Confessions of a Not-So-Secret Admirer

You asked me to write an explanation for the inexplicable behavior of the men in your life, myself included.

The simple answer to your question is this: Love does funny things to men.

The long answer? That one will take some doing. I’m drunk and in a love-filled depression as I write this, so please bear with me. Why do I inadvertently sabotage my best attempts to be nearer, closer to you?

Why do I self destruct the moments with my anguish and self-pity? Why do I do the things that drive you mad? Why do others call you a dozen times a day? Why do others still cling to your memory as though it were a dead loved one?

You.

That seems to be the best answer. You bewitch me and I imagine you bewitch others. The sad pall of inevitability looms over every life you touch. No one knows how to crack the code and those that do don’t manage it for long. No one knows how to get in deep. I try. You bring out the raw romance in my soul. Your coy rejections of my affection only egg on my torturous fascination with being hurt by you. The reason I keep it up is that, perhaps, one day, through all the hurt, you’ll love me as deeply and care for me as completely as I do you.

I don’t know what else to do. You’ve brought it to my attention (repeatedly) that it won’t work, can’t work. I’ll have to swallow my feelings and do what you need me to do for you.

At the end of the day, I care about you. I would do anything you asked of me. Perhaps that sounds pathetic. Perhaps it is.

I don’t know. I started writing this and I’m not any closer to an answer than when I started.

I’m going to spend the next few days pondering this issue at my typewriter (how romantic!). At the end of it, I’ll hand over a stack of pages and notes such as this one and hopefully you’ll be closer to knowing why we all trip over ourselves like fools for you.

Jesus, I hope it’s not corny.

Day 2

I feel like I have things pretty figured out.

I feel like I know what I’m doing.

When I’m with you, time stands on its head. We’re in our own world. One of my favorite authors would describe it as a “nation of two.” When we’re together nothing else matters. I don’t know about you, but when I find a place that I like being, I don’t like to leave. And when the problem arises, and I’m forced to leave our world, I’ll say and do the stupidest things I can think of to stay there.

Day 3

Love is the unknowable.

Day 4

I feel like there is no one on this Earth that can love and care for you as much as I do.

I only want what would be best for you. If you were to tell me that never again would you wish to see me, then so it would be. If you were to tell me to runaway with you to Venice or Paris, so it would be. If you were to tell me that never again could I see your face, with tears in my eyes, so it would be.

I don’t think this is what you had in mind when you asked me to do this, but I’ve had a few days to reflect. I imagine you were looking for some poetic justification for the erratic behavior of the men in your life. Since I’m the most poetic man in your life, then perhaps I’m the right man for that job. It seems as though this is turning into some kind of confession of how deep and pure my love is for you. Maybe you didn’t understand how much I cared. Maybe you did. You’re a smart girl. Maybe you know all of this already and just wanted to see what I had to say.

Maybe.

Do you know what it feels like to be in the heat of lovemaking? To be so ready to climax but not want the act of love to stop? Maybe you don’t. But when you get to that screaming peak of love, you think to yourself and maybe even say aloud to your partner, “We have to do this again, I never want it to stop…”

In that commotion, you’re biting scratching, sweating, moaning and you’re doing things that you would never dream of if you weren’t pitched into that physically romantic frenzy.

That’s what getting out of the car at the end of one of our evenings together is for me. The moments leading up to it are beautiful and wonderful and your presence, your aura, is so soothing and seething with your reciprocated love that I can’t hear myself think. I’m consumed by the noise of the love I feel deep inside me. And then I have to get out of the car.

And the climax is loss.

Wouldn’t you do anything you could to stay there? In the peak of that passion?

Maybe.

I know I might.

Maybe I’m just doing the wrong thing. Maybe I’m just wrong, period.

But why else would you keep coming out with me, week after week? Isn’t there some spark, some love you see in me that makes you want to be in my arms?

Lord, I hope so…