By Leatrice Spevack
When Rimbaud wrote Season In Hell, he must have been talking about Spring—that noxious spell during which human desire blooms alongside the crabgrass. And up and down Yonge Street, lithe bodies lubricate their Levis with each swing of the hips.
Love.
Rarely would I applaud the efforts of men (they are self-congratulatory enough) but last week’s op-ed piece by fellow “bitterisite” Peter Nowak was not merely inspired, it was decidedly accurate.
Just how many great songs have forever been sacrificed in the name of love; how many friendships destroyed? How many treacly beginnings, marinated for months and chicanery and vitriol, have ended with that all-too-familiar phrase, “Can we just be friends?”
Schlock-classic, Love Story, alleged that “being in love means never having to say you’re sorry.” That’s because love is merely a synonym for doormat. Ask yourself how often you’ve apologized to the welcome rug after wiping the shit off your shoes.
So how exactly do we recognize love? What exalts it above the drudgery of everyday emotion? How does one tell, for example, the difference between infatuation and love? Infatuation is the margarine of love—looks the same, tastes similar—but it doesn’t screw with your heart quite as much.
Love is a lease agreement with the fine print written in invisible ink. Love that is conditional is not love at all—it’s ownership. Love doesn’t have strings. Instead, it has ribbons and bows and shiny paper wrapping, that, when undone, reveal a Pandora’s Box of horrors: a bizarrely too-close relationship with mom. the habit of eating chicken wings with a knife and fork or a curious attraction to “I Dream of Jeannie” reruns.
However, love is indeed a “condition”—a clinical condition. The poet Dryden called it a “malady without a cure.” Of course, that was before Lithium was introduced.
Fortunately, time does heal all wounds—but so does a bottle of Johnny Walker. the pain in your head the following morning will easily make mincemeat of the ache in your gut.
In a recent Globe and Mail article, York University psychology and biology prof Suzanne MacDonald describes the flush of love as “…the same feelings animals have when they’re about to be eaten.
“These symptoms (rapid heart beat, sweaty palms, quickening of the breath, goosebumps) signify the arousal of the sympathetic nervous system: the adrenal medulla of the brain is directed by the hypothalamus to produce epinephrine and other neurohormones that make you alert and ready for actions.
“It is only our cognitive codes and cultural cues, then, that tell us…whether to reach for a rifle or lipstick.”
Do yourselves a favour and get the gun.
The erudite Mr. Nowak says that love “makes you lose your sense of yourself.” Damn straight it does! How many of us can claim we saw Sleepless in Seattle of our own volition (and if you did, I’ve got a nice little plot of land in Florida…)?
Love makes you just plain lose all sense.
Hate is not love’s opposite. Sanity is.
Mind you, there are things worse than being in love. Try being around someone else who is. Believe me, pal, friendship comes complete with its own set of conditions, the first of which is, “Don’t show me your poetry.”
Love is not only blind—it’s deaf and dumb. With so many services available these days you’d think that they would would have come up with the ultimate “wake-up!” call.
Did I hear you tell me, “That’s what friends are for?” When was the last time you tried to tell someone their little lamb is an obnoxious, snivelling, self-righteous poseur? Try it, and let me know how many years it is before you’re able to be in the same room together.
Love exemplifies the most wretched excess in the repertoire of human emotion. It is intrusive, illogical and mentally crippling. It eludes inquiry. It saps us of our strength and reduces us to empty vessels incapable of independent thought. It reorders our priorities. It is an oxytoxic nightmare. It is a mountebank.
Trust me. When love calls, hang up.
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