Love Ain't Nothing but Sex Misspelled Read Online Free
Author: Harlan Ellison
know. It's one of those troublesome areas that defies pat answers.
All I know for sure is that there are many, many women and men who are hanging out--because of "love"--with partners who are clearly their inferiors.
Shit, maybe it's that one of the selfish aspects of love is that we be able to feel we're the dominant love-partner in the link-up. I don't know. Think about it; maybe you can write a critical study, then we'll both know.
Love weakens as much as it strengthens, and often that's very good for you.
The operable part of that aphorism is that vulnerability is a good and enlarging thing. When you fall in love, you start to need. For people whose self-sufficiency or fears of life have made them encysted creatures, love opens them.
For instance, the other day Lori and I were talking about what a prick I am when someone tries to chop me conversationally. Being a "fast gun" in a verbal encounter has always been a stance I believed to be extremely pro-survival. There aren't too many people who have as vicious and insulting a manner as I can manifest when I'm annoyed. That's because in some ways I'm conversationally suicidal: I'll say anything. There are no bounds to how deeply I'll cut to win. That's simultaneously one of my strengths and one of my weaknesses. I won't go into how it got started, it goes 'way back. I'll just say that it makes me a very enclosed individual a lot of the time. I'm constantly on the alert for the attack.
So Lori put forth the proposition that I was stronger than she in such situations, and I said, "No, we're evenly matched." And then she said, with considerable disbelief, "But you could cut me up in a minute and we both know it."
Which led me to think about it and I responded, "Then why don't I?"
"Because you love me," she said.
"Right," I said.
Then she grinned and made the perfect point. "You're handicapped."
Right!
Willingly, gladly, joyously handicapped. A mercurial sprinter happily tying a bag of cement to his left leg so he can race with fairness to the competition, because he loves the race, not the winning.
Love can do that. It can make you dull those savage aspects of your nature so you become more nakedly ready to accept goodness from your love-partner. It is even more pro-survival, if one accepts the theory that life is a string of boredoms, getting-alongs, sadnesses and just plain nothing-happening times, broken up by gleaming pearls of happiness that get us through the crummy stretches on that string.
Weakness becomes strength.
After you've had the Ultimate Love Affair that has broken you, leaves you certain love has been poisoned in your system, then, and only then, can you be saved and uplifted by the Post-Ultimate Love Affair.
Because that's when you're most uncertain, most self-doubting, most locked into a tunnel vision of love and life. And that's when new experiences come out of nowhere to wham you.
I guess this ties in with what I was saying about pain in the introduction to PAINGOD and about how we cannot savor the full wonder of joy unless we've gone through some exhausting, debilitating times of anguish. No one likes pain (and please be advised I'm not advocating S-M or any of the torture-games some people need to get them off; I'm talking about life-situation pain; enemas and shtupping amputees and whips 'n' chains may be superfine for Penthouse and other sources of communication for those who're into such things, but I'm not, and so when I talk about pain I mean getting your brain busted, not your body shackled; okay?) but it seems to me that we spend so much time avoiding pain of even the mildest sort, that we turn ourselves into mollusks. To love, I think, one must be prepared to get clipped on the jaw occasionally.
Otherwise, one would always settle for the safest, least demanding, least challenging relationship. Wouldn't we?
I think that makes sense.
And so, having been destroyed by an affair, knowing one has had the Ultimate Love, one wanders
All I know for sure is that there are many, many women and men who are hanging out--because of "love"--with partners who are clearly their inferiors.
Shit, maybe it's that one of the selfish aspects of love is that we be able to feel we're the dominant love-partner in the link-up. I don't know. Think about it; maybe you can write a critical study, then we'll both know.
Love weakens as much as it strengthens, and often that's very good for you.
The operable part of that aphorism is that vulnerability is a good and enlarging thing. When you fall in love, you start to need. For people whose self-sufficiency or fears of life have made them encysted creatures, love opens them.
For instance, the other day Lori and I were talking about what a prick I am when someone tries to chop me conversationally. Being a "fast gun" in a verbal encounter has always been a stance I believed to be extremely pro-survival. There aren't too many people who have as vicious and insulting a manner as I can manifest when I'm annoyed. That's because in some ways I'm conversationally suicidal: I'll say anything. There are no bounds to how deeply I'll cut to win. That's simultaneously one of my strengths and one of my weaknesses. I won't go into how it got started, it goes 'way back. I'll just say that it makes me a very enclosed individual a lot of the time. I'm constantly on the alert for the attack.
So Lori put forth the proposition that I was stronger than she in such situations, and I said, "No, we're evenly matched." And then she said, with considerable disbelief, "But you could cut me up in a minute and we both know it."
Which led me to think about it and I responded, "Then why don't I?"
"Because you love me," she said.
"Right," I said.
Then she grinned and made the perfect point. "You're handicapped."
Right!
Willingly, gladly, joyously handicapped. A mercurial sprinter happily tying a bag of cement to his left leg so he can race with fairness to the competition, because he loves the race, not the winning.
Love can do that. It can make you dull those savage aspects of your nature so you become more nakedly ready to accept goodness from your love-partner. It is even more pro-survival, if one accepts the theory that life is a string of boredoms, getting-alongs, sadnesses and just plain nothing-happening times, broken up by gleaming pearls of happiness that get us through the crummy stretches on that string.
Weakness becomes strength.
After you've had the Ultimate Love Affair that has broken you, leaves you certain love has been poisoned in your system, then, and only then, can you be saved and uplifted by the Post-Ultimate Love Affair.
Because that's when you're most uncertain, most self-doubting, most locked into a tunnel vision of love and life. And that's when new experiences come out of nowhere to wham you.
I guess this ties in with what I was saying about pain in the introduction to PAINGOD and about how we cannot savor the full wonder of joy unless we've gone through some exhausting, debilitating times of anguish. No one likes pain (and please be advised I'm not advocating S-M or any of the torture-games some people need to get them off; I'm talking about life-situation pain; enemas and shtupping amputees and whips 'n' chains may be superfine for Penthouse and other sources of communication for those who're into such things, but I'm not, and so when I talk about pain I mean getting your brain busted, not your body shackled; okay?) but it seems to me that we spend so much time avoiding pain of even the mildest sort, that we turn ourselves into mollusks. To love, I think, one must be prepared to get clipped on the jaw occasionally.
Otherwise, one would always settle for the safest, least demanding, least challenging relationship. Wouldn't we?
I think that makes sense.
And so, having been destroyed by an affair, knowing one has had the Ultimate Love, one wanders
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