I have always mocked my brothers for their mushy well put together strings of loving almost song like things they say to their wives and girlfriends while in my company. On some occasions I will pretend to need to wind down a window to throw up. They use affectionate names, and when in each others company it’s all very affectionate and to be quite honest, it makes me quite uncomfortable. I understand sex. I dont understand affection. I dont understand why people hold hands, or feel a need to have a part of themselves touching the other person when sitting a couch or across a table from each other. The absence of touch is much more interesting than the obligation of touch.
I realise these are my own perceptions and issues, but this is my thing – so deal. But on that point, if someone flirts with me or is blatantly interested, my brain goes into a weird repulsed state of ‘where is the door, someone show me the exit route NOW’ mode and I dont care if the person interested was previously someone that I was attracted to from a distance. Brains are sexy. Flaws are sexy. Conversation is sexy. ‘Can I cook you dinner?’ is an instant NOT sexy and everything in me shuts down.
Its not rocket science why. I have PTSD, and the people who I thought I loved as a young person all either tried to kill me or hurt me so badly physically that my ideas of what weakness, and what courtship should be got all twisted. But what also happened was that in my intensity and messed up artistic brain I grew to find beauty in the flaws in people that I believe other people miss. These perfectly symmetrical faces on the front covers of magazines do nothing for me. A freckle covered face of a wild eyed red head on the other hand, that is spectacular.
Someone with a ferocious temper who has inner demons leaking out of every movement, and every broody facial expression – that is sexy as hell. But that is not love. That is just colour and texture in other human beings that I appreciate because they reflect my own imperfections and I understand them.
I have written love poems for friends. Its a love that I am able to wrap my head around. But the type of love where people speak of completion, and of symmetry in world merging beauty – is a concept that makes me feel more suffocated than inspired.
I loved a girl like that once. I love a boy like that still. The girl couldn’t cope with the burns she got every time she touched me and the boy – I burned him too, but he calmed me in return. Is that Love?
My love poems would be about perfection in incompatibility. A safe word for him when my eyes changed and my demons won the battle in that moment. And a few token lines for how much I appreciate the forgiveness after each blow to his self esteem. After each time I had skinned him alive for not being what I wanted him to be.
Sincere, all the same. But what kind of love poem would that be?
For anyone who has watched Marco White lead Hell’s Kitchen, that would not be unlike me. Respect me, listen to me and follow me, and everything will be fine. Issues warnings of my rules, and then promises of perfection.
I am aware of what that sounds like. Possibly why I have never actually written a love poem in the context of real romance.
I do control. I do dominance. I do decisions. I do making you feel like the only person in the universe – as long as it happens my way. Because my way is safe and works for me.
Interesting how love is a verb.
Mocking Bird Down 