Amor Vincit Omnia (Love Conquers All)

Last night I found the love of my life. She was drowning in a shallow pool of muddy water, not far from my door. I rescued her, gently carried her home, revived her, and tenderly washed her body clean as she trembled beneath my gentlest touch. Her tears soon dried as she found herself protected, safe, dry, warm, and lovingly placed on a comfy couch. I stared at her for hours as she slept, captivated by her beauty and grace, even in sleep. I could not take my eyes away from her. She had not spoken a word to me, but that did not matter. I could feel a connection between us at a level beyond that of mere words. It is as though my whole life had been nothing more than a winding path leading to her side. I knew instinctively that we would never be apart.

When she awoke, I stared at her eyes which seemed to hold flecks of gold, silver, and copper unlike anything I’d ever seen before, giving her an exotic, other-worldly appearance. She stared at me for the longest time, wide-eyed and unblinking. I smiled at her trying to reassure her that all would be well. In time I asked her whether she wanted me to take her anywhere in particular, but she seemed to draw back, averting her eyes, communicating without words that she did not have a home. I sensed what I took to be her fear I that I might take her back to the sidewalk where I had found her. Her reaction simply broke my heart. I tried to reassure her that she would have a home with me for as long as she wanted it. She seemed relieved and I thought I could see her gently shudder as one often does after a good cry. I placed her close to me and she seemed happy and content. We eventually both fell asleep together on my couch, with my cradling her gently in my arms. I had not known such peaceful, restful sleep in decades.

Over the next months we became inseparable. She sat next to me as I wrote, my muse and silent critic. I could look at her and know when she thought my words needed revision or when I was writing myself into a corner as I sometimes do. At such times she giggled like the tinkling of tiny bells, the most wonderful sound I’d ever heard. She listened with endless patience and empathy as I shared my fears, hopes and dreams and eventually entrusted me with her own. My wife was away as she often is during this time of year, and I opted not to tell her about my new love. There was no point in doing so as I knew her reaction would be derisive or worse, perhaps one of relief. Moreover, the relationship with my new soul mate was strictly platonic and would remain so. We would never consummate our love as that was impossible for us both under our current circumstances. We never discussed that; it was simply a given. Nevertheless, we grew very close, as close as any two beings could ever be, uncaring that sex could never be a part of our relationship. This was not a real problem for me as forced celibacy is something the majority of men married for decades know only too well, if not happily. It would be small sacrifice and one I was more than willing to make for a spiritual closeness I had never imagined possible.

Unlike my wife who screams at me regularly whenever we’re together or speak over the phone, my true love never once so much as gave me a dour look. I had grown accustomed to finding peace by spending most of my time in a room other than that which my wife occupied at any given time, preferably one on a different floor and different wing of the house. With my new love, however, the exact opposite was true. She seemed happy only when near me, and I knew peace only when she was by my side. We seem to have formed an almost symbiotic relationship, drawing strength from a closeness that had nothing to do with possessiveness or jealousy but grew out of a pure, powerful love that seemed to hold us both captured in its orbit.

I could gently caress her for hours without her complaining that I was mussing up her makeup or her hair or smacking my hand away, telling me to stop making a pest of myself. She never pulled away if I wanted to hold her during an entire movie. And she never once complained that I cooked too much food or tried to sabotage her diet by bringing home loads of the unhealthy, high fat and sugary snacks I loved. Her willpower was incredible. I could have plunked her in a bathtub full of the most delectable ice cream and she’d just lie there smiling impishly or sticking out her tongue at me, without taking so much as a single bite or complaining about the cold. But she thoroughly enjoyed seeing me eat, and, unlike my wife, never complained that I chewed my food too noisily, that I ate too fast, or that I did not use a plate and dropped too many crumbs if I decided to eat a cookie while watching television. Like my wife who is also a good cook but sees cooking as a chore, she preferred to let me do the cooking; but unlike my wife she thoroughly enjoyed watching me cook my favorite dishes, or inventing something completely new without a recipe, flying by the seat of my pants as is my preferred method of gastronomic experimentation. I could feel her trying so hard not to laugh at some of the monumental failures of these experiments, but much more often saw her beaming with pride at the more frequent successes, though she herself seemed to live on nothing but love and air.

