Today's True Confessions and Musings on Love

The following comes basically from a letter I recently wrote an old high school chum  I have not seen in more than 50 years...it is hard to fill people in on what has transpired in our lives but from things he said later ( He cannot remember a time in his life when he has NOT been in love, first with a movie actress and later with an aunt of his, to mention a few)..

Anyway..

Two topics interest me right now: the saga of Salman Rushdie as somehow symbolic of our times  (not getting into the absolute value of his work if that can be assessed right now anyway), and the whole question of "being in love" ( which comes from the recent spate of Everly Brothers songs I have been hearing on internet radio...they are all about teen romance of course but pop culture rarely goes much beyond that, despite classic Hollywood claims of a story of "Love to Rock the Ages." ( The ages seem to remain unrocked by almost any Hollywood venture I can think of, though there have been some fun outings such as " When Harry Met Sally," and the weird triangle of kinds in "Gone With the Wind." ( Anyway, everyone in Gone With the Wind is upstaged by the character Melanie, who at a critical point in the book arrives to cheer everyone up and then promptly drops dead. Hard act to follow).

I loved my parents as only a rather abused and neglected child can, wondering what was wrong with me, and the one woman I was " head over heels " in love with turned out ( natch) to be someone really totally unsuitable for me...she thought me fascinating but weird and definitely not her type when it came right down to it...(while I was going through all these classic love story states of elation and despair and walking on air-- and then with my head in the clouds but my feet on the ground....every literary cliche and conceit imaginable.

I remember when I met a close friend of the Czech woman who was the object of my affections when he was visiting New York. He told me that "Hedwig" 1) "Had always had lousy luck with boyfriends ( heavy hint she had a problem there too) and that 2) Her typical relationships with men involved rough sex probably and definitely rough behavior in other ways ( public screaming matches and throwing things at her paramours such as clocks, coffee mugs, shoes, you name it).

It was also a perfect example of how a naive young man can fall so completely for someone he does not really know all that well ( the more I was filled in by her friend, the more the scales fell from my eyes and I could see that I had been head over heels for the tip of a Prague iceberg of a woman...no surprise to my Czech camera instructor at NYU, an unhappily divorced bear of a guy with whom I shared a bond by having been in Prague and seeing all his old haunts and learning a little of the language, as well as the fact his wife had needed thyroid medication just as I did, which was not available in Czechoslovakia after some point for no particular reason and which he continued to mail to her from the United States, even though he wanted nothing to do with her at all of course).

He added that not only was it easy to fall in love with the wrong person, "Besides, behind every Czech girl there is a scheming and plotting Czech mother."

My lonely love affair has been the only time in my life I had all the classic symptoms expressed in songs and poetry about love...I have admired and cherished other women and had more than a passing feeling of attraction for some men, but nobody has ever "stolen my heart" again. Some people put this under the category of " once bitten, twice shy" but I suspect it simply has to do with having such a confused and confusing childhood that still has me examining new aspects of it with psychotherapists ( such as  at recent interview)...

My therapist is reeling trying to cope with all the information I have thrown at him in trying to get acquainted ( I have only seen him four times now) --my first response to him was that he was a cold fishstick of a person whom I could never relate to, --so I just decided to hit him with my most intimate kind of fantasies, feelings and experiences such as we usually do our best to keep hidden except for people with whom we have developed a deep feeling of trust ( part of this comes from just getting old and feeling that fuck it, my life is just a story, like "Ethan Frome" or "Anthony Adverse" which would make a movie that would bore most people to tears...)

(The most interesting people I have ever met, however, often told me their stories seeming to believe they had unremarkable lives while at the same time blowing my mind with their stories of casually mixing with say, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings in Nashville and getting encouragement from them for their songwriting career which might have gone nowhere but then of all careers, I suspect wanting to be a recognized songwriter is worse than wanting to be a great NFL quarterback, or just as hard to attain.)

But back to stupid cupid: I don't know how you handle the topic of being in love in Harmony Junction (friend's novel) ( or even how to get a copy of your book-- can I send you a check and have you mail me a copy?) But I would love to hear your thoughts on the topic...