Romance is Mush

So this blog has thus far been stringently impersonal -- observations, thoughts, musings, but nothing of the author's own feelings or relationships.

But now, whether out of the overpowering gush of -- yeck -- feelings, or out of the exhaustion of other material, I will divulge that the author's great romance and engagement has come to naught.

From a certain perspective, one can ask why one would ever get into relationships in the first place unless they were strictly unavoidable, unless someone were to hold a gun to your head, threatening to squeeze the trigger if you didn't steal that first tingle-to-your-toes kiss, if that first I-love-you-darling hadn't sort of flopped out of you.

I'll admit that even more than losing myself in the rosy haze of a new romance, I really I am very much enthralled with the drama, the wry, urbane, bourbon-sipping, sheer worldliness of losing love -- more even than having had it in the first place. It's a new toy for a former monk reentering the world. An artfully tarnished medallion of Being In Society, the thing that for Cole Porter and Billy Strayhorn and the rest of those brilliant, arch (and, not that it enters into it, gay) swells defined American sophistication for generations, even if in the end it really ended up being about emphysema and corroded livers.

Romance is mush,
Stifling those who strive.
I’ll live a lush life in some small dive...
And there I’ll be, while I rot
With the rest of those whose lives are lonely,
too..

But again, such undeniable pleasure in identifying and tasting these things I'd heard about, these icons of Worldly Living -- falling in love! getting engaged! oh, boy, getting dumped! -- trumped whatever minor emotional discomfort might actually have been felt at the moment. Every part of the relationship, almost especially the end, has been like seeing the Eiffel Tower for the first time.

Well, I'm going to toddle off to bed in my smoking jacket, the ice in my bourbon clinking softly in the glass. I pause at the bedroom window, looking out over the twinkling lights around Central Park, and pour myself more bourbon...I find myself humming the great Jerome Kern song...

They, asked me how I knew,
My true love was true,
I of course replied, something here inside,
Can not be denied.

They, said some day you'll find,
All who love are blind,
When you heart's on fire, you must realize,
Smoke gets in your eyes.

So I chaffed them, and I gaily laughed,
To think they would doubt our love,
And yet today, my love has gone away,
I am without my love.

Now laughing friends deride,
Tears I cannot hide,
So I smile and say, when a lovely flame dies,
Smoke gets in your eyes,

Smoke gets in your eyes.

Ah. Just so. (Takes a long pull from the bourbon. Then a drag from his cigarette, and another pull, this time directly from the bottle.)