Tough love? April 16, 1985

 


Love is a strange animal, creeping out of the corner of the mind. Some have actually placed its home in the heart

But nothing so vile could come from an organ charged with pumping sweet life-giving blood through a person’s body.

Love is a beast, produced from too much chocolate, pop or maybe poison.

In the 1960s, people feared LSD would change the genetic makeup of the human race, altering how people think.

We have suffered far longer under the influence of the much more power mind-altering drug of love.

Love kills. It sucks the blood out of its victims the way a vampire might, but slowly, with the drip, drip, drip of Chinese torture, stealing a person’s ability to think, erasing ever ounce of common sense.

In the last six weeks, Pauly’s mind has played tricks on him, especially in regard to Jessica, deceiving himself as to how much he wants her, how good life will be if they are together, when she clearly prefers macho men, which Pauly is not.

It is difficult to know why she took up with Pauly at all, perhaps drawn to his snide sense of humor and draws women to him like honey does flies, until they realize this something comes out of bitterness, which drives them away.

Sometimes he seems cruel, and this has its attraction to some women who seek for him to punish them.

Jessica appears to have turned off Pauly when he went soft (a sexual pun) and preferred poetry to nasty jokes.

She seems to need hardness in her men, crude like her boyfriend is, aggressive, maybe ruthless, and was attracted to Pauly when he seemed bristly, a father figure with the potential to provide the punishment she desires.

She seems to need a man to rebel against, to find reason to hate, so the harsher the man the more she wants him, again why she finds her boyfriend so attractive, as he lives up to all of these expectations, even if he is far inferior to Pauly in intellect.

Pauly asks me what he can do to get Jessica to like him again.

I’m scared to tell him what I really think.

He asks me if he still stands a chance with her.

The easiest think for me to do is lie and tell him, yes, when I already know, Jessica has already moved on, and no matter what Pauly does to modify himself, she won’t ever take him back.

Yes, I believe she’s still attracted to him. But I also think she used Pauly as a way of getting her boyfriend to pay more attention to her, to become more like the man she really wants, and her boyfriend, clearly intimidated by Pauly as an older and brighter man, is doing everything he can to live up to Jessica’s expectations.

She wants tough love Pauly simply doesn’t have in him to give.

 

 

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