What is love?

To keep this blog from getting too long and boring, I have the TV on. Now and then, I may comment randomly with my thoughts, no sensoring. Believe it or not, my brain surprises me too with the shit it comes up with. These moments will be preceeded by two asterisks (**)

I got a call from a friend who has fidelity issues asking how I knew I was in love with Em, and knew she was “the one.” I started rattling of some stuff about being in love with her, and not caring about anyone else, and he cut me off with “Well, haven’t you been in love before her?” Yes, I had. And I’d still say that I loved those women very much. But this is different.

So anyway, what is love?

It’s a question that has inspired works of art (Sistine Chapel), pieces of music (“God Only Knows” by The Beach Boys), literature (Romeo and Juliet), murders (the guy who shot Lennon; Jesus Jodie Foster, what’s a brother gotta do for some love?), suicides(again, Romeo and Juliet…that’s a two-fer!), wars (Helen),  basically anything good, and anything bad  can loosely be tied back to a search for what it is that we love. Money, power, the other gender, the same gender, beauty, nice stuff, food, whatever it is, somebody loves it.

**I think kd lang looks more and more like a boyishly cute man. Put a short sleeved shirt and cargo pants on her, and the transformation is complete. I know a few lesbians that actually dress that way, and I admit I’m confused. You’re attracted to women, are a woman yourself, but you dress like the sloppiest of men. Meh…

Now as a product of a divorced couple, and having watched my mom go through a second divorce and my dad getting close a few times, what love is and how do I know has been a question on my mind. As most of you know, I just got engaged. This means a marriage is pending, and has refreshed the question on my mind.

Growing up, I always told myself that if I did get married it would be for good. I was always a bit embarrassed as a kid to have divorced parents, reinforced by attending a Catholic school from 1^st to 7^th grade. Turns out Catholic God frowns on my “failed parents.” What a sweet thing to tell a child. Anyway, I’ve dated more than one woman who told me that they could never see me getting married, and as much as you just want to shrug that kind of shit off, it still sticks with you and rears its ugly head when momentous events like my engagement arise.

**The Geico cavemen are like a gay teen in Montana. (Yes, it’s ok to smile at a “beaten to death” joke. I won’t tell)

So with my parents being totally misguided in their teachings on love, were do I turn next, my peers? I mean, I grew up in a generation whose “greatest” and most quoted “I love you” came from a fucking Tom Cruise movie.

“You complete me.”

Any Shel Silverstein fan (yes I am!) knows the search for what completes us is inherent in our souls. But Tom Cruise and Renee Zellweger? Ugh. And everyone remembers the line, but when was the last time you watched that movie? He didn’t come up with that line. He stole it. Off of another couple. And the guy saying it was deaf. And Tom Cruise made fun of him before Renee translated the sign language. So basically, the biggest “I Love You” came from a movie starring a creepy borderline midget who makes fun of deaf people and then steals their eloquent way of saying “I’m better at life when you’re around” so he can re-bag a woman who looks like she’s either looking at an eclipse, sucking on a Tear Jerker (hey kids, remember those??!!) or walking through a really potent fart. Actually, her look is really all three. And then she rifles back “You had me at hello,” meaning “It doesn’t matter what you say or why you came back…I’m so desperate that just you walking through that door washes away how you mistreated me, what with you being attractive and wealthy and me being a mousy-at-best single mom who lives with her kid and sister and has weekly bitch sessions about why the boys on the playground don’t want us with some other dumpy broads.”Anyway, what kind of lesson is that?

The only movie as big as “Jerry McGuire”  when I was in high school was “Titanic.” A poor kid bangs a rich girl and gets to act rich for a day or two, at which point the boat sinks, the poor kid drowns after getting the rich girl safely onto some floating wood, and she lives a long, fulfilling life with her rich friends while smiling about that poor kid she had sex with once. You know what that teaches me about love? Nothing. What it did teach me was that no matter how fulfilling life is that, from age 16-22, rich girls love to disappoint their fathers…and I lived in an affluent suburb and later went to a private University where I drank a lot and was in a band. Awesommmmmme!