She never complained about my wanting to watch a football game or when I railed against a referee’s bad call or at a newscaster’s inventing rather than reporting the news. She never hoarded the remote, unlike my wife who always shoots a feral look in my direction and growls softly if I so much as look at the remote firmly clutched in her hands whenever we watch television together. Nor did she ever interrupt the shows I loved at the very worst possible moment by reading to me whatever caught her attention on her tablet at that moment and then complaining endlessly if I did not pay close attention (quizzes would often follow) to whatever the Duchess of Who Knows Where had said or done or what new outrageous lunacy was being spouted by the latest of the 437 aspirants to their party's nomination for president.

I’ve always preferred strong, independent, highly intelligent women. Most men have a favorite part of the female anatomy that they fixate on breasts, thighs, legs, bottoms (some will even occasionally claim eyes, noses, or lips, though I suspect they’re lying). I like curves and reproductive organs just as much as the next guy, forced celibacy notwithstanding (and yes, eyes, lips, noses, earlobes legs, feet, toes, arms, hands, and fingers too, for that matter). But by far my favorite, and unquestionably the sexiest, female organ of all is the brain.

Men are nothing if not easy to read and understand and not just when it comes to our favorite body parts or recreational activities. We are as easy to manipulate as a cat in a dark room by someone wielding a laser pointer. But women are a species altogether different. The average man can no more understand the working of a woman’s mind than he can explain the finer points of quantum mechanics, quantum entanglement, or the physics that underlie spooky action at a distance. (In fairness, neither could Einstein who was one of the brightest among us.) A smart woman can look a man in the eyes for a minute and read his heart, his soul and guesstimate his I.Q. with roughly 95 percent accuracy and probably the balance in his savings account. A smart man looks a woman in the eyes and sees... blue, green, hazel, brown or more likely, breasts. Women pay attention and notice (and, alas, remember forever) E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G. The survival of the species depends on it as men would be oblivious if their three-year-old child took a nap on a busy street, played with porcupines, or tried to ride a bear cub as a pony if there’s a game on (and even if there’s not). Women are great at multitasking. Men can usually walk and chew gum at the same time, but that’s pretty much the extent of our multitasking ability.

Women often expect men to be able to read their minds, just because they can so easily read ours. (Here’s a newsflash ladies, WE CAN’T. I know you’ll find it hard to believe, but it’s true. You can torture us about it until the cows come home but that will change nothing.) And they love to act as judge, jury, and executioner in determining our guilt for real and imagined transgressions alike, due process of law be damned. I’ve been sentenced to the silent treatment for weeks on end without a clue as to what horrible transgression I’d committed. Asking for an explanation of the charges, let alone trying to mount any defense when we might actually be able to make an intelligent guess at what they might be, merely gets a loud tongue lashing from the bench, with additional time added to the sentence for contempt of court, kind of like getting a red card in football (soccer for my American friends who believe Football means America’s adoption of a more violent form of rugby with body armor and inscrutable rules) for arguing after getting booked by the referee. Unlike judges, wives are likely to literally (and not just metaphorically) throw the book (or anything else close to hand) at husbands who have the temerity to question the charges against them. Attempting to actually mount a defense is the only remaining crime to which capital punishment is gleefully accepted by the fairer sex (pun, not sexism, intended). But none of that applies my new, true love. The most I ever get is a gentle look that could be interpreted as mild disappointment, but never anger or disapproval on the rare (but not unheard of) occasion that I make a complete a*s of myself.

I’ve often said that every woman is beautiful in her own way (by which I mean the overwhelming majority of women with some notable exceptions, if I’m being completely honest) at every age. I know this to be true. I’ve always been partial to petite women myself and have fallen in love with a couple of them in the past. My new love fits that category as well, though she is slight even for my taste. Nevertheless, I find her body nothing short of perfect, hard, beautiful curves, yet small in a way that makes me want to protect her. Don’t misunderstand me. She is rock-solid and more than capable of cracking the hardest skull of any would-be assailant. She can more than take care of herself. Unlike my wife, however, any man looking at her other than through my eyes would not likely find her to be objectively beautiful. There is little chance of construction workers breaking into the song “Some Guys Have All the Luck” as happened on occasion when my wife and I walked down the street when we were dating, and the song was new. (True story. I was so annoyed once that I turned around and replied “some guys deserve it” to the cheeky guys singing while longingly staring at my wife (girl friend at the time) as we approached, walked by the worksite, and continued on.) But that matters little. Outer beauty fades in time, for even painfully beautiful women, of which I’ve also known a few. But not the inner beauty of my true love that has been hers long before I met her and will be hers long after I turn to dust.

