I’ve been writing a few entries on the border of religion. I’m really skating the border of the nature of love. Religion has the most abstract version of love in it. Yet, it is out there. I don’t think I’m the only one who has used religion to talk about love. I’ll grant you the giving up the only begotten son is a far cry from how to get into someone’s panties and/or boxers, which, is usually the kind of thing we think of most often. I was going to qualify that with age, but, yeah, no, I’m an ancient fucker and I still think more about getting into panties than giving up my or anyone else’s only begotten son. I did begat the old fashioned way.
Elvis, it’s said, didn’t sleep with Priscilla after she begat a kid. I don’t know if that’s true but I think a lot of guys understand that, you see a head crest through that thing and it stops looking like a yummy party club and more like an airplane hangar. Not trying to be gross or even suggest my second kid came out of an airplane hangar (that particular blimp hangar done haired over n sealed shut, just saying, and given the almost wholly political nature of her dykeness and the long standing AARPness of her girlfriend, I’d say there was enough dust on that thing to write wash me). Shit, shit, shit, tangent. And here I thought I had some serious entry about to happen.
Yeah, there’s a whole lot of love’s in between the places a girl sits (or you know a boy if you’re into that sort of thing --- I swear I don’t understand how girls like those things, boys are gross) and the throne of God, and, mostly, they are less complicated. Someone is already complaining in their head that panty/boxer getting into is lust, not love. True enough, yet, seriously, you ever fall into romantic with someone whose panties and/or boxers you haven’t been into? I’ll rephrase that because I don’t understand kids today; ever fallen into romantic love with someone’s panties/boxer you didn’t want into?
Anyhow, dogs and kids come to mind first off the bat. That shit isn’t automatic by the way, that whole unconditional love business. There are entire industries dedicated to protecting kids and dogs from people who love them. I know, you might not be able to conceive of someone both loving and abusing, I swear to god though, every trial I ever asked for the core argument was Love Is Not Enough. You hear a lot about abused wives going back to their husbands over and over. You’re sympathetic but also know there’s something terribly wrong with her and that he is a monster. Doesn’t mean there isn’t a love dynamic.
Shit, another tangent. For me and my kids and dogs, it’s what unconditional love means. They cannot fuck up so bad that I will stop loving them, and you (meaning me) are their world, you’re the person (guy, me) who does everything for them including letting them do, sometimes, for themselves. There is no mean word, no bite, no bad mood, no licking the paw of or holding the hand of another alpha male that’s make to make you stop loving the hairy little sonsabitchs or the dogs.
I guess patriotism sort of comes close too but that’s starting to lean closer to god, I mean it’s an abstract, but, there is a tangible country and patriotism is often unconditional; a patriot loves his/her country no matter how badly it fucks up. Here in the states I consider a patriot someone who tries to correct the fuck ups, the way you do with a kid or a dog, maintaining the love but training hard to have your country look both ways before crossing the street or to have your country not bite the mailman.
Then there is the sort of disposable love like with celebrities; I love that song, I love that movie etc. I’m not suggesting it’s just phrase, though, sure, sometimes it is, or that it’s any less intense, I’m just saying nobody expects any sort of duration from it. Romantic love, especially if you take it as far as marriage, involves vows and promises and shit that it will be forever. Dogs and kids, if you have it, I mean if you feel that unconditional love, it’s forever (though, especially at my age, you are very aware that forever for a dog is a lot shorter, I mean even here in my dotage I expect I would outlive a puppy if I got one today). Often patriotism and religion is forever unless something really tests those bonds hard and even so some folks come out the other side of that even more gung ho.
I was half thinking about making up a survey. I didn’t because I can’t do those things without going all smartass and I’m even worse with the very few I’ve written. I had an essay question in mind though, something I’m pretty sure most of us are not a stranger too. I’m not sure how I was going to word because if I had gotten that far I would have gone silly and it’s sort of a serious question. Something like how many of core beliefs would you bend a bit to get laid and how many would you bend permanently for romantic love? Of course how many isn’t the question at all; which ones is.
Obviously, most of us would lie, at least by omission to get laid, small lies, typically, like “Oh yeah, I love that song too” and not “Sky diving? I do it all the time, let’s go right now!” Bending them permanently might be something like “Honey, that’s our song” which isn’t really bending the core value of lying, more like adapting your taste in a singular instance for sentiment. Lying almost doesn’t even count, some of us don’t even have honesty as a core belief, even among the ones who do know that certain lies are expected when, um, courting, yes, let’s call pantie/boxer getting g into courting. Killing someone, for instance, to get inside some panties, seems like the sort of thing someone wouldn’t admit to in a social networking survey unless they were trying to be funny. I’ve certainly known people in my life who would consider it if it really would get them laid; typically they aren’t the kind of people who’d be very adept at killing. Or, you know, they’d be sociopaths. Hard as it is to say “I’m attracted to you and will do anything you ask if there’s a possibility we will have sex.” It’s a lot harder to look someone in the eye and pull a trigger or stab them or strangle them. At least it should be.
There’s a lot of morality in-between lying and murder though. I think girls are a lot less likely, for instance, than boys, to, for instance, suggest going for a drive to hit mailboxes with a baseball bat as a foreplay sort of morality bending. They are more likely, however and for instance, to suggest, sneaking into a pool or park that’s clearly closed and threatens trespassers to go skinny dipping and/or have a pillow fight. Car jackings fit in there somewhere and shoplifting and, I’m sure, fighting a rival. You’ve seen all that on at least a hundred TV shows or movies. I’m guessing in the course of your own life it’s been, if not different, more original.
In that respect TV does kill brain cells. We are apt to tell our own stories after the fashion they are told on TV, or be bashful about them because they seem, in the context of TV, so very common. It’s true enough, bending one’s own morality to get laid is pretty common, and the beauty of telling tales is the common experience, the shared experience. It’s why people laugh at funny things and cry at sad things, even if they aren’t told well (I’m thinking bad TV, not a stuttering buddy who misses parts of the story), because of the context of their own lives.
Just talked to my daughter. She really hates her job. She said if she doesn’t get a different gig (she’s been applying all the hell over the place) she’s just moving back home and taking a waitress job if she has to (neither of us suggesting that’s an easy job or that’s one with openings, it’s just that she has a lot of it on her resume as well as lab tech). I’m a little surprised it took so long. Every single day I’m here I want out. I was born here and wanted out then. One of my earliest memories ever was returning from Cambridge to this very house and thinking how very foreign this place was and how very small this world was here and how I’d rather be in Cambridge. I think I miss my daughter a lot.
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