Love Essay

I made a deal with a friend not long ago that we would swap stories about what we thought love was. It seemed a simple enough thing to do, and I was confident that I could find a few minutes to pound out an essay that would cover my end of the deal. Like me, this friend shares a need to write things down. She prefers to use poetry as a medium, which I think makes it easier, but that’s just my opinion. She was quick in fulfilling her end of the bargain. Her writing was heart-wrenching and immediate, sometimes violent and strangely erotic. Woe unto us, though, who prefer to try and pigeonhole everything through prose; the whole “love” thing is too elusive. As I try to write my “love” essay, I find myself wishing I was better at poetry. But, mechanics be damned. I’ll try.

If I could write in this blog what love is so that every person who read it knew and understood exactly what I was saying, well, I wouldn't be sitting in a crappy apartment writing essays that almost nobody reads. I don’t have the talent to cover such an all encompassing subject. “I love my mom. I love that movie. I love shrimp fettuccine alfredo”. How in the world would I begin to explain it to someone who didn’t know what it meant? More importantly, I think, how could I explain it when I’m not sure what it is myself? Anecdotes always work well, so I’ll hide behind that, and I’ll just stick to the adult occurrence. My teen love stories will have to wait.

I was married when I fell in love, and it wasn’t with my wife. I have heard older people say they fell in love with their spouses only after marriage, and it worked out great for them. Things don’t work that conveniently for me. No, as usual, there is always a giant monkey wrench floating about, waiting patiently to enmesh itself in my workings when I need it the least.

On the most mundane of errands, I inadvertently, unexpectedly, and blissfully fell in love with a complete stranger in about three minutes. When I saw her, I was immediately struck (blinded) by how beautiful she was. To be fair, I have seen lots of beautiful women, but this one was different. Of course, she was standing right in front of me, which helped; it’s tough to fall in love with a magazine picture, although I have seen others do it. But anyway, this girl literally took my breath away. I felt as though I were in another dimension. It was as if I could see, really see, for the first time. I was in my neighborhood liquor store buying bourbon like I did all the time, and yet, I was worlds away, my transportation courtesy of the new clerk.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Lush walks into liquor store, sees half-way decent looking girl, and has love fantasies. In a cynical (realistic) way, you’d be right. But this is a love story, so go with it.

Our short conversation was all business, I think. We may have chatted briefly about the weather or the gift boxed Jack Daniel sets or the man in the moon. I don’t remember, and it didn’t matter. I knew, in one instant, that I would be able to listen to her talk about anything. Anything at all. For as long as she wanted. And while she spoke, it would be as if I were in a dream, and her voice would be both an hypnotic soundtrack and a river that I could float away on, forever.

Quite (too) abruptly, our short transaction was over, and I was back in my car. I had to go home. To where my wife was. And I don’t think I’ve ever felt so guilty in my life. I actually took the long way home so I could try to gather my thoughts, once so neatly kept, so organized, so…predictable. Hadn’t I stood up, in front of my family, and professed to God and everybody, that I loved my wife, and would cleave to her and no other? Oh, this was bad. Very bad. All I had done was go to the liquor store to buy a bottle of bourbon, and now I was in love with another woman. Wait, not in love, but I knew I could love this woman, much more than I ever did my wife. I knew, for the first time, what love really was: It was the desire to hang on every word, to get lost in the smile and to scream and fight no matter the cost to myself in order to keep the smile in place. It was the feeling of utter relaxation. It was a calm that inspired abandon I had never known, and wanted so badly, no matter what I had said to anybody before I met her. It all happened in about three minutes, and there isn’t a day that has gone by since that I haven’t thought of it.

Did I lust after her? You bet I did. But it was more than just the physical act that I wanted. I wanted to be as close to her as two people can be. I wanted to lose myself in her, and I knew it would an ecstatic, delirious experience, with my only hope being that maybe some of whatever magic she had would shine on me, if only for a moment. I imagined it would be like touching the face of God, and I don’t care if that’s blasphemy.

When I had finally gathered my wits, I went home. I didn’t mention to my wife that I had fallen in love at the liquor store.

Remember the floating monkey wrench? It came back. Through an odd series of events, my wife became good friends with the clerk of my dreams. And (I couldn’t make this up), they had the same name. She would visit on occasion, and there just isn’t enough bourbon in the world to make that scene comfortable. I remember sitting in my kitchen with those two women and realizing that I had never felt so secretive and yet so exposed in my life. I had to be very careful about any vocal inflections when speaking their names. When I spoke to my wife, her name sounded like I was spitting out a poppy seed, but when I spoke to the clerk, it sounded like a symphony. I had to be very careful to make sure that what was going on in my head didn’t make it out of my mouth.

I could go on and on, trying vainly to describe how I felt. Suffice to say that I have never felt so strongly for a woman.

There’s no happy ending to this story. I eventually discovered that my wife had been involved in more extramarital affairs than I wanted to hear about. The beautiful clerk is married, and we do speak from time to time.

In case you’re wondering, I did have the chance to tell her how I felt. In a desperate act of foolishness, I told her I would build her a house with my own hands and love her children and devote the rest of my life to making her as happy as she could be. Bless her heart, for she was very gentle in letting me know that she did not feel the same way, which leads me to wonder: Did I know from the beginning that I could not have her, and is it that fact which made her so appealing? Would things have been different had she felt the same for me, which is to say, would it have lasted? I’ll never know, and yet, I am still grateful to her for making me feel like she did. It felt like love for me, and it was good.

Epilogue:

I’ve been working on this essay for nearly five hours, and every time I re-read it, I realize how much more there is I could say to try and describe how I felt for the clerk. It will take everything I have to resist the temptation to revise it…again. I’m tired, and at this particular moment, my opinion (subject to change) is this: Love, for me, anyway, is beautiful but clumsy: Just when things are almost fixed, she drops the stupid wrench.

I have since tried to extend the same amount of fervor I felt for the clerk to subsequent women, and I am sure that I have loved them, although it was different, and, I might add, unsuccessful. I wanted so desperately to feel the same way the clerk made me feel; I tried to make it happen, and it didn’t. There’s a word to the wise.