What's this thing called, love?

Dusty Miller

“What’s this thing called, love?”

It didn’t take too much erotica writing before the inevitable questions arose.

“Holy crap, are erotica writers among the frickin’ loneliest people of the world?”

“Why am I just aching with loneliness inside, and why is finishing one of these and not having anything to do the worst feeling in the world?”

(“Why am I so horny all the time?”)

“And why am I staring at people’s faces and checking out their walk in a world where we tend to avoid eye-contact, staring, and being sexually aggressive?”

I don’t know, but it’s definitely a time-filler, or something.

What I think happens is that writing romance, love stories, erotica, all that romantic shit, highlights and underscores the fact that there’s not really all that much going on in our own life.

And yet maybe, as an expression of our own most personal wants, needs, desires or fantasies, it says a lot.

Love is a universal human need. Everybody wants love, it’s like money in that sense. Sex is a powerful driving motive behind many of our daily actions.

Stated baldly, a house is a place where people mate and have kids…right? Sure, we all got to live somewhere. But it could be stated that way and not be all that inaccurate.

***

Every so often you get a crush on someone.

You know damned well it ain’t happening, right? Generally speaking, there’s not much you can do about it but suffer and wait for the next big crush to come along…then you’ll forget all about ‘em.

Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Even then, it says a little something about what’s going on inside of your head, which is the biggest sex organ of all, according to the experts, mostly scientists and guys with big heads…(hmn.)

***

I don’t think it’s ever a mistake to love someone. Even when they don’t and probably never will love you back, or even be aware of your existence.

In those clear-cut cases, it’s probably better not to dump that heavy load on someone who may already have a spouse, significant other, or maybe they're just not very likely to be interested, plain and simple.

Why tell them, right?

Loving someone that you may never have is sure a lot better than hating someone—because that can get to be a habit that’s hard to break.

Because loving and having are all mixed in together. Why love someone you'll never have?

I think it's better than not loving anybody at all, for surely in order to love someone else, we must first love ourselves, and maybe even consider ourselves worthy of some love?

Does that make any sense at all, ladies and gentlemen?

I sure hope so.

***

There are all kinds of love, from an academic love of humanity, which includes some less than exemplary individuals, but we sort of accept that, to the love of a mother for a child, a father for his son, or between brothers and sisters.

The love of a mate is special. Human beings are animals too, and the natural urge is to mate, and to have a mate.

It’s interesting to read about monogamous species. When the stork loses a mate, it may never mate again. 

Romantic as it seems, it also seems pretty tragic. In most cases, humans will remarry or ‘re-mate’ if you will, sometimes relatively quickly.

A friend told me, “After five years you’re officially a virgin again.”

She’s a lesbian, but her perspective is not far off.

“Well, that is good news indeed.” What the fuck was I supposed to say?

But after a while a bit of that mental or psychological virginity kicks in and it’s like falling off a horse: you’d better get back on and ride that thing, or walk away and stay away!

But it’s, ah, definitely troubling.

I’m a healthy and normal 31 year-old woman, and that biological imperative is hard to ignore.

And if I was out on a hot date with some luscious hunk, always in the back of my mind would be the daughter at home with the babysitter, and the unpaid bills, and the squeaky fan belt on the old Nova, and a hundred other adult concerns that we really didn’t have back then—when we were in high school, or college, or young adults without a care or responsibility in the world. And yet that’s where most of the memories are—that’s where they were built.

No wonder it bears little resemblance to our present reality.

***

To write erotica or romance is to fantasize, to daydream, and then very simply to write it all down in the best form you can manage. The database for our fantasies is of course our memories. This includes experience, books, films, education, conversation, everything in our heads remotely related to our fantasy of the moment.

There is more to it, I’m sure.

It is a kind of wish fulfillment of a purely symbolic nature.

And yet at the same time there may be a kind of magic in it.

People look at what they like. That’s why I will buy a red car before I buy a silver one. I might even order it special and have to wait, when a silver one was sitting right there on the lot.

People dream and scheme, and manipulate to get what they want. They also have to convince themselves, a.) that it is possible and b.) that this is what they really want c.) the price will not be too high d.) it will work as advertised…the list goeth on.

Because there are always options, including the nun’s habit and the cloister. For whatever reason, that just doesn’t sound like me, although it sure sounds like Sister Heather in Project: Passion.

That book has a very simple message: you have to know what you want or you ain’t ever going to get it now, are you?

I have no doubt whatsoever that the interest in romance, erotica, love, relationships, it all holds great meaning for this writer. And it holds a lot of meaning for readers as well.

The readers want to be loved too. The reader is just like me.

Coming to terms with that meaning, and figuring out just what I must do about that meaning, personally, and in the works that I produce, may be a little more difficult, but we’ll take it one day at a time and see how it goes.

Other than that, thank you for stopping in.

***

Smooches.