There was a porcine young man with not unpleasing features leaving JFK just as I was getting there, screaming into his cell phone: “tell me you LOVE me!” Well, that’s one way to go about it, I guess. You know, my philosophy is, say what you want. If you love me you love me. What I hate is when you say it, and then whoever you say it to is like, “oh, um, yeah, I, um, I love you, too, um, of course, heh heh. Is it hot in here, or is it just me?” Or when women say it to you, you know what that’s about, don’t you? They just want to shame you into saying it back. If you say, “yeah, me too,” nine times out of ten they’ll be like, “then why don’t you ever say so!” And you’re like, “because you always say it first, lambkin!” And they give you that little pout, and those eyes, and they’re like, “well, that’s because I love you. If you loved me you’d say it first!”
Ah, love. It’s something different to everyone isn’t it? But if you have to beg or order someone to say it, is it really love, by anyone’s standards? Rochefoucauld, the famous 17th century French wit, once wrote, “There are people who would never have loved if they hadn’t heard others speak of love.” And that’s the truth. For most guys, a warm body on a cold night will do. Don’t tell me you love me, because then I’ll have to take you to dinner to make up for the fact I didn’t say it first. Tell me you want to have sex with me! I promise to take you to dinner sometime afterwards. One day.
That’s probably what this bloke meant, wannit? Tell me you want to blow me! That’s how most guys know someone loves them, innit? If you love me, love my mini-me!
Boy, those Greeks had it all figured out didn’t they? They had three flavors for love: philia, eros, and agape: loosely translated as friendship, sexual love, and love of God, respectively. We moderns aren’t particularly good at any of these. We’ve mastered the malignant self-love of Narcissus, but we have some work to do on the others. Personally, it’s my conviction that all true love is, in the end, agapic love. As Buber had it (to paraphrase shamelessly): God is revelation that arises from relation.
Philia is probably the truest and most enduring form of love. Agapic love is the hardest, because most people’s idea of God is as someone or something with a separate consciousness, who can’t be seen, by definition, except by schizophrenics, who can also see the devil (and sometimes the devil pretends to be God, tricky little so-and-so, and maybe God pretends to be the devil, too). But eros. Eros is the most misunderstood, I think. It is not synonymous with sex, as is often thought.
Adler gives us food for thought on the dual nature of eros. “The word that we must examine in thinking about love is ‘desire,’” he writes. “There are two modes of desire, acquisitive and benevolent, desire that leads to getting and desire that leads to giving. The word ‘love’ is misused if it is used for acquisitive desire and, in that connection, carries the connotation of sexual desire.” He goes on: “It is only erotic or amorous love that involves sexual desire and activity, but even erotic love is benevolent in its concern for the enjoyment of sex by the loved one. Sexual activity devoid of benevolent impulse is not love but lust, and lust, like greed, is a mortal sin.” Just something to chew on.
When I got to the station, there were several people milling around waiting for the buzzer or the whistle (the buzzer’s for the Braintree side, the whistle’s for Ashmont, I think). There were a couple of menchen who’d obviously never been there before. And it can be confusing. But that whistle blows, there’s no question what’s going on. Immediately everyone shuffles, zombie-like, towards the Ashmont platform. But when the whistle blew, the more neurotic of the menchen, who was wearing his yarmulke pushed forward, rather than on the crown of his head, blurted out: “that means it’s coming??” His friend, gave him a look, and shrugged. Then they trudged zombie-like down the stairs like the rest of us. At the bottom of the stairs they found a lovely and very helpful young woman to give them detailed directions to wherever it was they were going. Those menschen are clever, I’m tellin’ ya.
I was going to the gym myself. I won’t be able to go again until Tuesday. Not that it breaks my heart, but I like to keep up with it, you know. People get all lazy in the winter, because they figure they’re wearing layers and no one can see them under all those shirts and sweatshirts and sweaters and fleece pullovers and whatnot, and why not pack it on for a little extra warmth? But those are the sods that come rushing in all panicked come April, crowding up my gym, likes their blubber’s my problem, too. Got news for ya: Poor planning on your part is not an emergency on my part.
This time of year, the place is deserted. It’s wonderful. Except there always seems to be some old fart lurking in the sauna. Never seen him in the weight room, but always seems to be in that sauna, sort of lasciviously positioned like a geriatric version of the Barbarini faun.
So at the gym, over the sound system, they were playing one of those satellite radio stations that the FCC doesn’t have any regulatory authority over, apparently. I think this one was called XM radio. Maybe there are several genre-oriented stations in the XM network to choose from, I don’t know. Ever since I started with the saint john’s wort, I just listen to The Sound of Music soundtrack, over and over again, day and night. I can’t stand DJs, is my problem. I can’t stand people yammering on all the time, trying to be funny or witty or smart when they’re not. Morning radio is the worst. It’s always two blokes and a bird laughing uproariously at their own jokes. (Remember in Patrice Leconte’s Ridicule when the Charles Berling character is being instructed in the do’s and don’ts of life in the court of Louis XVI? The most important “don’t”: “Never laugh at your own jokes.” Sage advice.) But that’s on FM radio.
