An everyday perfect love.

A Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie story

July 3, 2013

“What if…” I posed, “you had a skateboard you loved more than all the world?” I was talking to The Skatepunk, of course. He and My Lady Disdain, his sharp-tongued girlfriend, had met me at Duffeeland Dog Park in the late afternoon. They were snuggled into each other on the bench across the walk from mine. Naso was slowly meandering behind a dog she fancied, I hope immersing herself in a scent that smelled like home to her, a long-forgotten aroma of everyday perfection.

“When you skate on that board, every move you try comes easy. And when you compete, you always win. You tinker with it constantly, always keeping it tuned to perfect performance. You love it so much you have dreams about it.”

“You think you’re joking,” said My Lady Disdain, “but he has that skateboard.”

The Skatepunk smiled, half proud, half bashful. “I only bring it out for big events.”

“Can I borrow it?”

“Hell no!”

“I’ll take good care of it.”

“You can’t even skate.”

“But I’m going to Las Vegas when Naso dies. I think it would be cool to cruise down The Strip on a really bitchin’ skateboard…” I grinned so hard it hurt.

When he had stopped laughing, The Skatepunk said, “I don’t share that board with anyone.”

I nodded. “Now you understand extra-marital sex.”

WTF?! Both of them.

“Take that deck down to the skatepark, and don’t just share it, offer it up to anyone. Let anyone who wants to take a ride. If they scratch it, so what? If they beat it up, who cares? If they ruin it forever, what difference does it make?”

The horror on his face was a wonder to behold, and here’s why: You don’t understand something until you do, particularly if you’ve been lied to about love and sex all your life.

“If you have two women in your bed, together or one at a time, you cannot possibly love either of them, not in the way that we have been talking about love. Your wife can’t be half-precious to you. If you share your woman with another man, it could only be because you prize her quite a bit less than you do your best skateboard. And if you’ll let anyone hop on for a ride, that’s not love, that’s indifference – or worse.”

“You said it yourself yesterday – it’s like masturbation.” My Lady Disdain. Even the most contrary of marriage-minded women will take your side when you preach a homily on monogamy.

“It’s not like masturbation, it is masturbation – by proxy.” Quick pivot: “You’re at your grandma’s because you bombed out at ASU?” I never ask a brutal question gently.

“UC Boulder.”

“A snow-bunny. Second semester?”

She smiled, but not happily. “First.”

“Lucky you. You saw more than you lived through.”

“I saw more than enough…”

If you want to know about the college campus hook-up culture, do your own research. But steel yourself. It ain’t pretty. I knew The Skatepunk didn’t know what we were talking about, and I didn’t want for him to. “Without affinity, without care, without romance, without the enduring love that thinks and speaks and acts – and dreams – for the idea of ‘us’ – without real love, sex is not love-making, it’s just masturbation using another person’s body for the friction.”

“Why are you telling us all this?” Contrary enough.

I shrugged. “So you’ll know.”

“He wants us to get married.”

“No, sir, I do not. I don’t hate it if you do, but that’s yours to work out. I’m just hanging out at the dog park.”

“My grandpa says you’re marrying some guy you know.”

“A year from now. And that’s when I’m interested in talking to you about getting married – if then. I’m in a bigger hurry to get your grandfather married off, if you want to know my deepest, darkest secrets, but even then I’m so hands-off that most people might wonder if I even have any hands.” That’s actually true, even though it might seem like a big fat lie. Empathy I got, a straight to the king, but for sympathy I almost always come up with a busted flush.

“But would you be willing to do it, when the time comes?” Not The Skatepunk, My Lady Disdain.

I teared up a little bit. Sympathy or not, I’m nosy and pushy and intrusive and crazy-making, I know it. But I live my life my way, and I love the everyday graces that I get to be part of in consequence. But everyday graces command everyday solemnity, so I said, simply, quietly, “I’d be honored…”

Naso yelped to let us know that The Master Sergeant’s scrappy little Scots Terrier was involved in some kind of barking altercation off at the other end of the park. What are Terriers good for if not for starting fights that they never quite engage? The Skatepunk hustled off to break things up.

To My Lady Disdain, I said, “I’ll bet his father yells at him all the time.”

She took a long time answering. “Everything you say means something else, doesn’t it?”

“No. Everything I say means exactly what I said: His dad yells at him. He lives with his grandfather. You do the math.” Nosy. Pushy. Intrusive. Crazy-making.

And when met with a challenge like that, a liar will go huffy, with the puffed-up posturing of offended dignity standing in as the mannequin of a rebuttal. Instead, My Lady Disdain said, “It’s something I try to watch out for.”

“If you’re his favorite skateboard, he’s a crystal vase to you, a thing to be treasured forever or shattered in an instant’s rage.”

I don’t know if she wanted to hug me or hit me, but there was nothing of indifference in her face.

When The Skatepunk had rejoined us, bringing the dogs with him, I said, “The Greeks fell in love with the idea of abstract perfection, a world where circles are truly round and lines extend to infinity, a world where perfect plans and perfect performance yield perfect results, instead of the everyday imperfection – the ordinary, the drab, the bent and beat-up and broken things – they saw all around them.

“But that Greek kind of perfection exists only in the imagination. In the everyday world, the real world, things get bent, things get broken. But things can get better, too, and real perfection is the avid pursuit of everyday perfection – each day a little better than the last, each word a little fonder, each kiss a little deeper, with each moment you spend together your love growing a little bit stronger. Big things are made of little things. You two can make a big perfect love for yourselves, but you’ll do it, if you do, by making everyday love as perfectly as you can.”

To this they said nothing, just snuggled into each other a little more tightly.

I’ve always loved Sun City because it’s so full of serious people. It tickles me to no end that two of those serious people are still teenagers. If you look out at the world and all you can see is everyday despair – look closer…