Date:         Sun, 1 Feb 1998 06:20:51 -0500
From: Words from the Monastery <jackechs@EROLS.COM>
Subject:      SUB: VDC: On What I Know of Love (essay)

THE END IS HERE! Thanks to everyone who submitted ... I'll get a list to
the list soon ... ;)

The 1998 WRITERs' Valentine's Day Contest

Remember, save your critiques please and send you entries to Michelle
<winebird@inreach.com> and me <jackechs@erols.com> not the list for entry
into the contest.

*****

        On What I Know of Love

        Thought I didn't know who exactly I might become, and
had met no women I wanted to be when I met my true love, I knew
my intimate relationship with him would cloak me.  It would purr,
inside, and make me strong.  I threw myself at the poor man,
twenty ways to crazy, holding back only my instinct for survival,
and my great intellect.

        How indistinct those echoes of mighty romance, muffled
now, almost inaudible, really.  A murmuring pitapat.  One's sigh
leads to the other's moan.  Faintness wanes, then charges.  And all
paths lead to the joining, the ultimate confirmation of oneness in
physical pleasure so overwhelming you feel that no one loved like
this before.  "It's inevitable," you think, "it's love."  

        Oh, it pads there, this vague recall of bewitchment, in the
back alleys of charades I once played, and I haven't forgotten.  It is
only this woman's resistance, strong in reach, wishes to qualify,
place in context, those mazes of enchantment which grew pink and
lush with lust.  That early me was green, unacquainted with my
destiny, though his seemed as familiar to me as my own face.  Ahh,
that would become problematic, you see, and this unwillingness to
return to a place the women of my generation feared was a social
condition, a biological muteness, or maybe just a pretty picnic feels
thick.

        Yet, it is a relevant question.  What is love?  Romance
flourished way back then, with him, and though we had love
aplenty and were in love, I couldn't tell anyone else today what I
think for sure of love without addressing this issue to him.  For  he
stood by, bewildered, then resolute, then contentious and furious,
then astute, as I grew into the woman I desired and taught him to
desire, also.

        Evening falls outside under the early glow of a dim sliver
of moon.  I cuddle my pen and pad and think on love, and I pretend
to explain my take on this love thing in his absence.  Then we shall
see what I admit to, what I believe, of love and romance.

        Now that I am no longer a girl in love, nor just a wife or
just a woman, but that independent and unconventional person you
claim to still love after all these years, you would assume I could
write about it: love; expand upon themes of enduring ardor;
transport of reason; sex and lust at forbidden junctures; and even
unveil dusty truths from our past that might inspire us, you and I,
my love, to extend this pact.  Instead I am left dog paddling, with
the life raft always just out of reach, for after all this time I am not
as sure as you that what we have could be called love. 

        Yes, yes, yes, I know you complain about this difficult mind
that works backwards, up the down staircase, searching
everywhere for that singular, spectacular daisy that will bear up to
my incessant picking.  It is not that I do not hear love upon your
lips, or read fondness and other things in those same eyes of yours,
or even that the feel of you cupped just so cannot stir romantic
particles and waves.  But this is no ordinary question, nor is it
about ethics.  I simply yearn for one instant, one heartstopping sip
of pure sensation, and then I know I shall perceive the true nature
of love.  Our love.  My love.  

        If I could just finger aside the words and definitions for a
moment, slide past Aristotle's Clotho, past certain births and
deaths, even further, past our discovery of your hands on my
breasts, well, perhaps lingering to listen awhile to the exquisite
work of lungs and racing heartbeats, and then further back,
creeping past the death rattle of my father, back into girlhood
amidst portable record players and the Nixon-Kennedy election and
pinafores spoiled with saddle shoes, piano lessons, just there, yes,
perhaps I could break my silence and say what I always thought of
love and romance.

