“art of love”: apprenticed to the internet, we are members of passion’s craft guild. The monopoly on masturbation prepares us to become journeymen of jealousy. When we finally do produce our magnum opus of courtship and are promoted to master, we seethe and grumble and set up our own workshop, accepting students on a pay-per-view basis.
The ambidextrous masturbator: one hand’s fatigue is an opportunity for the other to show its tenderness. But eventually a man tires of the slow and gentle, seeking again the intensity that would rub him raw. Alternation has been the rule for so long that he never thinks to ask his girlfriend to use both hands at the same time. For the same reason, in his emotional life he thrives on a dialectic of abuse and babying instead of just bending over to be spanked.
Celeranimous
“There is a vastness there,” the foreign traveler reports—looking up from his map to point to our bellies. As we measure our lifespans, so do we hold and feel our largevity. But with spirit it is otherwise—that we swallow. Falling short of magnanimity, we settle for being “fast-souled.” In a society characterized by the vicarious lifestyle, alcohol and drugs are the most direct modes of secondhand experience: having no great events to give shape to existence, one resorts to the intravenous joie de vivre. But the real intensity is the man intoxicated by blood alone—his own and others.’ It rouses little to see red if you can’t also smell and taste red—if you can’t drown all of your senses in the nectar of life and death.
The Language of Modern Love
A polyglot love: forms of address that go beyond body language to the argot of objects: stale candy, flat champagne, unarticulated children. To know each liaison by a peculiar gift. A construction paper heart cuts wrists more painfully than scissors.
My Free Love Gave to Me . . .
Love quadrangles: four geese a laying, three substitutions, two confused goslings—twelve days of Christmas abridged in one seedy hotel room.
Hopping from bed to bed is as natural as channel-surfing, misplacing household trash, applying for a new baby while nursing a job, planning late bills while prepaying a vacation. A multislacking love hones all the senses in on distraction from many objects at once. One sheds condoms like snake skins and juggles diseases with the finesse of a hemiplegic acrobat.
Faithful to the Ideal
Idolatry, adultery: if the first is genuine, it overflows into the second. Zeal needs a physical outlet the more it achieves fulfillment. An object of mistreatment, a plaything to scorn, jealousy to encourage appreciation. If only both were socially acceptable at least one might be common.
A Dying Groom’s Wedding Speech
Beloved Wife,
You were to be both my restraint and my onslaught. As my ball and chain I would have flailed you about with the vigor of a medieval knight; together we would be safe in my castle. That these words we have exchanged would have been enough to tie us together fast, I am sure. But since this glass of punch has poisoned me and I have but a few moments left to express my love, I can only speculate what our life would have been like: me sitting on the porch enjoying my early retirement, the nanny tending to the children, you out in the world earning a living—I respect your modern ideals. A woman’s place is no longer in the home. She must know the virtue of a good work ethic. This is why, as you know, I only employ women in my household: chef, chauffeur, butler, maid—all female. I am only too happy to foster the advancement of woman’s position in the professional world. And whatever the temptations, I promise that you would have always remained my highest duty. Curse the bridesmaid who took revenge on my faithlessness; which one it was is anyone’s guess (though I myself have a working theory). Forgive me, I am still amorous despite my age. Though yesterday I wanted to experience my singlehood one last time, today I am yours forever, since tomorrow I will belong to the worms. I make a young widow of you, it’s true, but I hope you will take my promises into account and remain faithful to my memory: please, do not take another lover, but remain as chaste as I have always known you to be. I know you have the wisdom to come to this decision yourself, since it is the condition of inheritance in my will.
Alien Companionship
To wake up, find a stranger in your bed, and prefer it that way. Discovering more about your wife as she opens her soul to you over the years, she becomes not what you thought she was. Yet her habits endear her to you more than ever even as the reasons behind them escape you. Her estranged mind objectifies her, turns her into the yard sale doll you were always browsing for. You love her for the repetitive phrases that imply, with such apparent tenderness, you care not what. Dull, fat, slow, you pull the strings on the few movements she makes. Even her rebellions are cowed. As she reaches into her purse for lipstick, finds a stick of butter instead, and smears it on her facial labia, you know there will be something more than familiarity to relish about the goodnight kiss.
A Dying Bride’s Wedding Speech
Beloved Husband,
I am a modern woman, as you well know. While this makes me stubborn, it does not prevent me from loving. We would have been an equal match: you, old and with lots of money, I young and beautiful—a fair tradeoff. But since I have been poisoned by this glass of punch, I am prevented the satisfactions of living in your mansion and giggling when you praise my body. What can I say? Your best man was insanely jealous. I am sorry, I wanted to revel in my emancipation one last night. While I would have always practiced affection towards you and been faithful to you from today on (except maybe during your business trips—depending on the location, they’re outside the jurisdiction of the marriage covenant), you must know that I could never submit to you. Nor am I sure that I could ever have your child. Probably I would have gone to a clinic before I started to show. And why not? It’s my right. My sex has had the vote for almost a century now. We are strong. We are proud. And if I chose long ago not to take up a profession and buy a strap-on, it was only to put those qualities to use. A modern woman can show off her emancipation just as well with her husband’s credit card as through a high-powered career—it is what she owns, and not what she is, that distinguishes her from her poor past forms shackled to the hearth.
Love and Ambition
The power of naked ambition comes from commandeering love. It accompanies a relationship of unequal status, posing as affection and exposing itself the moment it can afford to. A tyrant that gathers flatterers to the feast only to slay them post-toast, it needs a shroud of benevolent excuses to be served a large dinner. The tragedy is that many realize no difference between the two passions and deceive themselves that they really are in love. Theirs is an inarticulate “wanting more . . .”
A love that would achieve its object cannot seem pure. The asthmatic sigher hits on success by anticipating a moaning suspicion and disguising himself as an easy breather.
Two Types of Minds
a) Simple minds—capable of only one great passion at a time. Emotions are greater when combined (one has to confuse the recipient); a solitary passion is too predictable, too subject to counterstrategy and rebuttal. The mediocre confuse love with ambition and pursue them as one. They are clocks that wind up and tick away.
b) Great minds—the computers that sit and charge and use up their battery-powered talent. Like the simple, they have ambition according to their nuts and bolts, and love according to their warranty. If great minds are recognized they can love after their ambition is spent—it was, after all, only a compensation for their loneliness.
Only Estranged?
Admirable
