to slow down haven't been there too, is what I guess I'm saying.
That and sometimes it does work out. But we have a choice – males evolved with the “reproduce,
reproduce, reproduce” mentality, but that doesn't mean we can't slow it down, too.
Memetic evolution, it's called, and it's when the brain overcomes the instincts,
the logical eclipsing the emotional. Of course, there are several instances
in which the emotional works much better than the logical, but things have
changed since the early days of human evolution. Instinct
hasn't changed, but the times have. Love at first sight can exist,
but we've got a choice of whether or not to stay in love.
Or to become just another emo song that ends in melancholia.
I choose the choice.
And, of course, I choose to guard my skepticism carefully,
because skepticism is nobler than chastity,
and exchange it when I reach old age
for the eternity of my dreams.
Four days.