The Heart is the Lonely Hunter

Sex and Love

To Apple Two


We humans like to talk about sex and love. Sex is easy to know because it is a physical act. Love, on the other hand, is complex and has myriad forms. Everybody has their own definition of love. Saint-Exupery once said that love does not consist of two people looking at each other, but at the same direction. And Eric Segal is famous with the corny line: Love means never having to say you are sorry. Roberto, the infamous half-Italian wannabe fiction writer, disagrees whole-heartedly with Segal. To Roberto, love means you say you are sorry all the time because you don’t want to hurt the feelings of your beloved, because you put her own feelings and welfare before yours. But how often we do that, Roberto wonders. We almost always love ourselves first and foremost.

Sex is coarse and animalistic. We come up with sex jokes and talk about/practice rough sex or group sex. We don’t talk about rough love or group love. Romantic love is almost always about tenderness and exclusivity. And romantic love is what Roberto mostly wants to ruminate about today. He should be an authority on the subject because he has a “big heart” and has fallen in and out of love so many times that he has lost the count. Today he decided to venture into this mine field of the heart because he is seeking solace and understanding while a teaching from Buddha is echoing in the back of his mind. The biggest debts are those of the heart.

He passed by her former house today. He had to. He was in town and he wanted to confront his own heart. So he asked the cab driver to make a detour on the way to the hotel. And there it was. The old villa was still there. He recognized it right away, even with newly planted trees and a new gate. In a flash, memories flooded back and overwhelmed him. His heart felt constricted and tears formed in his eyes. The biggest debts are those of the heart, indeed. He no longer loves her, but he cannot forget her, not for long anyway. A scarred heart has long memories. He does not want to meet her in order to ask her some questions so he can shut the door to the past because he is afraid of the answers he might get. He would rather spend the rest of his life speculating on the reasons why she left him. The speculation would do him more good than bad because he would be gnawed with the uncertainty, the sorrow, the anger, and the distrust of all women who arrive after her. And all these unpleasant feelings would drive him to write.

Nguyen Cao Ky Duyen, a celebrity in the Vietnamese diaspora, was dumped by her second husband. She was in so much pain and full of public humiliation that she sought catharsis by posting an article in a forum in which she movingly and eloquently bared her anguish. Roberto was dismayed to see a disparaging comment posted on the internet with regard to Ky Duyen’s article. Where is the compassion? Where is the empathy? In this forum, some bloggers have a penchant to post x-rated sex materials. While some of the materials are funny, most of them border on bad taste and that makes Roberto wonders about the sexuality of the bloggers. Sex is meant to be private. Constantly telling sex jokes or posting sex-related materials in public is an indication of something quite amiss in the “state of Denmark”. Love, on the other hand, can be talked about in public because love is universal and has been one of man’s deepest longings. In addition, talking about love can bring catharsis and transcendental feelings. No wonder we always have an endless supply of songs and stories about love throughout the ages while stories about sex are of limited circulation because sex by its nature is short-lived and boring if not sustained by love. For the first few years of his youth, when he was making love, he had to focus hard not to think of her. Sex rarely kills unless one engages in some severe sadomasochistic act or one has a weak heart, but love kills. During his recent travel, Roberto heard of the following heart-rending story. A male radiologist was courting a female obstetrician-gynecologist. The latter was interested but played hard to get. Then the former met a vivacious, charming cavaliere. He fell under the sway of this woman and lost interest in the ob-gyn doctor who later hooked up with an engineer. The radiologist married the cavaliere who promptly dumped him after managing to get almost all of his money. In a moment of despondency, he hanged himself and died. After Roberto was told of the story, he shook with fear and sadness and anger. Suppressed memories came back. He once almost died of love. You don’t really know what love is until you are willing to die in the name of love. Maybe at one time in your life, you got close to the abyss, looked down into it, and it looked back at you invitingly. But you were strong enough to resist the temptation to jump. So you stepped away from the abyss. During the walk back to your car, back to reality, you suddenly realized that nothing in life could hurt you more and that you would endure and survive. From that moment on, life has a special meaning and so does love. Love is no longer absolute to you. You can talk and write poetry about it, but in your heart of hearts, you know you have lost the innocence and the purity of youth.

Roberto walked around the city and saw her name everywhere, the name once was beautiful and almost sacred to him. Now it brought him pain, but not enough to make him cry. He recalled in his first year in college, a woman’s name appeared all over the campus, written by a man obviously in pain. Roberto always wonders what happened to that man, whether he could survive the pain of love. Roberto didn’t write her name anywhere after she was gone. He did write in his last letter to her that in this whole wide world, nobody would love her as much as he did. For years, he suppressed all memories associated with her. He didn’t listen to love songs in her native language. He listened to Spanish language radio stations, instead. And whenever his mind turned to her, he would shake his head vigorously for a few seconds and try to focus on something else.

He stayed in the city for four days and tried to shut everything associated with her out of his mind. Yet, no matter how hard he tried, the sight of young couples on motorbikes reminded him of the three years he was with her when he used to drive her around on his Honda. He wondered if he could ever stay in the city this long if he traveled all by himself. The group tour helped alleviate much the sorrows caused by the invasion and intrusion of indelible memories. There were usually fellow travelers around him to occupy his thoughts. Only at night, the ghost came back and tormented him. Love was short while memories were long.

On the morning he had to check out of the hotel, he felt numb and listless. He came down to the restaurant and had his usual buffet breakfast. The beef noodle soup still tasted good. As he started on the fruit dessert, a couple walked by and an unmistakable voice rang out. He was jolted out of his lethargy and looked up at the couple. By this time, she was walking to the section of the restaurant facing the street. There was only one woman in the world that would walk like that, but he had to make sure. He got up and followed them. They had reached their table. She put down her purse and turned around and headed for the food section. That was when she saw him. Their eyes locked. He was dead sure that it was her. The dimples, the split chin, and the high cheekbones gave her away. He was nodding at her. She looked at him with puzzlement. Then her eyes hardened and she turned to the European next to her, put her hand in his, and led him to where the noodle soup was being served. He got back to his seat, gathered his briefcase, and walked out of the restaurant and straight to the restroom where he promptly threw up his breakfast’s contents. And he sobbed uncontrollably in the confines of the stall. True love never died. And it hurt like hell. No wonder Ky Duyen bared her soul and the radiologist killed himself.


Wissai
February 3, 2009