I know I don't believe in fate or destiny, just in general but specifically and especially when it comes to matters of love and romance. The idea of a soulmate is nauseating to me, not just because I'm a heterosexual man threatened by the lingering fear that notions of emotional accessibility will click over the last number on the combination lock that finally falls open and reveals me as a gay.
As I said, it's not just that. It's also that if I'm in a relationship, I want some credit for the work I put in, thanks very much. If my connection with another person is being directed by Meant To Be or Destiny or the Three Fates at their spinning wheel or Jesus or Criss Angel or Body Thetans or Marxian Dialectical Materialism or whatever hoodoo mysticism you believe in, then all my efforts at compromise and understanding and vulnerability are pointless and unnecessary and everything Dr. Phil says is a lie.
OK, I muddied the thesis up with that last point, yes, but I stand by my original position: nobody is fated for anyone else. My ex-wife was fated for me until she was fated for the guy she's with now. Which makes Fate just as much a fickle, rationalizing motherfucker as any other corporeal, limited creature, but wandering formless and homeless with neither purpose nor function. And we all know the best thing to do with the homeless is to just pretend they're not there.
But that's all changed for me now, people. I'm happy to announce that your boy, ole Pops hisself, is in love. It's a change for me, certainly, and totally unexpected. But I finally found someone I connect with on a spiritual level. She's the jigsaw shape that fits the hole I didn't know I had in my soul. I love her and she loves me.
At least I think she loves me. My Tagalog is not that strong. Also, it's hard to make out what she's saying over the webcam. I'm pretty sure the people she works for at liveasiansluts.org have optimized the webcam we use to communicate more for video than audio transmission, which I guess makes sense given the nature of the business she's in. So we don't talk much. Actually, I have to pay to get her to talk at all and for the same price, I can have her put her whole fist in her rectum. All the way up to the wrist, I swear to God. I maxed out the credit card last month, so I have to space out the meaningful communication. It's OK though, we don't have to say much. That's the sweet thing about a soulmate: if there's only the one for you and you for him/her, you don't really even have to try.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
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9 comments:
Just don't start playing Battleship with her. That way lies your doom.
Back to your central thesis, though, (you did have one of those here, didn't you?), I equate the belief in soulmates with the frequently stated belief, usually following something bad that happens, that "everything happens for a reason." I've taken to pushing back when people say that, but I invariably end up being treated like I'm a jerk. Which really isn't that different from all my other interactions with people.
Ah, but everything DOES happen for a reason, like your friend is paralyzed because some asshole drove a Hummer while totally shitfaced. Or because that baby's brain was missing a huge chunk and so it miscarried itself. Or because lighting strikes can cause fire, and that's why your house burned down and you lost Everything.
The problem is people think that the "Reason" is going to be some happy calming profound thing that makes the vagaries of life suddenly make sense. But in actual fact, none of us live in Harry Potter's world, where prophecies are lined up by the million and so you can never really get it wrong, because the all-seeing hand & eye of the author has pre-ordained it all.
Soulmates are another piece of slap-happy bullshit. It's all the opiate of the masses. I'd rather just have MY opiates plainly sold and labeled as OPIUM.
Mrgumby, is "playing Battleship" a creepy euphemism for some kind of vaguely kinky sex (or sex acts)? Because "I sunk your battleship" sounds kinda dirty now.
Knk - of course, you're right; there is a cause for everything that has happened and it's when I try to discuss this with people in the terms you've used that they turn away as though I'm hideous (I'm not. Really!).
After seeing a palm reader, my first wife informed me that I wasn't her soulmate. Had she been telling me this by way of explaining that she didn't believe in soulmates I'd've been fine with it. Clearly, though, she had something more insidious in mind. It's okay, though. We weren't compatible for a lot of reasons that were more obvious and significant than whether our souls were doing the mambo together.
I guess it all depends on your cultural background as to whether "playing battleship" is a creepy euphemism. I always thought it was kind of charming, but then that might also partially explain the "ex" part of ex-wife.
KnK, yes, Guinea worm infestation, wayward candirus and Sacculina-infested crab zombies happen for reasons. Those reasons mostly have to do with us being happy we are not bothered with such things, so we are grateful to some benevolent force for being spared, but following that, you have to blame the poor sots on the short end of the stick, as it were (puns intended) for making our benevolent force pissed off enough to punish them for some obvious misdeed to the Almighty but hidden to the rest of us. In the case of quadraplegia, anencephaly, conflagration, dracunculiasis, and catfish up the wahoo, the obvious incentive for Divine Wrath is gay marriage. For those poor crabs zombified by barnacles, it must be because they aren't kosher. I just really hope this flexible succubus of Pops' doesn't have a bad case of the crabs, if you get my drift.
Gumb-o: What I enjoy about the "everything happens for a reason" is the astounding asymmetry of it. A 9/11 widow and a widower meet at a survivor's function, fall in love and get married 9 years later? Everything happens for a reason!
KnK: Whoa, how is it you're suggesting "playing Battleship" is NOT a sex euphemism? That's what boardgames are for, supplying us with sex euphemisms. I coasted through most of junior high school just on references to "Clue."
Gumbo x2: She lost me at "seeing a palm reader." I don't think she was right for us, man. Unless that is also a euphemism?
Kay-Z: I'm clapping. I didn't understand one single bit of that thing. Not a solitary jot. But oh, look at the jumbly bunches of letters! Rarely have I been so pleased. Dracunculiasis indeed, madame. Dracunculiasis indeed.
i mean, chutes & ladders is pretty obvious. snakes and ladders is even worse. Sorry! and Life are obvious.
i'm not sure about Candyland, though.
Mrgumby, the first, now ex, MrsGumby was clearly not your soulmate and the proof was consulting the palm reader in the first place, as pops has suggested, i think. Though i didn't realize you, pops and the first mrs gumby were part of a polyamorous, er, group (? what's the correct plural noun here?)
unless mr gumby and pops are the SAME PERSON.
I have never seen Pops & MrGumby in the same place at the same time.
At least, as far as they know...
Pops and I are not each others' sock puppets. Make of that what you will.
And KnK, I think the proper nomenclature here is play circle, though I'm flexible on that.
I kind of love sock puppets.
Play circle? is this what all those boring moms on facebook are talking about when they mention playdates?
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