Love With The Proper Familiar | Heather Corinna For B., ten years past deadline In the movies, and in novels by the Brontë sisters, it happens something like this: you see that someone, and all the lights start blinking, all the drums pound, all the world stops. You stare, and they stare back, and something is acknowledged, quietly, unspoken, and that single moment remains unforgotten throughout your lives, no matter what else ensues, changes, occurs. Usually in movies, and in novels by the Brontë sisters, either a lot happens in between that first moment and your understanding of its importance -- and often what happens is with everyone else but that person -- or else your whole life changes all at once, and you enter the great love of your life just as soon as the slipper fits, the theme music plays, or you find out exactly who that woman who won't shut up in the attic really is, anyway. But life is not the movies, nor is it Wuthering Heights, thank god, because that Heathcliff was really kind of a passive-agressive asshole, and I prefer to have a theme composed for me after I sense it's particular rhythm on my own. But I did have my moment, and it certainly was important, and not only did a million things happen in between then and now, but my whole life did change all at once. I just didn't know it. Life is often more about simple inconveniences and poor timing than the stuff of high drama and tragic romance; life is more Marx Brothers than Sophocles. And so, there were no heinous dusty secrets in my great romance, but there were girlfriends I didn't like very much who seemed to appear just when I was prepared to make my entrance. There weren't continents or social classes to be crossed, but the monotonous drive to St. Louis, though far shorter, is no day at the park either, especially when you're driving through the heartland with pro-choice bumper stickers on your van. Me and mine weren't brother and sister, nor were we housekeeper and lord of the manor, but we were friends who spent years trying to keep our hands off of one another who failed disastrously (but deliciously) at times, who struggled with an attraction that after years seemed a little incestuous (and even that certainly has its charms), and who had the hardest time figuring out that it not only is possible, but ideal, for your best friend to also be the love of your life in a world where love is supposed to be with the proper stranger, not the improper familiar. I remember having that feeling when I was younger of love and lust which is all encompassing: without which you feel you cannot breathe, sleep or eat, without which you are most certain you will cease to exist, without which you determine with a brave and quivering lip that you would much rather die than live. I also remember my bewilderment and unbearable disappointment when that intense and dramatic chemistry fizzled away swiftly -- or worse, slowly, where you watch it slip away -- to nothing, or something worse than nothing. And so many of us, faced with those sorts of experiences, become convinced that the real love, and the real lust, is that feeling of high intensity which never fizzles, never ebbs, never fades, and never changes. That may well explain why a great many people are so deeply bitter, dismayed and distressed about their love affairs and their partnerships. I've no doubt it does. In due course, when I least expected it, I found myself in the arms (and thighs and mouth and elbows) of my best friend. Putting off a sexual attraction for a few years tends to create some pretty serious buildup that does eventually tend to combust most unpredictably. I had the best summer of my life, and when it ended (in life as in fiction, the best summers always come to an end, and it's rarely pretty), I got scared shitless. What had I done? Look, you can take your theme music and your dramas and file them under "I" for incredibly insignificant in comparison. You want mind-blowing conflict? Fall in love with your best friend. It doesn't get any more intimate or vulnerable or complicated, folks, and once you've gone there, your options are sorely limited, and if you were me then, you'd do what I did, and what any fine heroine would do. You'd run screaming like a bat out of hell and become embroiled in a series of disastrous relationships looking for the least intimate thing possible, and every single time, find yourself a little more hurt, a lot more tired, and recklessly floating your boat down a river in denial with only one oar. I managed, in the span of just a few years, to employ a cast Hollywood or the Acropolis couldn't have topped: a con man who robbed me blind, a mama's boy who was great in bed and better still at driving me insane, a man with children and a wife he didn't tell me about, and a cast of extras who, like the starring roles, were utterly impossible, and had numerous qualities I never saw coming, because I didn't want to see any of them. You know what? He did the same thing. I swear. Go on and ask him. Okay, he actually did it a bit less than I did, and even tried to get me to come be with him in the process, so he gets two points for having the better script. But mine was funnier -- well, when I wasn't miserable, it was. But amidst my misery, one day I vividly remembered a moment in an October in 1990. I remembered this guy with fistfuls of black hair and glasses too big for his face, in a gorgeous skirt whose pointed glance made me hold up an entire line