written December 2009
I’m sitting with Jim in his room. The walls are painted a deep orange. An alcove, in which his bed fits perfectly, is painted a light cream color. The alcove has two windows that provide the room with the sun’s natural rays.
“I like this room. It has character. I’m painting it to
reflect my personality; the fiery angry side and the peaceful and logical side,
from where the light ultimately comes,” Jim wrote me this summer, while I was
exploring a life of hedonism in Sydney, Australia.
Jim is the angriest, most violent, lover
of everything in the universe. When you first meet him this may seem paradoxical, but it’s not. Passion is at the center of everything
worthwhile.
On the far side of the room, across
from the alcove “from where the light ultimately comes,” is a tiny door covered
with a yellow and black checkered scarf. Jim meant for this scarf to be his
replacement for a tattered keffiyeh, a typical headdress of Arab men, which
Jim bought during a year abroad in Chile when he was 18-years-old. Jim’s
original keffiyeh symbolized solidarity with the plight of the Palestinian
people, but his replacement scarf was bought at a time when this once-symbol is a fashion trend in the United States. Because Jim can no longer express his
solidarity without looking as though he's trying too hard, the black and yellow replacement scarf now drapes the tiny door in the corner. I can’t write about what’s behind the door, where a light glows brightly, because it’s one of Jim’s
secrets.
Jim and I are very healthy people.
We eat well and we work out constantly. We look in reflective surfaces often. How
we look and feel is very important to us. Some call our behavior vanity, but we
don’t think of it in such terms. Respecting our bodies is our way of expressing our profound enjoyment of our youth, health, and beauty. It’s important to
appreciate these things while you still have them.
“By the grace of God go you,” Jim
always says.
He means that we only get to have
the things we have, live the way we get to live, and love the way we get to
love because of the unfathomably complex workings of the universe which, currently, are
in our favor. All of these beautiful things which are so easily and often
taken for granted can be gone in a second. “Only by the grace of God, the
cosmic design of everything, go you."
For now, Jim and I go together.
I’m in love with Jim, and he’s in
love with me. We’re in love with each other. And it’s that crazy, wonderful
kind of love. The kind where everyday I wake up, and Jim is the first thing on
my mind. The kind where I spend everyday waiting to get done with my work and
chores and errands so I can see him again. The kind where to not have him creates a hole in my life that only his life can fill.
But that description doesn’t do our
love justice. Not really.
What I’ve just described any couple in the world can have. You can love someone without knowing or caring why. And
you can miss someone without really loving them at all.
"Love" is usually the word people use
for "Addiction."
When we fall in love, when we make
love, our brains release chemicals. The chemicals make our brains go wild with
pleasure. You can come to despise someone, but if they’re the one that cuddles
you at night and fucks you in the day, then you still need them. The chemicals
have you – same as pain killers, heroin, or methamphetamine. It’s all you can
think of, it’s all you want, and in having it, you find bliss… happiness...
Nirvana.
But at what cost to yourself? At
what cost to “the ghost in the machine” we so lovingly refer to as “the soul?”
I watched a documentary about
heroin addicts that showed a couple who spent their days on the streets
of Denmark selling magazine subscriptions. Once they’d gathered enough money to
shoot in their veins, they’d head to their dealer and help each
other inject the venomous opiate.
Writhing around on the ground, eyes
rolled up in their heads, gasping for breath - the couple held each other - in
beauty, in peace, and in love.
Not to say I’m not addicted to Jim.
I am. And he’s addicted to me. The thing about our love which makes it
different than your run-of-the-mill chemical dependency is that we know why we
love each other.
I love Jim in the same way I
love music, good literature, and the summer sunshine warming my skin. I love
him for the sake of what he is and how his existence complements and inspires
mine. If he were to stop loving me today, it wouldn’t change the fact of my
love. I love him, because his energy is the sort of energy that creates, arouses,
and changes the world. I love him, because his passion is all-consuming.
“I can't wait to have you back
again to experience this messed-up universe with me. And maybe help me mess it
up a little more,” Jim wrote to me while I was in Australia.
One of the things Jim enjoys most in
this world is thinking of new ways to kill people. He’s even invented some
weapons which he wants to patent, but he worries, maybe, the Israelis will use them
on the Palestinians. Despite Jim’s new affection, or at least respect, for the
Israeli people:
“You need to be as mean as a rattle
snake to survive in a place where everyone around you wants you dead.”
Jim still has some moral qualms
with his weapons being used to kill people who he once wore a scarf very
often, even when it was not stylish, to support.
Jim loves knives, guns, and
weapons. He sleeps with a large knife on the windowsill at the top of his bed
in the little alcove. He explained to me once that he loves death and violence
for the same reason I love comedy. The duality of man. We
can desperately want peace at the same moment we inflict death. And the
most powerful thing we can do in the midst of a great tragedy is to
laugh.
Jim’s life up until now has been
comprised of chasing down all of the questions of the universe until they become
unanswerable. Jim says every question you ask will ultimately and
inevitably lead to the same unanswerable “Why?”
Jim constantly ruminates over how
to best kill his enemies, such as the boys who talk to me when he’s not around. I can’t deal with any serious issue that hurts me without making it into a
dark, twisted joke. We are the next generation of free thinkers. We are
philosophers. We are artists.
Maybe this is just another way of
saying we are college students who do too many hallucinogenic drugs.
But for now, Jim and I still cling
to the belief that we will be able to help recreate the world in our image.
Maybe if I can only write something
good enough, then Jim will love me forever. I want to make him proud of me, and
I want him to think I’m amazing. I want to always be the most worthwhile, stunning
woman in the world in his eyes, even as my hair turns grey and my skin begins to
sag and my face becomes lined with the marks of worry and laughter. I want to
ensure his love will always be mine, and I hope that maybe, if I make him proud
enough of me, then he’ll always want to be by my side.
In turn, I am Jim’s biggest
supporter. I want to lift him up so high so that nothing in this world will
have the power to tear him down once I’m through. I want him to know that he
can have any girl he wants and still not be able to wait to come home to
me at night. I want to make him so big that if I ever stumble or lose my way
it’ll be no problem for him to catch me, to carry me, to help get me back onto
my path.
Jim is going to be a rock star, and
I am going to be a famous writer.
Jim and I are going to help each
other become great.
This is the beginning of our story
together, and this is my love letter to Jim. I wanted to write an entire story
for us where we go on great adventures together and conquer great evils, but I
suppose, for now, I’ll have to be satisfied with an introduction.