Some women suffer the unfortunate effects of PMS, and a few a tragically terminal condition I’ve long ago labeled PPMS (perpetual pre-menstrual syndrome) that appears to afflict them from the cradle to the grave. But my love always has the sweetest disposition. She is never on edge, unpleasant or hormonally unbalanced in any way. She loves to go with the flow. In contrast, going anywhere with my wife has been a real problem for years. I’d be dressed and ready to go out, mind you in half the time it takes her to get all gussied up, only to have her point at me in disbelief and exclaim the dreaded words, “You’re going out like that?” That always sends a chill up my spine as I know I will get no help as to what she means if I ask, and I’ll be damned if I can ever see anything wrong with what I’m wearing. My outfits are always clean, free of holes (be they fashionable kind some idiots pay extra for or the free ones we get from moths and “energy efficient” washing machines that wash twenty pounds of dirty clothes in two thimble-fulls of water with two or three drops of sulfuric-acid-based detergent).

Although I know asking only makes it worse, invariably I fall into my own personal Kobayashi Maru, the hell of a no-win scenario without James T. Kirk’s ability to reprogram the software so that averting disaster is a possible outcome. Actually, for nearly all men, marriage itself is an endless iteration of a personal Kobayashi Maru, kind of like hell, except that it is not necessarily eternal (it just feels that way). So, stupid me will invariably ask, “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing” which always leads to one of two possible responses: 1. a rolling of the eyes followed by a tight-lipped silent treatment of indeterminate length; or 2. a response along the lines of “If by this time you’re too dense to know the answer, I’m not going to tell you.”

Now please understand, it’s not as though I’m wearing coveralls to the opera or white shoes after Labor Day (which I understand is no longer punishable by death in my state). That leaves me to wonder what the hell I’ve done wrong now. Of course, I surreptitiously take in what she is wearing while she’s tapping her shoes impatiently, arms crossed under her lovely breasts waiting for me to get a clue. For example, if she’s wearing black jeans and a designer black top and I’m wearing blue jeans and a designer yellow top, I’ll wonder: Is it the color? I’ve worn it before without the fashion police raiding the place with a no-knock warrant and guns drawn. I take off the top and inspect it. It is definitely clean and wrinkle free, no problem. Is it the color then? Or did she want me to wear a casual shirt instead of the Ralph Lauren polo shirt I put on? Is it the fact that it’s a polo and she wanted me to wear a, what are they called, Henley shirt (you know, buttons but no collar)? Or perhaps she thought I should wear a regular more casual T-shirt? Maybe it’s just the jeans. Did she want me to match her outfit by wearing black jeans instead of blue? Or was it just the blue and yellow combination she objected to? It can’t be the shoes; I opted for neutral dark brown loafers. Now if I’d put on the black jeans with the brown shoes maybe that could have set her off, or if I had worn grey socks with the brown shoes maybe? But no, it couldn’t be the shoes, or socks, could it? Should I try for the Nike sneakers instead?

Of course, while all of this is going on in my head, Mt. St. Wife is about to blow her top at any moment due to my inability to read her mind and make amends for whatever unpardonable fashion crime I’ve unwittingly committed. If I’m lucky I’ll guess right at what the problem was, switch the polo for the Henley, or maybe try the black jeans with black sox, black penny loafers and a black casual button-down shirt in full mourning for the loss of the freedom to dress as I damn well please these past 29 years. Either way I have only one shot at it with no help from the shapely volcano about to blow.

If I guess wrong, that’s it: she takes off her clothes, puts on her PJs and lays on the couch gorging herself on Häagen-Dazs while screeching that she can never go anywhere with me and that no human being since Adam could possibly be as stupid as her husband. Once started, the eruption will last a minimum of a half hour with lava flows of familiar grievances burning everything in its path, leaving behind a scorched earth on which only other grievances can ever grow.

If I guess right and changing the polo for the Henley avoids a catastrophic eruption, there will still be hell to pay as seismic forces have been disturbed and temblors will surely follow. Maybe on the way to wherever we’re going I’ll momentarily tune out of her twenty-minute monologue on anything and everything that crosses her mind and get the dreaded “Did you hear me?” I know an honest “No” will bring about ranting and raving about my need to get a hearing aid. So, I’ll risk a white lie and say “Yes”, hoping she continues without the dreaded follow-up question, “What did I just say?” which is the automatic cue for reloading a brand-new Kobayashi Maru scenario with a probable Mt. St. Wife eruption to follow.