On satellite radio it’s two chicks on one dude, and there’s this (en)forced vulgarity. Because they can, you know, they must. Not too imaginative, but there it is. But if you have to try to be vulgar, just give it up and talk nice instead. I mean, I think the producers have a quota, because the DJs were throwing in these forced “fuck”s like they had a gun to their heads.
And then, of course, the dude was always commenting on the chick’s tits. But it was totally joyless. It was like they’d forget that the contract says every twelve minutes there have to be at least four references to “tit(s)” It was like clockwork. “Oh, by the way, it’s time to tell you your tits are looking really fuckin’ big today,” the dude would say. And the chick was like, “Yeah, my tits are so fucking big! And I’m wearing a really tight, wet tee-shirt! Hee hee hee.” It was like bad phone-sex.
Then they play this awful, awful thing by Korn, cleverly called “A.D.I.D.A.S.” (I looked it up on the web when I got home). The lyrics were “All day I dream about sex/all day I dream about fucking,” (repeat ad nauseam). OK, and? I’ve got an acronym for you: T.M.I. But seriously: you want a medal for thinking about fucking all day? The only time guys aren’t thinking about fucking is when they’re fucking. And then they’re either thinking about the grocery list, what’s on TV, or something like, “God, when is this gonna be over so I can start thinking about fucking again?”
No, the point is, it’s not authentic vulgarity. They’re trying too hard. And have you ever tried to work out to Korn. Jesus God, it’s… just indescribable. Whatever happened to ABBA??
On my way to the Fenway to buy some last minute nonesuch, I saw my waiter from Abe & Louis, where I had brunch Sunday. He was very tall and thin. Not to say cadaverous. But friendly and helpful. One member of our party of four is a little picky. I’ll eat whatever is put in front of me, I’m just happy to have something to eat, after all those years in the Romanian orphanage eating boiled cabbage three meals a day. But in dealing with my picky friend, my star waiter here not only had a can-do attitude, he told us exactly how he was going to enter her unorthodox order in the computer so that the chef would be able to fill it properly. He was like, “I’ll just punch it in as such-and-such, but substitute so-and-so for such-and-such.” TMI. But whatever. He was a good waiter.
At Park Street he had his nose stuck in a book by a writer I have seen a lot of people reading on the T: Nelson DeMille. I’d never heard of him, but a quick google search confirms that he writes crime mystery thriller type books. My waiter was reading Plum Island: “Wounded in the line of duty, NYPD homicide cop John Corey [a recurring character] is convalescing on rural eastern Long Island when an attractive young couple he knows is found shot to death on the family patio.” Happens to me all the time. I just don’t go writing all about it.
So I get on the green line train headed for the Fenway. There’s a respectable-enough-looking woman of a certain age in a fur hat sitting across the aisle. She’s reading the day’s Herald. And I’m sneaking a peak myself. There was a headline I thought was funny and kind of clever: “Left behind: Pastor’s wife kicked off airline flight.” I moved a little closer, trying not to alarm the woman in the process, but I wanted to read the short article. Well, I only got to about the middle of the second paragraph when she saw me encroaching from the corner of her eye, and abruptly snapped the paper, pulling it closer to her, and turning slightly so I couldn’t see the article anymore. Hmph. She paid a quarter for that damn paper, and she wasn’t about to have some bum on the train reading it for free!
Of course Johnny Damon’s all over the papers. I managed to score a Globe on the red line train on the way into town this morning that showed before and after shots of Johnny. People are rightly obsessed with his hair. As I’ve said elsewhere, I think he made the right decision switching sides, especially if it means he’ll finally cut his hair. Here’s what he looked like when he came to Boston in ’02. Like a perfect little gentleman. I mean, aside from the gum-chewing. He’s a handsome bloke, isn’t he? A big, handsome blokey bloke. Mmm.
With the beard (which obscured a remarkable jawline) and all the hair, some thought he bore a striking resemblance to a certain Messiah with whom you might be familiar. But recent scholarship would seem to contradict this. According to a number of sources, Christ didn’t actually have long hair. Unfortunately Pagans and Gnostics infiltrated early Christianity and spread lies about His do. And they stuck. In the 4th century AD, Epiphanius of Salamis broke the story:
“These impostors represent the holy apostle Peter as an elderly man with hair and beard cut short; some represent holy Paul as a man with receding hair, others as being bald and bearded, and the other apostles are shown having their hair closely cropped. If then the Savior had long hair while his apostles were cropped, and since by not being cropped, He was unlike them in appearance, for what reason did the Pharisees and scribes present a fee of thirty silver pieces to Judas that he might kiss Him and show them that He was the one they looked for, when they might themselves or by means of others have determined by the virtue of His long hair Him whom they were seeking to find, and thereby without paying a fee?”
Well, I’m convinced. I mean, it makes sense. And I very much like the idea of a crew-cut Christ, I have to admit. But as for the question of Damon’s Christ-likeness, what you have to ask yourself is, of course, What Would Jesus Do? I mean, if he were playing for the Sox. Would he play center field? I don’t know the answer myself. I have meditated on it. Anyone have insight?