It was sunset and as the sky lit up with colours of soft pinks and bright oranges, shades of magenta with a splash of aquamarine I came to the top of a hill in a small park near the school in my neighborhood and sat down. On the one side, the hill perched above the suburb like a huge roof patio; it allowed me to watch over its residence like a hawk. The other side was a view of the city the suburb lives off of, the way a pilot fish lives off of a shark. The suburb offers a family a safe haven for their children to grow up. A place where people walk in the streets for leisure and where they greet each other even though they might not know each other. A friendly happy place free of the grit, grime and hard work that makes a city work.
Families = building blocks of society… so what am I?
I don’t have a family. I don’t intend on having a family… or should I rather say I don’t intend on having children, as I do come from a great loving family. But as I look around at the parents playing gaily with their children I wonder how am I going to make up the love that a family has for each other without having a child? Furthermore I start to wonder if a suburban life style is the style of life I should be trying to live up to? I love the idea of a unit. The family is a unit. It’s a group and nothing can penetrate it. In that impenetrable circle exists a few completely unique individuals with their own dreams and aspirations and view points, whereas the love I feel with someone I am in love with, is more of a sacrifice of ones own identity in hopes of forming a new identity, away from ‘you and me’ and make it into an “us”.
So does the answer lie in taking lovers? Would two satisfy the hunger for a love bigger and greater than I ever would have imagined? I have the capability to love more than one man. Maybe the love I have is three different types of love. There are three words for love in the koine Greek language, Eros, Philo and Agape. “Eros” being love based on sexual contact and sometimes emotion. “Philo” is love at its most basic of trade offs; if you love me I will love you back. The third, “Agape”, is the most pure and real form of love, where we love expecting absolutely nothing in return.
So what if I am Agape and I take two lovers, Philo and Eros, to satisfy all my needs? Will they be able to satisfy each other?
I have loved for sex and emotion, once the passion dries up or my emotions inevitably change, that love seems to dwindle. It’s love that is based on that physical connection. Even a small amount of time apart from each other, not holding each other, will allow that love to dissipate like smoke in a breeze.
Loving you for loving me has no excitement to it, its safe. This love feels so empty. Its expiration date depends entirely on the love I would get in return. I wont be treated special or spoilt. It’s a one for one and tit for tat situation.
Three lovers can only work if all three love Agape style. People don’t love that way. Although, one night of erotic man love will definitely work if the three men in question are loving each other Eros style.
Families that work well love each other without expectations from each other. This love is most prevalent in families than in relationships between lovers. Is it impossible to find love from others that is not based on anything you may have to offer them? And if people only love for love in return or sex or emotional support then why not write the whole idea of “love” off as another tool to barter with? Then if that is the case, how can it be so wrong to use love as merchandise to get what you want?
Is it the love formed in a unit that causes so much ostracism for those not part of the unit? What if someone grew up without the loving warmth of a closed circuit of people that watch each other’s backs, a person without a family? Is there love in their life or are they destined to walk the earth without ever feeling the joy of loving another human being and being loved in return.
It was that point I reached down beside me for the Micro-Uzi hidden underneath my coat. Not one person even seemed to notice the creepy man in the large black trench coat standing on the top of the hill holding a machine gun swaying from side to side. And I stood there for a few minutes to see how long it would take for someone to notice me. And then someone did, a mother with a small child. She screams out in shear horror and I begin to open fire, offloading bullets at the rate of over 1000 rounds per minute. No one is safe from the machine gun wielding mad man that I have become. Bullets flew through the air hitting so many unsuspecting victims. Taking out all the mothers who ever ushered their children away from me when I was with my lover. Taking out all the fathers who treat me like a pedophile just because I am gay. Taking out every child that will inevitably be infected by the hypocrisy of the loving family unit. I mean, do you know how many happily married men I have slept with in my life?
Ok, so now that I have your attention I can tell you I would never open fire on innocent families. However what is your answer to the lie that is; a mother, a father and two children are a family and a unit, and that unit is the building block to any society? What am I then… decoration?
1 comment:
If so, you're the loveliest decoration of all :)
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