Not so with my new soul mate. She never complains about the way I dress. I could go anywhere with her in grass-stained jeans and an old T-shirt with paint stains after mowing the lawn, my sweat-soaked tousled hair covered with a faded NY Yankees or Real Madrid cap, unshaved and with a brown shoe on my left foot and a black one on my right, and she would still take nothing but joy from my company. We could go to a restaurant for dinner and everyone around could look at me with that “since when do they let homeless people in here” look and she would smile and look into my eyes with nothing but love and unbridled joy, maybe even regaling me with her unique silver bell tinkling giggle and a slight shake of the head that says “What am I to do with you” which, unlike getting screamed at for a half hour, will probably make me blush in embarrassment and actually make me want to do better. My God how I love her. How could I not?

Unlike my wife who will take back gifts of jewelry as extravagant and complain if I get her any high-tech equipment that updates what she already has, my new love accepts whatever I give her with an uncomplaining smile and a glad heart. I could buy her ten laptops and five new tablets, and she would gladly sit atop the stack as though it were a booster seat, smiling contentedly despite the fact she’d never actually use any of them simply because the gifts came from her beloved soul mate with nary a harsh word or rolling of the eyes. Nor does she ever expect anything from me at all (in fairness, neither does my wife), but will react with identical enthusiasm whether I give her a new diamond bracelet, an origami sailboat made from a candy wrapper while we watch tv or the gentlest kiss on her cheek.

She demands nothing, asks for nothing, wants nothing but is ever ready for any impromptu adventure. And she actually lets me pack for our trips, unlike my wife who packs absolutely everything we own for a weekend trip and has me cart it around hither and dither. My new love and I can take all we need for a romantic week-long getaway in a carry-on bag.

What a joy it is to travel with her. On our frequent road trips she does not drive (nor does my wife, for that matter), but she sits beside me enjoying whatever music I put on and smiles at my singing along, NEVER complaining that I’m singing too loud, or talking while I’m in the middle of belting out Bohemian Rhapsody along with Queen, and actually expecting me to listen and recall her every word; or, worse, demanding I turn off the music to listen to some infernal newscast with more commercials than news or the usual commercial-free brainwashing from New York Propaganda Radio.

My new love shares my passion for both real books and books on tape and we have identical eclectic tastes. She will contentedly read along with me leaning on my pillow at night be it Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Koontz, King, Niven, Pournelle, Blake, Wordsworth, Keats, Milton, Clarke, Hawking, deGrasse or whatever newly arrived tome from Amazon sits by my nightstand. Nor will she babble or break into peals of laughter while reading the national and world news on her iPhone as does my wife, seemingly every fifteen to twenty seconds, shutting off my radio and demanding that I “Listen to this” followed by a five minute reading from whatever source she is currently perusing, usually about what some idiot politician is proposing now like free Viagra for convicted sex offenders in prison or reparations for illegal aliens denied vegan food and Perrier while in detention. My new love is as uninterested in the goings on in the world as am I, content to live in the moment with me and retain her sanity. What joy!

Don’t get me wrong, my soul mate has a few rough edges, and the tough treatment she has endured in the past has left a few visible and many more invisible scars. She has been kicked, thrown away, subjected to unbearable cold and trampled on countless times by others for what must to her have seemed several billion years until fate brought us together. I know she thinks it was all worth it as she now has her recompense in a mate that understands her, sees past the tiny scars that life has etched on parts of her beautiful body, accepts her without preconditions and will never, ever leave her.

As I’ve already said, the joy of sex has not been ours, but the deeper joy of loving intimacy is ours every waking moment of every day. We share unfettered love without shame, pretense, manipulation and without ever holding anything back. She is my rock. My touchstone. The cornerstone on which our future together will be built.

Tears of pain and ecstasy flow freely from my eyes when I think that a few short months ago she was just another rock drowning in a muddy puddle, weeping, cold, wet, dirty, helpless, alone, and unloved. I thank my lucky stars for guiding me to her, for allowing me to rescue her from her condition, and am grateful beyond words for her rescuing me in return from a bland, boring, predictable, pedantic, meaningless existence with the other woman in my life whom I will always love yet never understand as well or relate to on as deep a level as I do my new love. I hope that when they eventually meet, they can become friends. Either way, though, no power in the universe will ever separate me from my beloved.