of customers I was ringing at the health food store where we met (I know it's crunchy granola, so shut up already). I remembered the person who I always called when I was the most upset and who wrote me long letters in which he felt comfortable discussing everything under the sun. I remembered the person with whom I literally set the pillows on fire and who I read Blake to on the beach and who actually listened to thirty pages of verse. I remembered that person who I truly was elated to see every single time I saw him, whom I felt like I could talk or not talk with and be saying just as much in both cases. I remembered a person who I had wanted to be a part of my life, and who wanted to be a part of mine, for years, not as one thing or another, but as whatever made us both happiest. I'd love to say all those feelings made me feel immediately wonderful, but what they made me feel most immediately was incredibly stupid. Eventually I got past the stupid part, chalked a whole lot up to experience and lessons learned and felt wonderful about it. Then that too passed, and I felt terrified, especially after I called him and invited him down for a visit and had no real clue what the hell I was inviting him for. He visited. It was wonderful, and as he was leaving, I still had no idea what I wanted or what I was doing. Until he drove away. And then I knew. Oh, the drama of it all. The lights started blinking, all the drums pounded, all the world stopped as I stood coughing from the exhaust fumes, and realized that the person I wanted to share the rest of my life with -- the person who I really already HAD spent a great deal of my life with -- had a fairly unmemorable license plate, and I had really lousy timing. Now, in fiction or the movies, it may have ended that way. Think Casablanca, and Ingrid Bergman with that soft little tear in her eye, but with ratty bed hair. But this is my incredibly convoluted and perplexing life, and in life, unlike the movies, we don't have poignant endings, we have bizarre beginnings that go in a thousand different directions, and an exceedingly unpredictable plot no one in their right mind would try and follow. Yet we do have singly defining moments which, when I'm at my peak, I see the significance of eventually. I married my best friend, and now it's been a decade since we met. Some days, we have that incredible intensity I remember from high school. Other days, we don't at all. Sometimes, our familiarity is almost too close, closer than many of us are accustomed to, but other times, it's really lovely. Sometimes we're setting the pillows on fire, and other times we're fighting over them instead. But what I always do have is someone who I know loves me not for what role I play, or for the feelings I provoke, but for who I am, no matter what that is. What I know is what I think few people really can know, though we all want to believe it: in one way or another, I have a partner who really will be with me all of my life, and I likewise. In a world of disillusioned romance, spoiled relationships, palimony suits and strangers we prefer to familiars because we can pretend they are whatever we want to see, I think we're incredibly lucky. When I see the quiet glances of an elderly couple, or hear their loud bickering while they still smile at one another slyly, I understand now what I'm seeing: not romance, not wild lust, not star-crossed lovers, but the best of friends, who can weather changes many of us cannot simply because what they expect of one another IS one another, whatever that may be. If I had a daughter, I would tell her this: have your crazy affairs and your tempestuous romances, and have plenty of them. Make some really foolish choices at least once or twice. Get caught up in the drama of it all on more than one occasion, and be sure and feel you'll never breathe again if he or she leaves you. But while you do all of that, pay close attention to whose shoulder you cry on, whose hugs are more comforting than anyone else's, who drives you absolutely crazy with frustration, and who has seen the most of you in your life -- the good and the bad, the brilliant and the feckless -- and loves you for all of it. Pay attention to that person more than most, because you may need those memories someday to realize how stupid you've been when the love of your life you've been hurrying up to wait for was right under your schnoz all along. And if the world tells you that it isn't a good idea to fall in love with your best friend, you can tell them to read their Jackie Collins novels somewhere where you don't have to look at the flashy covers, and you and your pal can laugh about it loudly over ice cream on the long walk home. The thing is, real love doesn't fit into a small box very neatly, nor into two-hour segments or a leather-bound cover. It leaks out messily over the edges and into friendship, lust, and family, anger, pride, and cacophony. Just when you think you know what it is, it changes on you, and it's never -- ever -- the stuff of fiction and the movies, and do you know why? Those things end. Love, life and friendship, which are truly best when intermingled -- are always just beginning. You stare, and someone stares back, and something is acknowledged, quietly, unspoken, and those single moments remain integral to your lives, no matter what else changes, even you. Copyright 2000, Heather Corinna. All rights reserved. talk about it at the forums | wenches of yesteryear | home