Not a Flash Friday Flash 4-4-14 An apology to an ex-lover, definitely not in Flash Friday

Write a letter of apology to an ex-lover.

That’s the prompt for a flash. It’s not the flash I wanted to write this afternoon. Ok, so it’s not the flash I wanted to write whenever I got around to not writing it. Often enough to call it often I chose the prompt I want least to write. What use is there in writing only the prompts you want to write? Wait, no, scratch that, I’m just saying dot dot dot.

So I bring up my little box (which incidentally has been telling me ‘product activation failed’ for days now) and I stare at the blank page. I go lay down for a few minutes. You shut up, what’s your process for thinking about ex-lovers? I get distracted, eventually wind up back here, curse at the winking vertical line, pace, and then I sat down and started typing whatever the hell this is.

I almost started writing a letter of apology to dot dot dot someone else, not an ex. I wrote that line to remind myself, again, that’s not a good idea. Ok, it is a good idea, it just doesn’t go here. I’m not really good at apologies, but I write a sweet dot dot dot seduction. No. Just no.

Also I’m none to gruntled at the idea that there’s only one I can dredge up from my past that I remotely feel like apologizing to in any sincere sense. I mean sure I could tag all sorts of names with “I’m sorry you are such a bitch” and one or two of you would think that was a bit cold-blooded, but shit, not if I tell the tale. The handful that don’t go on that list are sordid little forget-me-please’s; no quarter asked, none given. I guess there’s one I owe an apology too, yeah, she’s not the one I was thinking of though. I mean the other one I was thinking of, not dot dot dot.

Yes, I know they are ellipses. I know that squiggly thing that looks like a treble clef is an ampersand. I know once you put umlauts into motley crue it doesn’t spell what the fans pronounce. Fuck it, if I want to write smarmy dot dot dots instead of a fucking flash apology to those bitchs I damn well will.

Hmmm. Ok, I’m not really all that bitter, though the two I married; no apologies, wrong direction for apologies. I’m grateful I still have most of my organs in reasonable working order. Don’t even think about snorting at that.

I am, however, not very apologetic either. I separated from my first wife when I was twenty nine. Since that time I haven’t misrepresented myself to get laid. You know, the standard stuff, trying to come across as smarter, richer, more sophisticated, whatever hot point you think will press the button of whoever smells like good eating. Huh. That wasn’t meant to sound quite so crude. You’ll notice that it’s still there. And still there. I just mean I’m sensitive to pheromones.

Huh. Both the dot dot dot to the future and the one I might could apologize to in the past, they have the right pheromones. You and I both know what that means; I’m also convinced it means something different to each of us. I hope you never spent money on pheromones and cat piss cologne or parfum. Yes, we are attracted to pheromones, but notthesame pheromones. The cuter more folksy pseudo-scientific way of saying it is Chemistry (yes it has a capital C). The fairy tale way of saying it is true love. They all basically mean Smells Like Good Eating.

Sex is not as necessary to sustain life as food is but we treat it the same. Yikes! I am so not about to make a moral judgment here, I am so not in a position too. I am likely not the cheapest whore on this site, but I’m much closer to his or her side of the bell curve. That said; if we are hungry and someone gives us a big mac we will most likely eat it; if we’re horny we will most likely fuck it. Um, the big macs owe me more of an apology than I owe them.

Yeah, ok, maybe I’m being a bit crude regarding the word lover and it doesn’t just mean them what you had sex with and/or married. I guess by my definition I should apologize to my right hand for ruining its breaking ball by widening its child bearing grip. I’m sorry dot dot dot.

But, you know, I only ever said that out loud once “Um, baby? I just said I love you because it was a short cut to sex.” I have some very strong opinions on Love. I don’t know fuck all about romantic love. I know about love of a child or a pet, a sibling, a parent; it’s scarier than shit. If Kris Kristofferson is right that freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose than love is the exact opposite, it’s having something so very precious that you would crawl through flaming shit not to lose it. Huh. No, worse than crawl through flaming shit, you’d go to a shitty job through the heavy traffic of everyone else going to their shitty jobs, spend forty hours a week slowly dying, burning time the only real commodity, to feed and house your love and all the rest of your waking time nourishing it; and it’s worth it.

That is not how romantic love works, or it’s not how it has worked for me, yet. In the beginning you ride that commuter train with a dopey smile on your face, do your forty hours of time, race back home to put pudding on one another’s secondary and primary sex characteristics, giggle, don’t get much sleep, rinse, repeat. Then there’s the part in the middle and the shitty part at the end and I’m sure that’s the part where most apologies come in. Whoever said in reference to romantic love that love means never having to say you’re sorry, well, that bastard and/or bitch was stoned. Not like a little high from a bong hit, I mean spun, dead baby on the ceiling black crosses on the eyes stoned to the tits.

So back to the other point I’m not really making about the flash I’m really not writing; in that sack of big macs there was and is a grand total of two marbled filet mignons or if you have too you can call them heads of lettuce, but, please, don’t. I don’t know if that makes me really lucky or really unlucky. It has nothing to do with love, well, how would I know, I just mean the draw has nothing to do with my precarious emotional imbalance. It’s animal, instinctual. Yeah, sure, you can work yourself up to it, you can train yourself to salivate for a big mac too, but it’s not the same. It’s not just craving the smell and taste, it’s being unable to resist it. Every. Single. Time.

It just can’t happen all that often, that’s why I’m going to go ahead and consider myself lucky. If every person had that overwhelming instinctual drive twice every fifty years, you’d run into people fucking on the commuter train. I don’t mean the sex drive; our species is in heat year around and have eight ways from Sunday to scratch that itch, the difference? The itch I’m talking about doesn’t roll over and go to sleep. The more you scratch the more chemicals flood the air, the blood stream, the taste buds. You don’t have an argument and she (or I suppose he, but ewww) stops smelling so good. That’s not how that works.

I could have just told the tale about the one in the past, slapped Flash Friday 4-4-14 An Apology to an Ex-Lover on it and have been done with it. In the truer and broader sense I haven’t a clue why we went our separate ways and I do know the narrative. In one significant respect going our separate ways did prevent us from fucking on commuter trains. Yeah, no, that wouldn’t have been for spice, it would have been compulsion. And yeah, that’s not theoretical, still not telling the tale, and still not sure what I’d be apologizing for, but yeah dot dot dot.

Maybe it’s unfair to call both ex-wives big macs, but in this context it’s absolutely accurate. This is not some winsome regret. Everyone is always settling for stuff, just because we put such a premium on sex and money doesn’t mean any of us hold out for the jackpot. I’m sure most people currently rushing headlong towards the grave haven’t even run across anything but big macs. Most people don’t seem to be paying attention to much of anything; work all day, come home, eat a big mac in front of the TV tsk tsk about that plane and all those people and lay down with their big mac, a few pecks a dot dot dot, and just across town someone is sending out those specifically coded pheromones by the bucket, and yeah, they might be big making and tsking about that plane and those people, but boy howdy you get those two scents together in an elevator and every neural pathway that knows the golden arches will come tumbling down.

So, you know, I’m sorry.