For Gone Antiquity

Holy fucking ghost. This is it. This is what it feels like to be in
love. Your heart gets heavy and sullen, and you feel like you just ate
too much bacon. It makes sense, really. People have died from loss, old
couples often die within a short time of one another, and in some
cases, you can actually hear someone's heart breaking, as if it were
made of glass.

Take, for instance, Joe Billings, proprietor of Timeless Antiquities, a
local antique shop. When his wife, Judy, died from complications after
a mascectomy, Joe tried to mask his pain and sorrow through his work.
However, being around so many old and beautiful things just made Joe
miss Judy even more. On a Tuesday, just a month after Judy's passing,
Joe, while in the midst of explaining the cultural significance of an
antique snow globe to loyal customer and potential new companion Betty
Hollinsworth, Joe's 72 year-old heart suddenly failed under the strain
of all his troubles. Betty, in post-mortem discussion of the "most
terrible day" of her life with her friends at the senior center,
explicitly recalls hearing a shattering sound. "The poor, poor man. He
was so hurt by his wife's passing, I could hear his precious heart
breaking." Her face would beam with compassion when she spoke of Joe's
love of his wife Judy, even though Betty herself had long coveted the
soft, frail old man. When faced with the prospect of this oddly
sounding occurrence, coroner Fred Buckley stated matter of factly, "it
was probably more the sound of his shattering bones as they hit the
floor," and added, succinctly, "that old lady is a loon." That "loon"
died just a month later than Joe, simply adding to the domino effect
that is love.

So the question remains; was Betty Hollinsworth loony? Let's examine
this theory a bit more closely. The term "loony," comes from the Latin
word for moon, lunus. In ancient lore, when the moon was full, various
things could happen, from your head being eaten by a ravenous werewolf,
to babies being born in overwhelming numbers, to madmen running about
the streets, calling the names of their lost/imaginary lovers. Hence,
the term to describe this otherwise unhumanly behavior was coined, and
of course, the moon was the scapegoat. Lunacy, loons, loony. Whichever
way you slice it, the blame will never fall upon the shoulders of man.
It's always something else.

It's what I feel now. Not lunacy, per se, but the sense that all of
this is not my fault. Of course, feeling something and knowing
something is essentially a werewolf in its own right. Spawned by
whatever mysterious powers the moon may have over man, it rouses a
beastly, irrational, primitive desire to deflect culpability. Luckily,
I am not a werewolf, so saner minds will prevail. It's simple, really.
I fucked up.

Many times, when a person is faced with a tragic circumstance, there
are two paths to follow; one easy, one treacherous. The ability to
discern what obstacles one will face on the path one chooses is not one
without substantial trepidation. After all, human nature says take the
easy path. Robert Frost says to "take the path less traveled by".
Whatever the fuck that means. I mean, who is to say which path is LEAST
traveled in these situations. If we already knew which fucking path to
take, wouldn't we take it? There I go again. Off the beaten path. Back
on track now, I suppose. Where were we? Oh. That is the question.
Fucking Shakespeare. Don't even get me started?

The problem with choosing ones path is that we tend to overthink. The
more weighty the situation, the greater exertion we place into deciding
which way to go. It's a lot like hunger, really. When you're really
fucking hungry, you could care less if you ate dog shit on a kaiser
roll. But when you "could eat," it takes forever to decide what exactly
you're in the mood for. By the time you get some semblance of what you
want to eat, you're really fucking hungry, and you're just going to eat
that steaming shit anyway. No wonder Americans are so fat. And
depressed.

That metaphor ties into the emotional struggle, the human condition, so
beautifully. We're emotionally fat and depressed. We have feasted on
love for so long, that when we are depraved of it, we go into a sort of
pheromone shock. It's pathetic, in many ways, but also endearing. When
else will you see a grown man cry other than when his car gets dinged
or his favorite team loses? When people are starved for attention,
they'll go for just about anyone in site. That explains the bar
phenomenon. But when people just "could be in a relationship," they end
up reserving that right until they get desperate. Pretty fucking
cynical for a guy that's in love, huh? Well, I suppose I'm just as
guilty of overindulging as the rest of humanity. How else could I so
vividly report on the taste of another person's heart?

You'd think that a heart would taste like it looks. You know, a little
juicy, meaty, maybe salty. Nothing a spritz of lemon wouldn't solve.
But on the contrary, the heart is very bitter. Once you delve into
feeding on it, you have to finish your meal, else the victim - er, this
is getting a little creepy. I don't actually eat hearts. It's a
figurative term. Anyway, you have to finish what you've started. You
have to feed. And, you have to let your own heart be fed upon. It has
to be a completely symbiotic event. In the event you decide you don't
like the way the heart you've chose for your main course tastes, it
gets left out for a while. While in the open air, it tends to ferment
quickly. A protective skin forms over it, like pudding. It congeals,
and the next person who gets a taste is going to have to chew on some
bad-tasting emotional film. I suppose you could saran-wrap it, but
people are too impatient for that. Takes too long to untangle the
plastic. We are a quick-fix society. We take the easy path. And in this
instance, it's just easier to leave the leftovers out rather than
putting them back in the fridge.

What's wonderful about learning lessons like this is that it's so easy
to forget them. It's like when people drink too much and vomit all over
themselves and swear to all that is holy that they will "never drink
again." Or when you eat too much turkey and dressing, to the point
where you waddle out to the living room, collapse on the couch and
ponder cutting your stomach open. I have seen people near death from
alcohol poisoning, crying that they will never let themselves get that
way again, in between sobs and retches, of course. Then the very next
weekend, I see the same people doing jello shots.

When I think of myself, I can't see that whole drinking scenario. I
never have drank, really, and never will. In fact, there are many, many
stupid things I refuse to do. But for some reason, I end up finding
something moronic to call my own. I'd blame it on being human, but I'd
rather blame the moon.

So I'm in love. What is my fucking problem then? Well, I'll tell you;
I'm the guy who leaves pizza out all night long. I don't think I own
saran wrap. In fact, I live in a messy little apartment, all by myself.
I don't get out much. I mostly stay in and lament on how pathetic my
life is, blaming the moon, sun and stars. Sometimes I'll watch TV. But
that only contributes, because all I see are little reminders of how
good other people have it, with their sheltered lifestyles, beautiful,
caring girlfriends and families that love them. And what pisses me off
more than knowing that they have all of that is that I have it too, but
I'm too involved feeling sorry for myself to even realize it. It seems
like I realize it, and in some ways I do, but I'm no better than the
puking binge drinker. I vomit love. I regurgitate compassion. I only
wish I had the gumption of a Joe Billings to topple over dead because
the only woman he ever loved died, and the stress of facing life with
Betty Hollinsworth was too much to bear, not because she was a loon,
but because she was not Judy Billings. I wish I were made of glass, so
that I may shatter when my love is gone as a result of my propensity
for fucking things up. I am tired of chewing on skin.