Quite a bit of what’s written about love is unlovely. A certain trope that recurs when reading about love is that idea that the writer or speaker is so long-suffering and wonderful, but the beloved is so annoying if not appalling. An old but still relevant example that comes to mind is this stanza from Showboat’s “Can’t help lovin’ dat man of mine”:
Tell me he’s lazy, tell me he’s slow,
Tell me I’m crazy, (maybe I know).
Can’t help lovin’ dat man of mine.
It’s a blessed relief to see Julia Gorin handle it differently (H/T). She’s utterly honest about her own flaws, and her husband comes off wonderfully. She writes about the first time she did stand up comedy in front of him:
If my speech in the cab hadn’t scared them off, the stand-up routine should have. My comedy was in its anti-sex stage, and the audience had to suffer through gems like:
“Sometimes I’ll spot a guy I’d been with and wonder: ‘Why on earth did I sleep with him? Oh, yeah. He wouldn’t leave.’ Let me explain something: If you ever want to get rid of a guy fast and never hear from him again, sleep with him. He’ll be on his way after five minutes, which is a lot less than the half hour he was going to spend at your door trying to get you to let him in. Then you can go to the bathroom, which is all you really felt like doing after dinner anyway.
“Of course, this approach often leads to regrets — like that I didn’t get paid. Because sometimes the sex is so blah, and I know there are women getting paid for that sort of thing, and it makes me feel like a sucker. Be honest: Wouldn’t sex be just a little more exciting if you knew you would at least get a dollar afterward?”
The whole thing is here, and worth a read, but a point we should consider is that all of us are far from worthy of being loved, but sometimes we get lucky: someone knows that you’re lazy and slow but is crazy for you anyway.
Posted by Hubbard in Ladies, Gentlemen, and the Rest of us