Do you remember the time when you grew angry at the Chinese woman in Rome? You were affronted by her waving the blue laminate-plastic menu around…begging us to eat at the restaurant. I could see the anger clearly in your eyes. Nobody else could.
I remember the first time we met. Bagnolet bus station. The air thick with diesel fumes and a selection of accents. Some American girl spoke to me in French, I replied in English. I was drinking an over-priced coffee. Then all of a sudden. There you were. When I think about you, I feel sick. Love is sick…it really is. I cannot take it. Falling in love is the worst of all possibilities. The deepest affection…or is it an affliction? One cannot tell these days. Yes, this deep ‘thing’ resides in me…it is called love. It is grand, uplifting, beautiful, disgusting, cynical and addictive. People need it. In the darkest of days, they survive on it. When they dream at night, they play imaginary scenes about it. When they masturbate…do they think about it? Poets write about it…singers croon about it…most obsess about it.
So we met. We kissed. We holidayed. We wrote love notes. We glanced at each other. We made love. We argued. We scowled. We forgave. We did all these things…some of the time. So many times, memories and images. I’m miserable because I need to think about you all the time…a constant necessity…like oxygen. I do love you. Always will. I dreamt about you even when I did not know who you were. It was an ideal. A form. It took its shape in you, then presented itself amongst the fumes of a bus station in France. Love is a crime against our better judgement.