**ShamWows are awesome, but that sales guy kinda scares me. He’s like the guy at bar close when everybody’s hammered comes over to your house and starts doing lines off the coffee table and talking about how much he wants to fight a ninja or cook you an omelet while you’re just trying to pass out. And what’s with the Britney mic? Talking out of the side of your mouth like that makes you look like you had a bout of Bell’s Palsy.

So let’s recount: My parents didn’t work out, the movies I grew up on offered me no realistic help. I read a lot, but I read too much nonfiction and Vonnegut/Thompson/Klosterman. It sours me. I just switched to MusicHD on cable, and there’s Dashboard Confessional singing “Screaming Infidelities.” Incidentally, I think their singer Chris Carrabba is much too pretty to really be that unhappy…but therein lies love’s rub. The search for love can even make the prettiest of the pretty, the modellest of the models cry in their cocaine and lettuce lunches.

You wanna know why weird art house movies and discordant (that word should have the root “chord” in it, but spellchecker disagrees), indie bands flourish? There’s so much money to be made off of people’s hope that somehow, some way, someone out there will figure it out for them, and the lesser known and more obscure the better because then there’s a greater chance of it being their own personal truth. Everyone wants someone else to do the leg work for them; tell them how to figure the tough stuff out so their love won’t be so hard. Well, that and some people have shitty taste.

**Boondock Saints was a good movie, but does not deserve the “Greatest Of All Time” status that it’s legions of fans give it. I know, “Da boiys arr from Oierland ahnd ya haff ta cheer for da boiys when derr foitin’ fer der honor”, but Willam Dafoe’s detective being gay is the most unneeded plot twist in history, and the story’s not that great. It’s good, but I’ll take “Lock, Stock, and 2 Smoking Barrels” or “Snatch” any day over “Boondock Saints.”

You should see the lengths I’ve gone to in my quest to find a song for our wedding! Let me put it to you this way, the singer’s so unknown that I sent him a message on myspace and he personally wrote back. With notes and ideas. Now I’m not a guy who sat and dreamed of a wedding, but when it comes to the music you KNOW I take it too seriously, and after having 2 of my personal faves sniped by friends, I had to go off the radar.

I don’t think we ever really figure out love until we’re in it, and even then it’s hard to explain. Right now, if you asked me, I’d tell you that love is holding back from smothering Emily with a pillow while we watched a horror movie. She has the flu, and I spent my day off taking care of her, cooking food for her and running to the store to get her everything she needs...things which she would do for me and I really enjoy doing. She wanted to watch “The Strangers,” a tense, creepy thriller based totally on the premise of surprise, and then coughed violently through the entire thing. She was like an added layer of “Holyshitthatscaredthecrapoutofme!!!” going on in addition to the movie. Like her virus was aware of the plot and forced her to cough every time it was tense and something was about to happen.

**John Cougar Mellencamp has a son named Justice. Justice Cougar Mellencamp. Fucking phenomenal. I bet his cum is 100% eagle sperm. Taste the freedom, ladies.

But if you asked her, I bet there’d be a part of her that wanted to say love is not killing me after she woke up this morning to find me sleeping in my winter coat and boxers (JUST my winter coat and boxers) on the couch and a pile of puke in the middle of the living room floor, about 7 feet away from where I was sleeping. It was the first time I’ve puked from drinking in like 5 years, not counting the time Wes Yoakam accidentally put a cigarette out in my beer and I drank it until the butt hit my lip, so you know the state I must’ve been in upon arriving home. She definitely made me clean it up wearing what I was wearing, but that’s love not hating on me all day for it.

So if I had to say something, I guess I’d say this: Love is the act in its entirety. Love isn’t just the vacation, it’s the year of saving and penny pinching leading up to it. It isn’t the awesome concert, it’s the line you waited in for tickets (before the refresh button ruined it) and the traffic you waited in to get there. Love isn’t just listening to “God Only Knows” by the Beach Boys, it’s the painstakingly long nights in the studio recording it, and the mental breakdown Brian Wilson had because of it. Love is work. Love is a job--but love is also the paycheck.

What do you think out there?