(No Bird Is An Island)
Something glass is cracking. Then, the sound of crystal slivers crashing in unison on the warehouse floor. It's probably just a wave of love.
I start to think that I have tired of being alone - that is, until I talk to my friends about their relationships. Being alone has never seemed so delightful as when I am on these calls. I laugh at them as if I am young and somehow wise again. I used to try to play the devil's advocate and point out to my friends where they were in the wrong. Not any more.
My friends are always right, and their partners are always the problem. It's inexplicable that it works this way, but that's science, it lets us see new and unexpected truths. There is only a problem when you are friends with both sides of the monster of love. Then, you just avoid that couple, always find a reason to leave after your second glass of wine.
I'm going to gender-identify as a vegan from here on out. That should prevent me from having any relationship problems. That last sentence can probably be shortened by one word.
I enjoy romanticizing romance, but the realities of any relationship wear me out, love thrashes me most when I should be sleeping. Relationships fuck people up. They become a distortion of their normal selves, as if bubbles grow out of their foreheads announcing some previously obscured character defect - trust, jealousy, pride, security. All of it is a perpetual mess. If love is what completes people then I'll remain unfinished in my partial form. I can enjoy all of my shortcomings in relative peace. Watching it all in others from a close distance is fun enough. Then, I get to go home and have my apartment to myself.
All the wine is left in the bottle.
Never date somebody without their own place to live and sleep. They are sure to drink your wine. That is a calculable error that many learn young.
If you can just sustain that single thought through every decision that you make in life then you should be fine. Anything less than that and you enter the distorted perception field of love, the hall of broken funhouse mirrors. It will happen anyway, but at least when the other person has somewhere else to go then hopefully they can just go there when the wine of love has reached its boiling point.
Once they are living with you then their place to be alone is also your place to be alone. Some love is just too much aloneness packed into a single space.
When the other person has their own place everybody gets to go to sleep if they choose to, you can always share the remainder of the wine tomorrow, or on the evening that follows the tomorrow of tomorrow, or on the eve of never.
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