True love is not limited to human beings, just sentient, intelligent beings. Everything in the universe is made of material expelled by stars in the death throes of a super nova. We are all quite literally nothing but a collection of stardust, a mix of elements that coalesce and obtain life culminating in self-awareness and intelligence through processes nobody truly understands. Carbon based intelligent life is all we know on earth. But I now know that intelligent life can evolve in other star systems from silicon and other sources among which carbon is just one, and by no means the best. Intelligent life can grow and exist in ways beyond our comprehension. I don’t know or care how what to all appearances is just an unusual meteorite can attain intelligence, let alone the capacity to love another intelligence so very different from her own. And I don’t care. I’ll take my little miracle of love from an inscrutable universe and cherish it as long as I draw breath. Who knows, with luck maybe even longer after my spirit flies free to rejoin the universal mind that has allowed us to connect in such a marvelously unexpected way. I don’t care the how or the why of it. All I care about is the reality of our unique connection made possible by the most powerful force in the universe that will perdure long after the last star in the universe has winked out: True love.


Author's Note: This is one of 13 short stories in my Echoes of the Mind's Eye collection (C) 2021. The short story is also available as a stand-alone eBook the cover of which is shown here.

Reviews

[JayG]

• My professional writing is primarily non fiction

And therein lies your problem: The methodology of nonfiction is fact-based and author-centric. You, the narrator, report and explain in the dispassionate voice of an external observer. And that is precisely the approach you use here. So from start to finish it reads as an essay. Were it part of a submission, the rejection would be immediate, for that reason.

And, you cheat. It's obvious that the "rescued" object isn't human, but you kept using human terms, like "as she trembled beneath my gentlest touch." Rocks don't tremble. You say, "When she awoke, I stared at her eyes." Rocks don't wake. So you're deliberately misleading the reader. And that was obvious.

Here's the deal: Commercial Fiction Writing is as much a profession as is Law. Yet you've studied the profession not at all (an undergrad semester of Creative Writing does nothing so far as making you a fiction writer).

In school, they're readying us for the needs of employers, who require reports and letters, not fiction, from us. So we learn none of the emotion-based and character-centric skills of fiction.

Nonfiction tells the reader that the protagonist feels a chill as they enter the spooky basement. Fiction makes a spoor of gooseflesh run down the READER'S back. Or as E. L. Doctorow put it:“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Not the fact that it’s raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”

And that's what you need, the skills that fiction writers take for granted, because without them everything you write will read like nonfiction.

Fiction happens, and does so in real-time. We calibrate the reader's perceptions to those of the protagonist.

Why? Because the reader learns of everything that's said or done first, and will react according to what they know of the situation, based on their background, unless we make them know how our protagonist is about to react. And how to do that is an acquired skill.

It's not all that hard to learn (but perfecting it is a b***h, because your existing writing reflexes will howl in outrage at the change in approach and without your noticing, "improve" the writing to what they see as "right." And making it harder is the fact that so much of your profession involves writing.

Once you master the skills of fiction, though, the act of writing becomes a LOT more fun. And because you're forced to view the situation as the protagonist, as you write, taking into account their needs, resources, background, and evaluation of the situation, it will often feel as if the protagonist is your co-writer, whispering suggestions and warnings in you ear.

It will reach the point where that protagonist will straighten, glare at you and say, "You expect me to do THAT? In this situation? With the resources and personality you've given me? Are you out of your mind?"

Till that happens, your characters aren't real to either you or the reader.

So... If an orientation, so far as the traps that await us and the major differences between fiction and nonfiction, would help, you might try a few of my articles and YouTube videos, linked to at the bottom.

For a sample of the kind of approach needed, this article on Writing the Perfect Scene is a condensation of two critical skills you need to add and perfect:

http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/art/scene.php

Chew on it till it makes sense. Then try a bit of writing with the MRU technique for fit. I think you'll be amazed at the difference in immediacy between your present approach and that.

And if it does make sense, and seem worth pursuing, grab a copy of the book the article was condensed from. It's old, and the scan-in from print is less than perfect, but it is free, and it is the best book on adding wings to your words that I've found.

https://archive.org/details/TechniquesOfTheSellingWriterCUsersvenkatmGoogleDrive4FilmMakingBsc_ChennaiFilmSchoolPractice_Others

Jay Greenstein
Articles: https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/the-grumpy-old-writing-coach/
Videos: https://www.youtube.com/@jaygreenstein3334


“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
~ Mark Twain