Living up to Expectations, Part Two:

Love

For the record, I don't know a damn thing about love except how to do it, and even that usually turns out wrong. The past year has made me really investigate my criteria for what makes a relationship workable, or even healthy. Not that that's the same as love, mind you, but they're related.

I'm working right now under the assumption that I don't know a damn thing about love, and that every time in the past, I've been wrong. And it's true, every relationship save the one we die in is a failure. I'm not down on myself. It's just the way the game works. You win once. That's it.

But the memories of losing are a lot of fun too...

I digress. Under the assumption that I know nothing about love, here is a solo vignette from my current relationship:

Perfume smells different on everyone's skin, because the artificial scent mixes with a person's natural scent and everyone blends a little bit differently. This is a fact.

You on me, or me on you--I can never tell which--has a smell which is not exactly like but evokes memories of the smell of Play-Doh. Sweet, salty, soft. Simple, childish, and safe. Joyful. Brightly colored. Durable.

It's cheap and easy to say you make me feel like I've never felt before, because if I wanted to feel the same feelings I'd date the same people. A less cheap way to say it is that earning and keeping your good opinion and care is something of which I am proud. That the times when we laugh and rip on each other and say terribly politically incorrect things (jokes about domestic violence come to mind here) are the best times, and the times when you fall asleep on my shoulder in front of bad television are also the best. I am so honored by your regard.

You are the first person I've dated in a long time to whom I've been faithful, and that's the highest compliment and most self-explanatory thing I can say about you.