No, Not Love, She Said. Don't You Know That It's Different For Jane?

"I know a lot of things that you don't --
You wanna hear some?"
She said "Just give me something, anything.
Well, give me all you got, but not love.
No, not love," she said, "Don't you know that it's different for girls? Don't give me love."
You're all the same...
Who said anything about love?"
Joe Jackson, 1979

The last two weeks are why I don't DO love. Or at least "love" in the way most people have been conditioned to understand it.

Look, things are not supposed to be this stressified. But when "being in love" with someone comes into play, all of a sudden you have drama.

Even if you are the QUEEN of doing a Pennsylvania Polka out of drama's way, as I am (let's sit down one day and count how many people know intimately what the back of my head looks like), when lurrrrve comes into it, drama will attach itself to you with every sucker on every tentacle. And before you can realize it's the Kraken pulling you under, you've already inhaled too much water and are doomed before you even have time to say "'ello, beastie."

Trust me, if my water wings couldn't save me, what must it be like for regular people?

I HATE drama. I hate relationship stress. I hate pain and suffering and angst with the cause being (back of hand against forehead) "someone (sob) didn't (hiccup) love. Me. (big sob) Back." (When what you really mean is "someone didn't love me enough.")

Some people love drama. Some people use drama as their primary fuel. Some people live on drama as their sole sustenance.

I am not one of them. Drama gums up my gears and turns what ought to be an easy sprint over rolling hills into an uphill slog without a granny gear.

As far as I can see, it's good for staying thin and not much else. Maybe that's why New York women create these Carrie Bradshaw lives for themselves -- full of romantic drama and angst -- so they can stay thin. Well, you know what? I would rather be my chubby self than be slender as a model and have all of this bullshit swirling around me.

When I was with Matt (one of those easy, blissful relationships that was doomed by being easy and blissful), I remember having this converstion:

"People say you have to work at love."

"Really, why? I think it should be easy. It's easy for us."

My girlfriends regularly became outraged on my behalf over some perceived insult or infraction.

"WHAT??? The NERVE of him!!!"

While I was shrugging and saying, "oh, well." I think I was happy to have anyone else except me be outraged at some supposed transgression. Their outrage was energy I didn't have to expend.

(In hindsight, I believe boys don't actually like a girl who says "oh, well" when a plan has to be cancelled, or someone is late, or a birthday is forgotten. Boys want the fuss, the carrying on, the drama, as much as any woman. A girl who says "oh, well," with a shrug of acceptance clearly doesn't want him badly enough.)

I have never told a man that I needed him in my life. I have told many that I wanted them in my life, but I have never said, "I neeeeeeed you. I will diiiiiieeeee without you." Because that would be a lie. I've always been one of those, "I will be really sad, and I will cry very hard, if we parted," people. But I can't say the "N" word. Because it would be a lie.

It's only after they've eaten enough shit over perhaps decades, that some men are ready to have things just be easy. Where they don't have to gauge the emotional temperature of a room before speaking, or run through a list of everything they have done in the last 48 hours to see if there's some way they have fucked up in some miniscule yet ready-to-become-an-issue way.

Listen: The last time I saw the SNF, we were lying together, peacefully knitted into each other, and he gave a big sigh, tightening his arms around me.

"I like this," he said.

"What?" I murmured.

"There's no bullshit here."

I knew exactly what he was talking about, and and I smiled into his chest. And then I sent him home to his wife.

It's easy. There are no expectations beyond that moment when we are together. And the "no expectations" part is what confounds people. Because most are like well-trained dogs, who believe that if "A" happens, then "B" must follow. Whereas I'm okay, and probably perfectly contented, for "A" to happen without any expectation whatsoever that "B" will ever occur.

What happened to me is that I abandoned all of that and sold myself on "B." I started to believe that "B" was what was missing in my life, and goddamn it, maybe this person was just the one to inject "B" into my life, when all I really wanted and needed was "A," given with as much love and tenderness and yes, honest connection, as some other kind of person who is expecting "B" to follow.

"I know it's really not fair of me,
But my heart's seen too much action."
Joe Jackson, 1984

Look, it may not fit into anyone's society-has-decided-how-to-define-it ideal, but if that's not love, then I defy you to call it something else.