Who Do You Love?

Only the most twisted romantic starts a talking about love by referencing a post in which he called himself the baddest motherfucker in the valley.

That line has been used in multiple movies but I am told combat veterans of multiple wars have used it.

I haven’t served in the military or seen combat but I have had my nose broken and bloodied as well as other parts and have made a point to do my best to give as good as I got.

Still like many other average Joe’s I always told myself I was him because it made taking that first punch hurt a little bit less.

****

I told dad that I wanted him to think of himself as the baddest motherfucker in the valley but I don’t know if he heard me.

Maybe he was sleeping, or maybe he was lost in his own thoughts. I didn’t push to get an answer because if you look at the last chunk of time he has been that guy so my words were likely unnecessary.

Who Do You Love?

If I had understood how ephemeral certain moments in time are I would have tried harder to bottle them up and or burn them into memory.

The funny thing is how many of those took place when I was old enough to know better. Sometimes I think about writing a folk song about them and sometimes I think about going other directions.

Maybe talk about Marlowe’s words, ya know that Passionate Shepherd to his love and how he offers to make a bed of roses for her.

Can’t say that I would definitively build a flower bed upon the bed but maybe I would compromise and sleep on sheets that had flowers.

It is hard to be the romantic when your spitting out clumps of dirt and while I never claim to understand women I am confident most wouldn’t want me spitting on them.

Wouldn’t matter if I was spitting out dirt, at least I don’t think most would like it. One can never say for certain because they have a proclivity for fooling us.

And given the nature of the Internet and how easily it provides access to fetish it is possible there is a place online that caters to females who are seeking men who spit dirt at them while rolling in a fake flower bed built upon a mattress.

What, you don’t believe me?

Go look up the furries or the women who like men who dress up in diapers and pretend they are babies.

Scratch that, don’t leave this place to seek that out–I have more to share and you’ll be happier to be bored by me than them.

****

A short while back I sat in a restaurant in Tyler, Texas and listened to the guy next to me explain how very few people really know who they love.

He filled five minutes with what he considered perfect logic, finishing with a flourish.

“I bet you can’t tell me who you love.”

I smiled at him and said I have written 109,938 posts about love and that I knew exactly who I do and do not.

He didn’t expect an answer like that and asked if I would explain.

“Some people say they never say I love you first not realizing they already had in a hundred different ways. Some people say they don’t love you any more when they really do and some say they love you not realizing they don’t. The words are just habit.”

The man scratched his head, leaned forward and asked me to give him more details.

“It sounds like y’all have spent some time thinking about this. Are you still married to her 0r have you gone your separate ways?”

I took one long sip of my drink, paused and told him the ride back to Dallas was going to take a chunk of time.

“Your words intrigue me, I am like a stranger on an airplane. Tell me your story.”

I smiled and said, “Who do you love is a question we all should ask and answer for ourselves.  Some stories are like that and some have to marinate a while before you share them…if ever.”

He waved his hand in dismissal and muttered a semi-polite goodbye but I saw the smile had left his eyes.

It annoyed me to see his irritation at my refusal to share but I saw no need to mention it. That ride back to Dallas is long enough to be noticeable and I hoped to be home by 8:30.

A Green Honda Accord

I used to drive a ’96 Green Honda Accord.

It was the first new car I bought and it served me pretty well for about eight years.

Had some kid not come flying out of the baseball fields when I was doing 50 on Burbank Boulevard it might have kept the family company for many more years.

Except the kid did try to cross several lanes and his last minute move didn’t provide me with enough time to do more than slam on my brakes.

I hit the windshield with my head and my left knee slammed into the dashboard.

At least I think my head hit the windshield, truth is the air bag might have stopped that, but I am not sure it did.

Mostly because my head felt like it smacked into something.

What I know for certain is the Motorola cellphone on the seat next to me flew out of my hands and was smashed into two pieces.

One moment I was on the speakerphone and then I wasn’t.

Sometimes when I say I am the baddest motherfucker in the Valley I think about that accident because the people that saw it told me how nasty it looked.

They said they were surprised to see me get out of the car and walk normally.

I like to cite that as evidence that Wilner men aren’t made of paper mache and to remind myself that sometimes we get lucky.

When you take your ticket and enter the ride you never know what you are going to get. You just know that smart people live and love hard.

They don’t just wile away the days waiting for things to turn. They turn things or at least try to.

So when people ask me if the current hospital stay is proof that treatment is or isn’t working I tend to give them a hard look.

We don’t get to make decisions for others, especially when we aren’t asked. We just get to offer support and to remember sometimes the answer to who do you love is part of why you defy the statistics.