I'm not an angry person. I truly believe that my misfortunes are mine and that blame is counterproductive. But, realistically now, we can't all be Kumbaya all the time, can we? In fact, I think it’s a little healthy to (once in a while) realise where the problems lie around you, whip out your manicured index finger and point at something as the source of all evil incarnate without flinching.
Billions of words, millions of pages and the endless depths of the wasteland that is cyberspace dedicated to (or wasted on) cracking the relationship code. Why you and I aren't in one. How you and I could be in one. What to do once you're in one, and how to gracefully fall out of one.
Meet Roy. Roy is 42, reasonably good looking, camp as Christmas and richer than God. After a hypoxy and a mud bath, he drove to Pimlico and honked his S Class outside my door urging me to hurry up. We were on our way to a party in north London and hearing that Brazilians were featured as canapés, his patience was not to be tested. I rolled into the passenger seat, bottles of bubbly clinking in one hand and travel size moisturiser in the other, clearly not 100% ready yet.
"Habibi," he says in his Lebanese/French accent "don't keep mommy waiting like that."
As we crossed Westminster into Camden and (choke) the unknown beyond, Roy and I were having one of our usual discussions about men and relationships. He was frustrated. Here he was at his prime, looking good, feeling good, and still the 'right guy' hasn't come along.
Well, what do you define as the right guy? I asked. His answer wasn't entirely clear. He wanted someone that came from a good family, with good values. He wanted someone that is financially secure, "No more toy boys! Prostitutes are a dime a dozen darling and honestly I'd rather just pay for sex than have to pretend I'm interested in their lives."
Cynical, but honest. Then he said something else. "You know," he stopped suddenly at a zebra crossing and looked me straight in the eye, "it may be that I'm just not looking hard enough. It is almost like I don't have the energy. Recently, it dawned upon me that maybe there's a reason why I don't care enough.
"You see," he resumed driving, "I've been sharing a house with Xavier for 18 years. We've never dated, never kissed, never even the thought of sex between us. We just got used to living together, meeting other guys, dating them for a while, and then discarding them. But think about it this way, whatever guy I meet, the sex will be great, it'll work for a few years, then eventually that will fade away and what will really be left is companionship. But, you see, with Xavier I already have the companionship. I'm not ready to invest another 18 years in someone else. The 'right guy' I'm describing is actually just another version of Xavier! So all I really want it seems is the first part of the relationship. For the happily-ever-after, I have my friend Xavier."
I was on the verge of saying something before I realised how stupid it really was. In a soft and lustful tone with yearning and butterflies, like Cinderella on ecstacy pills, I was about to say "But don't you want to fall in love? Meet someone special and grow old together?"
When did we decide that Disney and Hollywood got it all right? That Cinderella was a true story and that Cameron Diaz could act? We've been polluted, our intelligence insulted. We walk into one of these movies and for 2 hours our spirits are played into ecstasy as the love story unfolds before us. Of course, somewhere along the line Drew Barrymore throws a hissy-fit, Meg Ryan is reduced to tears or, God help us, Julia Roberts goes through an existential crisis. "It can't all be smooth sailing," you can hear the directors say as they plot the divorce of rationality from emotion.
These love stories are like drugs, the relationships they simulate last a couple of hours, they give you a rush and inevitably, as you walk out of the movie theatre and start holding up your love life in comparison, a come-down. Who's to say that Roy and Xavier don't have the perfect relationship? Sex when they need it, and someone they can rely on who will always be part of their lives? Not me. So I kept my mouth shut.
Now its time to look at myself. What kind of a relationship is logically the one that will work best for me, Shakespearean hypocrisy aside?
I've stopped leaving slippers behind; no prince-charming for me, thank you.
This is the most powerful entry you ever blogged! Wonderful; powerful and very real.
ReplyDeleteI just think about sex and the city - isn't that the pill that makes us believe that being bad lucked isn't actually bad? I mean, another Hollywood stereotype.
We should make our own perspective regarding this, we should neither be leaving our slippers behind nor walking around with a poisoned apple. If Roy made this theory about relationships, that's his own perspective, vision and need already - that doesn't make you follow it, adopt or believe in it. You just respect it.
Sweetheart, when was love ever "made-up"?
ReplyDeleteDisney or not, Drew, Cameron, Julia, and every chick flick actress you can think of, did not invent it.
It was there, since the first two humans were created, its always been and always will be.
The track of the story can change, the script, the costumes, the light, but as Plato once said the first God was love and thats how the universe was created.
Yes, there was no happy ever after, but there were moments, nights and days of ecstatic agony, longing and yearning, murder and death, and full throttle drama from Antarah ibn Shaddad to Eloise and Abelard, all the way down to Sada Abe, lovers killed, lovers united, different stories, different places, but all come down to this: we can not resist the temptation to indulge in this exquisite human condition called love.
No matter how rational or Nietzschean we become.
Even you sweetheart.
Diss Diseny all you like, happy or not, the story is there, we can dismiss the cinematics and the politically correct, insufferable optimism (whoever said hearts are not meant to be broken?), but the heroes and the heroines, and all the ladies who dressed up and dressed down, these are real.
There will always be love, and there will always be fortune.
Some endings are happy and some are not.
All we can do is, hold our breath, cross fingers, and jump hoping for the best.
Remaining true to ourselves all the while, rainbows only come when there is rain, and birds can sing a war tune, flowers can be poisonous, and love just the same.
E, I don't think we're disagreeing at all. I'm not at all claiming that love is made up, rather that our understanding of how it operates or should operate has been polluted by the influences of popular media. As you say, all we can do is hold our breat, cross fingers and jump hoping for the best, but it is our expectations that need to managed within the realm of realism, which, when taken in its full value can be so much more powerful than Disney. I have Roy to prove it.
ReplyDeleteMerci for the thoughtful comments...