        Have you ever seen a lady dress for a man?
In a bedroom glowing with lamplight or the sun going down? 
Breathing perfumed air that makes promises?  I used to watch my
mother do just that.  She sewed her own dresses, and mine, and
hers looked sophisticated, showy, and she wore them as easily as
one introduces those destined to be friends.  Of colors bright in
summer, and stark in winter, with precious peek-a-boo shoulders,
hugging waistlines and perfect straight hems, for her behind was
flat and the back of her skirts never hitched, no other dresses
compared.  Her dark hair curled around and above or swirled back
away, and her ear rings shone like the last jelly beans at Easter. 
Shoes, size 10 1/2 narrow, hard to find, unwrapped from tissue
paper or used plastic, matched handbags.  My mother smacked of
glamour after she stepped into those high heels.  At least two
Kleenexes littered her dressing table when she finally cruised
grandly up to my waiting father,  blotted lips wide open upon them.  

        I don't know how my father dressed, whether she laid out
his clothes or whether he just walked in and put on what made
sense.  Or if he had enough clothes to have a choice.  Red and green
colorblindness robbed him of some assurance, and I remember him
asking if his socks matched on occasion.  Mostly I didn't look at him
that way, look at his clothes, for I always observed the way he
smiled at me, or drank in my beautiful mother, or quizzed my
brothers.  Then there was the way he laughed,  hardy-har-har! (we
always mimicked him), the way he filled up the room. I bore
children of my own before I ever knew he was six foot four inches
tall.  Magnificent and mannerly and curious.  A talker. 

        They danced.  I didn't witness their steps very often, but
they relished and embellished upon fairytales of the parties and the
dances.  You could hear joy and romance and pride there.  In love
and seducing themselves by their own entwined shadows upon
yawning windowshades.  Rhett and Scarlett of the 1950s, dramatic
and singular when together, waiting in the wings as Other People
when apart.  They exchanged glances, and I remember those high-
up gazes that paused time, held us all wide-eyed hostage, until one
of them broke.  They kissed.  Good-bye in the morning, hello in the
late afternoon. They posed for pictures, with couple friends, with us
kids, in the backyard, on the boat, at the beach.  Is it my eyes
wandering through those photographs that bend them toward one
another, though the two dimensions and a few shadows dispute my
claim?  Did they yearn for that touch, that closeness, and did that
single kite string hold them through the gales of turbulence and
change that followed?

        Have you ever seen a huge scarlet heartbox, lacy and alive,
sweating sweet smells, filled with candies that make everyone in
the room ooh and aah?  Valentine's Day.  My father never missed a
one, with a lover's singular intent for my mother,
with sweet, promising, ever-growing boxes of filled chocolates and
pastel mints for me. Together, my mother and I made an exquisite
ladylike show of selecting one, only after we offered magnanimous
choices to every person present. 

        I know I escaped, chose not to be my mother nor my
grandmother.  Yet how I miss the candle glow and softness of a
ritual so incandescent!  That memory, that moment, comes back to
me when we dine occasionally at establishments which set out
cutlery, not silverware, where waiters whisk our courses in and out
from under our noses, when we glance amused at one another over
sips of wine.

        I am waiting, my love, for you to come home tonight, to
slide your hand under my hair and around my neck and lift my face
to your bowed one.  Your dinner waits, warm, on the oven rack. 
Our boys listen for your truck to approach the curb, the engine's
last murmur, the closing and locking of the door, and I know the
questions of the day rise into their heads at the thud of your boots
on the stairs.  Later you may sit down beside me on the sofa where
I listen to Jimmy Buffet and read or write, and your left arm will
slide behind me, and your hand will connect with the bare flesh of
my side, my ribs.  You'll whisper a pleasant word or two, and I'll
stay silent, listening instead to my skin and muscle and bone
welcome yours.  

        I am waiting, my love, for you to tell me what you believe
of love and romance, something besides "we love each other, don't
worry about it," impatience, wordless and thoughtless backtracking
through that wilderness mind of yours.  I am one for words, you
see, so I shall wait awhile longer.  Though I know you are one for
showing, and somewhere in between my words and your showing
lies the truth of our love.  Of that much, I am certain. 

End