What Do You Get?

"What do you get when you fall in love? A guy with a pin to burst your bubble. Thats what you get for all your trouble. I'll never fall in love again" - Elvis Costello

Too many thoughts of her to count.

Your first glimpse of a future.

Fantasies of her around you.

A recurring actress in your dreams.

That faint feeling when she smiles at you.

Speechless when you lose days, weeks, months, years in her eyes.

Comfortability.

High hopes.

Moments of weakness.

The guts to say how you feel.

Tears and strife.

Pro and con lists.

Battles between your angel and demon.

More questions than you can count.

A stiff upper lip.

Conversations that turn to fights.

Fights that turn to an empty hole.

Late nights asking what if.

Late nights thinking of her.

Airplane trips that create more than distance.

No phone calls.

Text messages.

Weekly emails.

Bi-weekly emails.

Short visits.

Trips to the bar.

Jealousy.

Bitterness.

Other girls.

A bigger and bigger hole.

Last ditch efforts.

Drunken dials.

Her moving on.

Life continues.

But the days all melt together.

What do you get when you fall in love?

Heartbreak.

When you are young, it's laborious to identify it. It feels like some form of disturbance you can feel deep in the pit of your stomach. Though never quite painful, the writhing and vexation keeps you in a constant acknowledgment that something just isn't right. In your youth, this sensation seems foreign and indefinable. You pass it off as a simple stomach ache, call your mother to pick you up from school, and the likelihood is you wake up the following morning having forgotten about the displeasure of the day before. No second thought is given to the quiet little girl you made cry the day before when you stole her dignity and called her names no woman should ever be called.

Guilt is a funny thing. One moment, the thought of a particular act can spark no significant reaction in you, and then the next minute, when someone you commend looks you in the eye to express their disapproval and disappointment in you, you can literally feel yourself sink lower, as the intensely heavy weight of self-condemnation rests itself on your shoulders. Again your stomach turns, and you are reminded of when you were young, the teardrops as they poured down her innocent face.

It is rational that symptoms of being ill become present when faced with the deadly combination of shame and remorse, for you are sick. Sick with yourself. The most intriguing aspect of guilt is that the most uncomfortable, the most intolerable kind, is the guilt you place on yourself.

To the little girl that I made cry, I eternally apologize. Years have passed, and I assume you have long forgotten that wretched day. I can only hope you have been able to blank out that day, a white fog from your childhood, having little impact on you now, and your life was carried on to its fullest, the memory of me gone.

But I will never forget that day. I will never forget the look in your eyes. I will never forget the torment in your face. I will never forget it, because every time I feel that burden weighing down, and that internal churning begins, I will see you. And every time, I will sink a little lower to the ground.

I wonder if it is possible to exactly pin point the moment in which the reality of chivalry and romance died. Obviously the concepts still exist, but it seems only as figments of a false actuality that never quite seems to be true. The media would have us believe romance is at a strongpoint in its existence, spitting out film after film of pure disillusioned bullshit. Girl pines for boy, boy doesn't even know she exists, then after some random turn of events, boy decides to pursue girl, a fling begins, until some bitch kisses him at a party, breaks girl heart, big romantic gesture to win her back, she accepts, everyone is happy. I have yet to see this fairy tale play out in real life.

Call me a cynic if you will, but at some point in the past 20 years or so, the necessity for a man to woo his woman fell into a chasm deeper than the pit Tartarus, caged deep beneath our human day to day. Who is to blame? Undoubtedly any woman reading this is getting ready to step up onto that high horse and blame the easiest target, the lesser of the sexes, men. Because of course, it is men who have stopped the gestures, is it not? It is the man who no longer brings flowers to a first date; The man who no longer writes songs and sonnets expressing his deepest most appreciation for the opposite sex and one woman in particular; The man who no longer holds her desires in the highest regard, so much so that he would give up his own just to please her, right? WRONG.

The fault for romance's most brutal and gruesome demise lies on the ladies, I am sorry to say. For it is the women who no longer demand that men even appease (not even exceed) what WAS necessary to win a beautiful maiden's heart. Year after year, as my array of close female friends grows and develops, again and again I am made to listen to the same list of grievances. "Why can't I date a nice guy? Why won't a guy take me out to wine and dine me? Why can't my romantic life be more like in the movies?". Here's a little hint. IF YOU DON'T MAKE HIM DO IT, HE WON'T! Constantly these women complain about their predicaments while entirely avoiding putting any responsibility for the situation on themselves. If you want a boyfriend that treats you a certain way, only date guys that treat you that way. Because the reality is that the majority of guys want one thing, to fuck. To fuck so hard and so often that they can barely even handle it. And the minute a girl starts giving him that without him having worked his fucking ass off to earn it, well that's just one more bullet through the heart of affection and courtship.

Ladies, like with anything in life, if you want it, you have to make it happen. If you are similar minded to me, and believe that nothing quite reaches the height of allure as a truly movie-made date, then don't say yes to any date that sinks below your requirements, NOT requests, requirements. Hold off until you find a guy that looks into your eyes and forgets what he ever thought he wanted, because at that moment, all he wants to do is everything he can to make you as happy as possible.

Maybe romance isn't dead, but rather in a deep comatose sleep, hiding away from the outside world. You can either pull the plug, or keep waiting at it's bedside until it's eyes open again.

Have you ever had one of those days? The day when your alarm clock's ringing springs you out of bed, when you get showered and dressed just in time to make it to whatever it is you need to do, when you go off and spend your day like any other, but at the end, when you're home at night, sitting in bed with no one to talk to but yourself, you lie back trying to become introspective and think of the day, and it's as if your eyes never opened since the night before. Sometimes it's like we watch ourselves, like characters in a show, seeing it happen, but not quite controlling it. As if we are the puppets, and something is pulling the strings. We talk, but never have anything to say.

We smile, we frown, and yet when we stop to ask why, the only answer to find is in an empty chest. I know how certain things are supposed to make a person feel, but how do I ever really know that what I'm feeling now is happiness, or grief, or anger? Couldn't it all just be some cleverly calculated plan to tell me how i feel?

On those days, I rarely sleep. As I lie in bed, an emotional failure, there is one feeling I most certainly know. Caffeine holds nothing over fear.

My name is Joe, and I am an addict. Not in the traditional sense, seeing as I seldom find myself held up in a filthy room at the nearby motel 8 sucking a Mexican's cock for just one more line of blow. My cheap thrills are derived elsewhere, in a much less obvious but none the less damaging place. I, Joseph Howard Kanee (as my parent's named me), am addicted to thought. The process in which observations wrap themselves in the cocoon of my mind only to emerge as a wing-spreading butterfly of an idea gets me high. I am a true devotee to conceptualizing the world, and utilizing the whirl of life around me to create something more... clear. This is my allegiance, nay my pledge, to expand these thoughts as much as I can. Because, well, sometimes we all need to let out a little of that fucking crazy.