LOVE THOUGHTS
Love is an experience that is as old as humanity. It may be the one facet which produces humanity. Yet each tiny piece of humanity which experiences love has the Godlike feeling that he is experiencing everything for the first time. The lovers look at each other and smile when they feel they are the first who have learned how to make sounds with kisses. They laugh and clutch at each other when they smack and pop their lips. They're as charming and as charmed as children, finding new toys---their toes. The fingers follow long lines on bodies, with small slaps, taps and scratches, showing the mystifications of love. Love is speechless, yet love tells all. Love has the language of the look and the glance. Love is timeless, yet looked back on, it is all too brief. Love seems endless, yet in the spasms of the pinnacle of feeling, when the voice shouts "Yes," it is all too brief. The sounds of the smacks of bodies kissing. The dew of sweat on the straining muscles, which click and slip against each other; the half-light produces shadows and highlights, and each blemish is investigated, each pore is probed, and each small hair is numbered and tweaked. And the gentle fingers follow the lines of the face, run along the nose and under the lips, run above the eyes and on the eyebrows, line the lines of the ear and follow the brow. A finger caresses the neck, slips down the throat, follows the line of the breast, curves around the arm, then glances back toward the body and follows the long slim line from the arm, down the body to the leg. There is languor in love, and a laziness. There is laughter in love, and a lilting gaiety, and a forgiveness. When the bed breaks, it causes laughter also. The lips become dry, become petals of roses, and the kisses are not kisses, but simply touches. And the touches last and linger. The teeth look so bright in love, they shine out in the shadows, white bones, shining through the redness of the skin and the lips, shining and glistening with wet. Who can record the essence of love? Who can find its meanings? Who can set the dictionary to its pauses and moans? Who can investigate its variations? There is fear in love. There is innocence. There is innocence that the others are doing precisely what they want. And there is fear when one finds that the lover is doing unknown things, trying to reach an unknown position, trying to attain an unknown goal. And one briefly worries that the other's experience is wider, that he's learned to like such a deed. There is mystery in position. There is infinite variety in pressure. This is the variety of love: the hard pressure, the frantic weaving in and out and the darting of the tongue and the clicking of the teeth, the pressing of bodies together, and then, suddenly, both, without a word, without a nod, they will press lightly, and the lips will stop, and the teeth will close, and the muscles relax, and the bodies grow limp against each other. The caress is the desperate caress of the helpless, the shared and sharing caress of one who hopes that the other will continue to share. But his wish remains speechless, since there is also the fear in love in being discovered. There is the fear that if the other realizes he is loved, the other will run, the other will want to escape, the other will want to flee the prison of the first one's love. This is one of the dangers of love. This is one of the fearful oppressions of love. The fear of confession. The fear of the involuntary subjugation this implies. The fear that's involved in the person's shunning your prostitution of your love to him. The triumph of the malevolent human who says, "You want me, and in your very wanting me I no longer feel I want you." This is the tragedy of love. Yet there is triumph in love also. The knowledge that the inferior can win out over the superior, by dint of love. The inferior can feel great confidence in this: he knows through experience that the love the other person holds is the most important thing there is. Other things are not important: facial blemishes are not important, the shape of the body or the weight of the skin is not important, the color is not important. The only thing that is important is the love, and this is where the one who is loved exerts a powerful influence either for good or for evil. For good, he can make the loved one's dreams come true; if evil, his influence can be all-powerful. He can do anything: he can step all over the other person's faith in love, and yet the other person's love will endure for a surprising length of time. This is one of the tragedies of love, yet, certainly, one of the triumphs.