Rhapsodian Guest Blogger: At least the illusion of it

 I have another Rhapsodian guest blogger this week. My friend Blushing gives us a glimpse into that feeling you get when there's a build-up for that first kiss... and it just really made me want to kiss someone! The type of kiss that makes you blush. 

At least the illusion of it
[follow Blushing on her blog  www.yupthisisit.wordpress.com]

For some reason, I’m incapable of kissing on the first date. Usually not on the second or third either. And I definitely can’t kiss someone I just met at a bar. I actually find this to be a rather boring feature about myself. And it’s not because I want to be a ‘good’ girl. It’s not because I want to play hard to get, or appear a certain way. I couldn’t care less about those things.

The thing is, I like a kiss to feel a certain way. This might make me a romantic, or a kid, or warrant a: ‘you’re such a girl!’. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I want to be in a 'relationship' before I kiss someone, nor is it that I want us to be hopelessly in love. It’s just that I want that feeling. I want my heart to pound even though I know it’s only hormones and chemicals. I want to loose my breath and feel weak in the knees just for a quick moment, even though if we were to get into a discussion you’d find that I probably don’t believe in love. I want even the hand-holding to feel special, discovering each other’s fingers, skin, and how they fit. And you can infer that all these things apply to sex as well.

Let’s think about that first kiss for a moment. Yeah you never get the first kiss back, bla bla bla. Scratch all that.  You can have plenty of amazing kisses with the same person, even for years and years. But back to the kissing a new date or stranger. If you’re hanging out with people you just met and one of them is drinking a bottle of water and you’re thirsty, would you just drink out of theirs? I’m not germaphobe or anything, but I prefer to know people a bit before I share bodily secretions with them. With my close friends, we share water bottles all the time. So I’m not gonna just suck face with some guy I just met who has smoky breath and sweaty palms (no offense to anyone). I have to feel I know the guy at least a bit, have a modicum of respect for him, and find him reasonably intelligent and interesting.

So it’s not love I need, but it is an illusion of something that looks a bit like a cousin of love. When I kiss someone, I want to feel we are both really enjoying it and kinda forgetting everything around us. When we stop kissing, I like to feel a bit surprised that there are still people around us, a bit like when you walk out of an early movie screening and are surprised it’s still daylight. Most of all, I just can’t look langouresement (no word in English good enough for this) into someone’s eyes and see nothing there.

there are no love stories like in the movies

I have a friend who still believes in love like in the movies. She dreams of passion that would last through decades, that would survive routine and babies and boredom and age, that would awaken sparkles in her eyes even ten, twenty, fifty years down the line. She believes in the happily ever after and she doesn't want to settle for less. Afterall, she's seen it happen. In "The Notebook."

Now last week, I acted in a short film. And it was a love story --like in the movies. I met the actor who I had to fall in love with at 7am Sunday morning and by Sunday afternoon he was proposing on a beach with the sunset in the background. And the truth is when we were acting it out we kept laughing at how weird the whole situation was and how we felt like in a Mexican TV Series, but on screen it just looks like we're happy in love. I saw the footage and it looked so amazing that even I believed it for a second. And the entire film is condensed quick-shots of the evolution of a love that is born, grows, flickers and dies. It travels through time, skips through the boring parts, only shows the audience what they want to see. Think about all the moments of love you've had in you life. If you just edit them and add some amazing soundtrack and tie everything together, you've got your own film.

But there are no love stories like in the movies. In real life, love stories are only felt in glimpses, in moments captured in a sort of capsule that only last in our memories. Love is not perfect. It is not gentle, it is not kind, it is not forgiving. Love is a mess of passionate turns that leave you hanging on the edge of a cliff. It's a roller-coaster that goes up and down and sideways turns your life around and scares the shit out of you all the while giving you the greatest rush of your life.  

This year that I spent out of love was the best way for me to finally understand it. I recognize it now better than ever, and I've learned to appreciate it as what it is: discontinued and rough around the edges. Many a times, it doesn't come inside a wrapped-up package with a pretty bow. And I had a glimpse of it, I think. There's someone was in my life for years and every time I saw him my heart skipped a beat, but it was never good timing for us. And the truth is, I know deep down that if we had gone for it and tried being together, I wouldn't have been happy. But when I was with him for a glimpse of time, I know we had something special. If we had turned this glimpse into a relationship, then I'm afraid it would've spoiled it. So I chose to keep it special: Even now, I can close my eyes and always smile when I think of him, and I just appreciate it for what it is: a love story that could've been. 

that something special

I took a trip outside Beirut this weekend. I drove two hours north and then west up the mountain all the way to Bcharreh, a village right below the Cedars. I am embarrassed to say that in 26 years, this was the first time I saw our national emblem. But everything I discovered on that little trip reminded me that our country is so much bigger and richer than the streets of Gemmayzeh and Hamra.

From the Kadisha valley to the river walking in the woods picking wild berries and grapes, to the highest peak of the Middle-East where we stared into the vastness and watched the sun set. There's the cedar tree seed which you break to get the sap on your fingers and breathe in the smell of cedars. There's the purple flower which girls used to wear as earrings, and the fresh water source that's freezing cold. And the villagers that are so friendly and considerate even the chef making me a sandwich made me one with less bread then the boys'...  And then, there was that view. Late afternoon, in the month of August, all the clouds gather in the crevice and if you just drive a few minutes up the mountain, then you find yourself way above the clouds, the sun shining and the sky clear blue. It was the most beautiful sight I have ever laid eyes on. And it felt like I was in heaven, looking down at the earth from above the clouds.

