The problem with being a lifelong bachelor is that you fall in love too easily.
That's not an exact quote, but I've spent weeks trying to recall where I read it. I've glanced repeatedly at the list of books I've read since moving to Florida, and I've paged through several more books that I haven't yet read, thinking that maybe I came across that line while looking for something to tide me over, at least until I was able to bring myself to start Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote.
And then, the other day, I suddenly remembered where it came from (or at least what inspired it): Margaret Atwood's Bodily Harm.
I don't remember much about that book, other than Atwood's impressive evocation of the nineteen-eighties (I was born in 1981, so my memories of that decade don't really begin until six or seven years later), but I've spent so much time obsessing over that particular line, knowing that it carries a certain weight for me. The passage has a troubling and strangely illuminating truthfulness to it. Finally, I thought, an explanation for my admittedly superficial tendency to get attached to the women I've slept with.
I've never been in love with a particular person--at least not in the way that love is most often understood--so much as in love with lust. With hindsight comes introspection, if not clarity of vision, and lately I've been pondering past relationships--if I can bring myself to call them that--with blush-inducing embarrassment. Often, I'd sleep with a woman, only to find myself hopelessly infatuated with her. Lust, as facile as it may be, is a sort of love, I think, with its own power, with its own ability to start a tide of emotion that, at least for me, is all but impossible to ignore. I've always taken pride in my ability to wallow in a bleak cynicism that's made it relatively easy for me to ignore my own insecurities, but I'm beginning to realize that "emotional sarcasm," as I like to call it, can't hide the fact that I fall in love very easily.
Maybe consistent bachelorhood has a lot to do with it. Or maybe I've simply been replacing love with lust--an easy mistake. Several years ago, a good friend of mine told me, "You wear your heart on your sleeve." I was stunned at her assertion, not so much because of the statement itself, but because of her ability to read me so easily. She and I still keep in touch, through e-mail, phone calls, and, since I've been back in Florida, occasional visits to her place of employment. She's changed a bit over the years, at least on the surface: she no longer wears contacts that make her eyes green, she's more tan than I've ever seen her, and her hair, while no longer worn in the curly, unkempt Julia Roberts style that she knows I love, is darker--several weeks ago, she told me that she's actually a natural brunette. I like to think that she's changed for the better--of course, I'm biased--but I'm certain that she's still the same person that, to some degree, I fell in love with so many years ago.
Seeing her can be hard sometimes, and while I'm perfectly content to remain "just friends," my slowly-changing outlook is giving way to a sliver of hope.