The Other 4-Letter Word
Ah, Love. Never was there an emotion so tailor-made for the idea that without pain there is no joy. That Eros can be one tough bastard. But we’d all go there anyway, because when it’s real, there’s nothing better. Not even chocolate.
Next week is Valentine’s Day, the mother of all Hallmark holidays, and a time fraught with just about every emotion named. Depending upon the mood and attachments (or lack thereof), it can be known as a good day, a great day, or Black Tuesday. Which means next Tuesday could be a time to honor love, or commemorate the mowing down of men in a Chicago garage. Either way, from the minute the holiday lights are taken down and the streets are littered with the corpses of Christmas trees, the world becomes a sea of pink and red hearts.
When you are in love, this seems like an awfully swell thing. When you aren’t, or worse, have just ended a bout of it, well the other other 4-letter-word creeps into your thoughts. We’ve all been there, and folks, it ain’t pretty. Weeping, screeching, gnashing of teeth, rending of clothes (theirs, if they happened to leave any behind), consumption of buckets of ice cream, or vodka, or both, all part of the dance l’amour. Love makes you a bit crazy from beginning to end. Especially the end. And everybody has ‘a story’. You know, the one you tell your best friends, once you are fit to be out in public again without a box of Kleenex, bottle of Stoli and pint of Cherry Garcia.
I know someone who actually had to break up with herself because he couldn’t get up the courage to do it. He just stood there looking forlornly at the ground and shuffling his feet. So she took the bull by the horns and did it herself. “You want to break up with me,” said she. “Uh-huh” said he. All very calm, very civil. And after he left, she calmly wandered around the house, collecting the few pieces of him left here and there in a plastic bag. As she walked to the trashcan she passed the litter box. She scooped, dropped poop on top of ‘poop’, and in the can it went. A fitting coda to the end of a love affair. Sure, they don’t all end that elegantly. Screaming assorted 4-letter expletives (and 7-letter, and 5-letter) works too, with the exclamation point of a loud door-slam for added emphasis.
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