Overtures at Twilight, Or, Push the Button! Don't Push the Button!

Now that I am finally here, back in the Spitsbergen, I want to go home. By home, I mean The Eternal City. The sun would set in the Eternal City, there would be no web of intrigue and desire to disentangle, while ensuring that one's composure wouldn't unravel at the same time in the Eternal City. The only desire I felt there was for Ted Baker creations and macaroons...ah, well.I've barely been back a week, and my life is as tortuous as I had left it, albeit with a whole new cast of characters.  As Hamlet and I discussed, if our First Season was an exposition, the second was a denouement, the third promises to change tracks almost entirely, and present itself as a bedroom farce. Mismatched couples, like fickle water molecules, form momentary interactions with one another, only break off and move to a different cluster, as the sun sits low. 

There is a lot to be said about using one's personal charms, one's crust, if you will. If you are not classically handsome, then your persona needs to be potent enough to inspire a certain degree of, well, a je ne sais quois that may endear you to many. As a person who has skated by on slick wit for many months, I think my word can be taken on that point. So, imagine my surprise, and utter delight, when I found myself being courted. But as a Gemini, making choices hasn't been my strongest point. So now, I have to choose between Option A and Option B. One who courts, and one who smoulders in the distance. One who is all affection, and one who is dangerously vertiginous to be around. These cases shall be addressed separately, as follows:

Option B

Option B is someone whom I have known of, but not really known until this autumn, and there is an innocence about Option B that shatters my heart into a thousand sharp shards that poke me in inappropriate places to remind me that what I have on hand is someone who deserves to be cherished, and not used. Yet, what we have is a liaison: it is a good idea to keep things civilised, is it not? Even if one has entirely countermanded the tedious business of defining what exactly it is that one intends to hold so high in sophisticated high regard. But, as men of fashion, detached liaisons are, well, easy. As men of fashion, we are, well, easy. Do I want to pick Option B? Yes. Have I mapped out the attractions of Option B? D'accord! Option B is found in a group of twenty-somethings who have a roughened artlessness about them: they are restive and restful; they take each day as it comes, each hour, in fact. As a person who has always lived and loved amongst the high-strung, the charmingly neurotic, and the achievement-oriented, I find this insouciance most delicious. Could I ever adapt to this? Not a chance! I am much to set in my obsessive-compulsive ways to be able to. I could do it, if there were a process, but that does indeed defeat the purpose, does it not? Have I learnt anything about myself from Option B? Yes. When I revel, I REVEL and weep, and revel again. When my clavicle is nibbled upon, I gasp. Do I see a future? Perhaps. A future in which I pull a 'Brief Encounter' and almost throw my planned life away, but not really? Yes, I may reach that point. Next course of option? Who is to say...

Option A

Option A shouldn't even be an option, since we've barely even met. I was introduced to Option A by my dear friend Elinor Dashwood whose poise and equanimity I admire and envy. I never thought that one could swoon, but I found out that keeping one's feet on the ground when the only thing one wants to do is tip right over, sigh and lose consciousness, is a task of extreme Yogic proportions. I was terrified that the blush that had suffused its way up my neck would be visible to all, but my cappuccino colouring took care of that. I proceeded to make an absolute exhibition of myself, laughing gaily, and orienting myself in a way that can only be described as slatternly. But how can one resist the vellications of such a gaze? I remember hearing Elinor whisper "Remember, you're better off" to herself, and I very nearly winked at her. I walked home steeped in the mud of self-loathing...what was I thinking throwing myself at Option A's head in so brazen a manner. Oh, and weren't my affections otherwise engaged with Option B? Well, not exactly. Being enliased (neologism) does not equal being enfianced. You may think, constant reader, that I am morally reprehensible, and, yes, I concur. But even here, I am not in love, so to speak. I am never in love anymore, it is a nauseating business, and why deal with noisome things when more fragrant, vespertine pleasures are to be sampled? Do I want to pick Option A? Yes. Have I mapped out the attractions of Option A? Mais, oui! Option A is the very epitome of pulchritude and comeliness, and has a gaze that makes me deliquesce. What have I learnt about myself from Option A? That I speak in a Southern accent when I am, ah, "half agony and half hope". Do I see a future? Theoretically, yes. But even then, I have no illusions. If Option A were to work out, it would be a situation in which I would delight in the utter wretchedness of my existence: being with someone infinitely more beautiful than one only amplifies the self-doubt, and frankly, I may burn my nights away wondering why this happened, or how this happened, only and only if I get too invested. The key is not to get invested, certainly not in the fickle-minded, proper false. Next course of action? "A weekend in the country! Smelling jasmine! Watching little things grow..." Or perhaps even making them grow. The only trouble with such a weekend is that, after a while, the mosquito bites and the hickeys begin to look startlingly uniform...ah, well.

Concluding Thoughts

I had long believed in the the more entropic nature of love, and I have outgrown that now. I do not even believe that something as grandiloquent as Love (i.e. the marketed kind) even exists anymore. Perhaps, it has more to do with distillation and crystallisation of feelings rather than the sheer entropy of whatever is supposed to happen. This is not a perplexing thought for me at all, a saddening one, yes, but that too is fading. This is no different from the many classes I have taken: read extensively, and carry a big stick. I don't know which button I shall push: A or B, but the one thing I shan't allow is either one of them to push my buttons. I am young,  but too disillusioned in my illusions to want to want anything more than a calculable means to a palpable end. The burlesques that are to play out under this perpetually purple sky are another matter. We shall see. 

Until the next time,

GossipGuy.