[Originally Posted on the old Fluid Imagination site]

How am I supposed to begin to tell you about this thing that, on a terribly inspiring San Francisco Bay night, where the rain was pounding against my window like a simile that needs an ending, where the cold wind walked through my screen door and demanded an anthropomorphic description of itself or else — and I mean through my screen door, reminding me of just how much money and time I wasted buying that little hummingbird patch and spending countless hours, because I’m useless when it comes to these things, sewing it on the screen — a terribly inspiring San Francisco Bay night, where the thunder and lightning teamed up like Cassady and Kesey to, in their pranksterish ways, split my infinitives, the thunder whomping “onomatopoeia” and the lightning creating a bolt of synesthesia, the culmination of which (the rain, the wind, the thunder and lightning) totally disrupted any writing groove I imagined to find in my anger; this thing that, with its endless hours of sitting in Hallmark stores, reading the drivel that, I imagine, way too many talented writers whose successes are less than a John Grisham or even a Howard Bloom are forced to write and whose words, though published by Hallmark, can hit the mark, and I don’t mean all the words, just some of them — I think we can all admit to reading at least one card a year that really does say something powerful, even though we don’t want it to — and its endless hours of watching insomniac television with its reruns of old movies from the 30’s and 40’s, insomniac television that, at its best, at its most fortunate moment, gives us a 2 A.M showing of Casablanca, which, though scenes were written almost the day they were shot and no one, including the writer, the director, or the actors knew how the scenes went together or even if Ilse would get on the plane with Victor or stay in Casablanca with Rick, is really the source, or, if not the source, the culmination of everything we’ve ever learned, of modern romance; this thing that, on an evening when my girlfriend sat crying in the other room and I didn’t give a shit and she could turn down the TV as low as it could go just to make sure I could hear her sniffling through the paper-thin walls that this cheap fucking apartment was made of, this cheap fucking apartment that she picked out, that she found on the Internet — “It says right here that we can look at it before we sign the lease. What’s the big deal?” — that she had talked me into accepting even though it smelled like cat piss and I told her there was no way we were going to get the smell out if the fucking landlord couldn’t get the smell out, an evening when I wasn’t attracted to her not only as a woman but as a person, when I had slammed the bedroom door so hard that the lamp her mother had bought us as an apartment-warming gift, which had been sitting on the dresser on the other side of the room in such a well-fortified position that it hadn’t fallen off when a decent-sided earthquake hit the Bay Area the week before, smashed to the ground, its pieces scattering like the little children we always imagined we would have scattered when they heard us arguing like we did that night, on an evening when my girlfriend was alone in the other room because we had a terrible fight about the sexy tone of voice she used to speak to that man from her office who had called during dinner, an evening when I had called her a “fucking naive bitch” who didn’t know how to talk to a man without flirting, when I had used what was really a small little transgression in a harmless conversation as a catalyst to vent everything that had been bothering me since we moved in together, such as the way she spent our next-to-nothing income on things we didn’t need and would never use, such as the ugliest platter you ever did see, which we definitely wouldn’t use because we were still new to the Bay Area and didn’t have any friends and so wouldn’t need a stupid fucking platter to entertain them with, an evening when I had badgered her long enough about every little friggin’ thing that had ever annoyed me, an evening when she told me all about some dentist she had met on her business trip the week before and who asked her to share a taxi with him and who happened to be staying in the same hotel and who she allowed to give her a small little kiss as he left the elevator and who she called later that night after returning from dinner and drinks with her coworkers and who she invited to her room after some heavy talk on the phone, heavy enough that she could barely contain herself, and who she allowed to do things to her, things she would never let me do, things she admitted to loving as long as she didn’t have to look the man in the eyes the next morning, an evening when I was a missing-raincoat away from walking out on her and driving to some bar and picking up some cheap floozy — preferably a redhead — and taking her home and having sex with her in every way shape and form, including that position — and you know the one — that my girlfriend would never let me do, an evening when I was seriously considering flushing the Veragio platinum engagement-ring with its a center diamond and four princess cut diamonds I had bought the Friday before down the toilet; this thing that, having convinced me to invite my girlfriend into the bedroom and just start reading to her, opening the book as she opens the door, starting with the first word as soon she makes contact with my eyes, reaching my hand out to clasp hers, to pull her close to me, to bring her slowly back into my world and, in turn, let her bring me slowly back into hers; this thing that, on a terribly inspiring San Francisco Bay night, showed me what it means to love? I can’t even begin to tell you about this thing.