I guess sometimes you don't have to go that far to find that something special. Now I'm going to make it my mission to discover all these beautiful places in Lebanon that I've heard about and never bothered to visit, always postponing or waiting for the right occasion. But then you go and you wonder why on earth you waited this long to do it. Maybe it's a cliche thing to say, but after views like that you can only be in a cheesy cliche mood. And from time to time, that's a good thing.

love-struck-silly

While it's true that we have to go through many disappointments (ref. "lonesome cowboy") to get that one good spark, when you actually get there, it makes it seem all worth it. There aren't many moments in your life that can quite match up to the feeling of a wonderful new beginning. You know, that time when you can't seem to stop smiling, even though your jaw starts to hurt? You wake up with a smile, you fall asleep with a smile, you catch yourself giggling because you just remembered something he said, and you feel love-struck-silly and it's the best.

It's those knots in your stomach --but the good kind. It's that can't-eat, can't-sleep, can't-help-but-being-cheesy, want-to-jump-up-and-down kind of stuff. And boys and girls alike, we all love it.

My friend Rebelious had that look a couple of days ago when I saw her. To be honest, she gets that look a lot, but who can blame her? I wish it was all beginnings, all the time --without the ending part. "Not all guys are assholes," she reminded me, with that gushy smile plastered across her face. I had forgotten.

Actually, there is no such thing as an asshole or a "good guy." The same guy has been one and the other, it just depends on the girl, situation, timing, and that whole complicated cosmic effect that makes two people either feel the spark --or not. Actually, when the guy feels the spark, he can be so much cheesier than a girl! Even one of the Rats, who will not be named even by nickname because he will kill me, had that beginning-blush not so long ago every time he mentioned this girl with who nothing even happened... she's the kind that could make him drop everything and runoff to some desert island and get married. He didn't use exactly these words, but it was something along those lines. He was love-struck-silly.

In the beginning, everything seems possible. The last time I felt that, my boyfriend and I were almost ready to get hitched within a month with not a care in the world. It's like when you're tipsy: you feel so happy you can't think of anything going wrong. And then eventually, you sober up. Reason starts to come back to you. You realize that you can't runoff to a desert island and it's not true that "all you need is love." All the annoying realities of life come into perspective, work, money, family, parents, religion, social class, culture... oh, and that temper of yours that had vanished eventually crawls back, and it's all a lot more complicated.

Beginnings are just amazing... and it's too bad they only last for so long. Once you transition into the this-is-a-real-relationship mode, all you ever do is try to get back to that tipsy feeling. Actually, the reason why you continue to make an effort when it's not all pink clouds and roses, when the other person seems to have lost their way, or you don't feel quite as special anymore, it is because you remember how good it felt when it first started. And you hope that maybe, tomorrow, you'll wake up with that smile plastered across your face, with that can't-eat bunch of knots in the pit of your stomach and want-to-jump-up-and-down kind of stuff.

Casanovas, Batmans and Assholes

When I wrote about my first love at the beginning of the week, two of my friends wrote some 30 emails back and forth complaining about the fact that I don't write about them. They even came to the conclusion that they should create their own blog, but ended up fighting on who gets to be the main character. One wants to be Casanova, self described as the "great lover from the land of Arabia." The other wants to be Batman, a "successful, generous man, a sexual machine, and a great lover." And now they might both kill me.
The reason I bring it up, is because I was thinking of the kind of men women want. We've already established that in most cases, men love bitches. But I don't think there is an equivalent generality that applies for women. Women are so emotionally unstable (let's face it...) that we can like one type of guy one day and his exact opposite the next. Yesterday a guy told me "what is it about women and assholes?" For a minute I thought "yeah, what is it about women and assholes...?" but then I realized: actually, it's women and every type of man imaginable. You'll always find a girl who digs some type of a guy.
Let's start with Casanova, for example. Some women love his player type, the guy who hits on all the ladies --but makes them feel like they're different from the others, more special. The man can sweet talk his way into any girl's heart and make her think she is so much better than all the other hundreds of girls he's hit on before. And that lasts for about a night, until she wakes up the next morning and realizes she's just another number on the list.
Then there's the Batman kind. Looks good in formal clothes, makes a lot of money, spoils a girl rotten. He makes her feel protected --he is Batman after all. Or so he thinks. But it's all about what seems to be with this guy, not what actually is.
Some women like the jealous, possessive type. they complain about it all the time, but secretly adore the fact that their man is so in love with them that he goes insane if she even talks to another guy. Other women fall for the lost artist... the one who acts like no one really understands him, writes a poem that no one is allowed to read, or spends days locked up in a room to find inspiration... The girl's instinct is to become his muse, inspire the artist so he can never let her go.
There's also the i'm-not-over-my-childhood-trauma one, who hooks the girl when he finally "opens up" because she thinks he's never opened up like that to anyone before and that must mean she's special and now she's the only one in the world who can save him...
Even the nerdy one can get attention, if he has that slightly awkward I've never been with a girl but also the I'm too hot to be a nerd thing going for him. There will always be a girl who will want to unleash the sexy beast hiding in his nerdy shell.
And then there's the asshole. The one who acts all tough --but girls somehow manage to see his "sensitive side." And she feels special because she knows about that sensitive side that no one else can see. And she takes his assholic B.S. because when, once in a blue moon, when he decides to be nice, it feels so special she forgets all about everything else.
Basically, it's about what type of man will make a girl feel like she is special. Like she is different. Like he needs her. Types that take us girls to a different dimension, where we see ourselves as unique, and we can imagine the princess and castle happy ending we were always promised as little girls.
So I don't think the question is "what is about women and assholes?"
I think it's just "what is it about women?"