Of course the greatest shock imaginable and the surest symp-
tom of a venge-
full God would be to introduce one's prospective lover to all of one's friends and family, one's best and most presumed loyal friends, knowing that one would boast of her as a 'catch', knowing that for once one would be Happy, and not only by virtue of the self-
transcendance of a volunteer, and that one was justified by Fate in this immeasurable pleasure, that the both of you would become a beacon of Hope for all aspiring lovers, parents, and children, if not cultural icons then at least kind, gentle souls, only to find that she does not love you.
How then to make sense of the violent passions of human emotion that had hitherto been cele-
brated as 'Love'?
How to justify the sexual appetite? How to pardon the un-
validated and, again as in childhood, meaningless songs of sentimentality on the Juke Box?
And what an affront by God.
What an affront by the woman.
What an affront by the mass of once-thought friends and elders and betters, who now with such selfishness and inhuman delight sink their grinning teeth in to the Splendour of this person that you had thought your equal. It would be as though to say: God does not love you. Your most intimate of impulses are vile, and your existence is utterly super-
fluous and there by un-
justified. What value would you possibly possess as a man then? What did you do wrong?? The world of friends and benefactors that one had presumed plotters for one's own joys, to whom you had been in-
debted, who had with every seductive coaxing smile promised you the heart of a girl like HER -- and none other --
who by every gesture of either marital fidelity or a passing fancy pro-claimed:
Marriage is justified! Love is justified! Even lust serves our Highest Purposes!
What purpose has your life then? How did you fail in your heroism?
What remains? For you to re-
solve your self to the embarassment of selfishness and arbitrary idleness?
To become less than human as all others evolve to attain greater and greater dimensions of altruism and Eros?
No. I know that you love me.
Dm.A.A.
But then how could you do that?
How could you lie? How could you accuse me of entitlement? Have I not only been kind to you, patient and polite, the hope its self justifying my endurance, its own re-
ward, with no anti-
cipation of a reward but the most eager desire, un-
abashed and surely -- as older women have in-
tuited -- sweet?
Who are you to accuse me then of entitlement? To your own joy? To the pleasure of my friends' company, and that they might have the honor of your presence?
I still recall the face of my band-mate's uncle.
The fourth of the four siblings.
That sunken, clamped look in his face that tightened about his eyes. I must have thought then: This man is whipped; you would dis-approve of him.
If only I had known his wife then! I had felt my intuitions corroborated by the fact that he checked his cell phone within minutes of entry to his brother's home, boasting suspiciously of the responsibilities of marital life. His days of getting high were over.
If only I had known her.
I spoke with her for at least an hour at the Graduation Party.
Dm.A.A.
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