Fall down, go boom

I met Marcus on Thanksgiving Day. By New Year's Eve, he asked me to marry him. Eight days later, I said yes. I'll marry you on my birthday, I said. March 10.

We weren't going to tell anyone. It would be our secret. It was wildly impetuous and romantic. Two weeks later, March was a lot closer. I said I couldn't do it. Instead of reeling in his heart and cutting his losses, Marcus persisted. By the end of February, I sent him away.

Now he hangs from my heart like an albatross. I go from missing his arms around me to wanting to kill him with modestly priced flatware. As I recall, before the blinding haze of this recklessly executed love affair, my life was just peachy. There were no men in my head, at least not in that way that makes me read the same sentence 15 times. How wonderful that freedom! How glorious it was! How ridiculously short-lived.

I had no need, desire nor intention of falling in love. I was just hitting that extremely interesting hormonal stage when young men begin to look like walking Hostess snack cakes. As far as committed relationships, I was perhaps on the verge of buying a second house plant.

Oh, I longed for a dance partner once in a while, someone with the occasional yen to shoot pool or hike into the Grand Canyon. Someone with whom to share tea and the Sunday paper, and to handcuff to a chair and drive insane.

But I did not, I repeat, did not, want to fall in love. I'm sick of falling in love. Falling hurts. I didn't seem to retain this from my childhood. As I recall, the vernacular back then was "fall down, go boom." There's a name for those of us who keep going "boom."

For once in my life, I'd like to glide slowly and effortlessly into love. I'd like it to be so subtle that someone else has to tell me I'm in love. I'd like it to be with someone I know so well I can tell if his shoes are untied by the way his footfalls sound on carpet.

Gibran says, "think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course."

Then again, Gibran failed spectacularly at love. I think what he meant to say was, "think not you can deflect the coarseness of love, for it will surely turn you swarthy, and eventually eat your brain."

I say this not because I just turned 39 and I'm fast on the way to bitter, shriveled up hagdom. No, not me. I believe in the miracles of chemistry and sand blasting. I'm just hard-pressed to believe love directs one to circle the phone like a vulture in a desperate attempt to not make a call, then land on it like a flying Wallenda when it rings. That's not love. That's a virus, and there should be a vaccine. Instead, we get Viagra, a surreptitious perpetuator of the pathology.

The truth is, Gibran was right. Love does direct our course because there is nothing comparable to it in the whole of human experience. Joining physically and emotionally with another human being is the nexus of both our primal and higher nature. Love is too demanding and complex to be held at bay by anyone's desire for order. It will come blasting through the constructs of solitude like a hurricane through a house of cards.

Resistance is futile. Flatware is useless. Snack cakes have lost their appeal.

Fall down, go boom.

Monday, March 13, 2000

Copyright 2010 by Deborah McAdams. All Rights Reserved. For Reprint Rights, click here.