They love us because we're bad boys.
They leave us because we're bad boys.
-KS
I remember when we parted ways. I remember the literal continental drift
before we did so. I remember the relief when it was over. I also remember the
smothering heaviness the morning after.
They’ve asked me over the past year how I’ve been so normal,
so clinically detached from the fact that you’re not there anymore. They’ve
noticed the lack of theatrics and eccentricities that usually accompany a break
up. I’ve always shrugged it off by saying it got over when it should have. That
it got over while there was still no bad blood. That it got over before it got
ugly. That it got over because we wanted different things. That it was because
we weren’t seeing eye to eye (well, for one, we couldn’t because you were
decidedly taller). That it was because you were younger and didn’t see things
as I did. That it was because I was older and therefore, outgrown of the
romance that you could still see. That it was because I had gotten tamer and
now lacked being the wild child that got you in the first place.
Well, the truth is I’m not over you. And I really don’t
think I’ll ever be. Or want to be. Or expect to be. You’re like that perfect
childhood movie that stays with you, there to be remembered as the greatest singular
movie ever. That being said, I’ve noticed how unsettling the relationships
around me have been. Some have been
defeatist experiments in an absolute quagmire of futility. Well, most if one
looks at it in complete objectivity. But then, they also say that human
behavioral patterns have to be studied in subjective unit patterns, unlike
complex mechanical systems. Human relationships can be as complex as dynamic
cloud patterns, meteor showers, insane ratios of fractal curves but the quantum
of chaos involved remains the same. Or maybe more, who gives a shit. A cloud or
a gulf stream or a rising tectonic plate does not care where or how it goes,
humans do. A little more than bloody necessary even, at times. Hell, most
times.
I’ve seen grown men in bars, looking at their watches and dreading
a call from the better half. I’ve seen them lie. I’ve lied for a few of them
personally. I’ve seen them walk out of a movie hall to receive a call. I’ve
seen them rise not to meet a woman but frown as if they were responding to a
subpoena from the most ruthless judge in town. Seriously, its like watching
someone play Call of Duty. In first person.
I’m eternally thankful that it was never required of me from you to be
someone as petrified as any of them.
Then there are some of them who have a problem with the time
and space continuum. They need all the space and a little more than all of the
time in the world. They’ll let you hang out with the boys late but want to an
integral part of the august gathering, either in the flesh or as a defence satellite
via the ever so unsanctimonious cellular phone. Noble thought, but irksome in
the real world. Like a gnat at a fucking barbeque. It does not work. No chauvinistic
reason as such. It just doesn’t work. It
just falls in the same category as keeping the poor man in shackles and away
from the gang. Sad, but true. I’m thankful that I was never on a leash for the
time that you were there.
Then there are the card readers. They believe, abjectly and
ceremoniously believe that they know it all. They don’t question or argue, they
come to life altering conclusions. Verdicts. Commandments. Holy edicts. Men are
idiots if they do not conform. Thankfully, and from what I could gauge, I think you gave the other gender credit when
it was due.
Which brings us back to why we’re not married with three
kids, a dog, a mortgage and a minivan. Seriously, I’ve given it a lot of
thought, but I still do not have a plausible answer. It’s the law of
diminishing marginal utility proving itself in a study of perfect emotionless
harmony. Where the perfect mechanics will falter because that is the way of the
world. A very dark, Hobbesian world, but a worldly flaw nonetheless. It’s the simplest
rule of chaos. You fire a cannonball from a spot. It lands at another spot. You
fire another cannonball from the same spot, it will land somewhere very close
to the earlier spot of impact but not exactly there. May go the same distance,
but it may falter because one errs in the placement of the canon, because the
wind changes the yaw and trajectory of the cannonball, because the hammer didn’t
wind correctly the first time or a million other reasons. The outcome of all
human relationships will be the same. A lack of feeling. The lack may differ in
intensity for different beings in the
end, it may take multiple routes, but it will die.
Ultimately.
But, as I was saying, chaos really just tells me the outcome
was rational considering what we had as a complex mechanical or live system.
That it just wasn’t supposed to work for eternity. But it doesn’t sort the shit
when I wake up and you’re not there. When nobody’s holding down the hood of the
jacket so it doesn’t hit one in the face on the pillion seat of a motorcycle. When
I don’t have to look for cafes at 3.00 A.M. Or when I chat up with thirty other
women who just strike themselves off the list within 60 seconds of an
introduction.
Or the totally gut wrenching pull when I realize that I love
you. I do not want you there but can’t let you go either. Won’t is more like it.
So much for fucking chaos.