Love, and Other Tumours

“What is Love”?

This very question was posed by the visionary philosopher Haddaway en route to purchasing yet another yacht and the ensuing harem that was to feature at the numerous parties herewith; the dark lyrical undercurrent contained within the electronic throng dissipating simultaneously with armpit nectars beneath the neons of many a discotheque.

My very own Smash Hits ‘92 Compact Disc Record served as the vehicle for such existential probing, albeit from beneath a veil of surface imperfections that served to distort its message even further.

Our own early definitions of love are likely to consist of the confected nonsense peddled by studio executives keen to placate the masses and monopolise the share-market, manifesting in the form of inoffensive boy-meets-girl pap, with entertainment vices as the chief syringe thrusting at our collective jugular from the moment we detach from the breasts we will never gain nourishment from again.

It is only too easy to launch thine lobes into this lucrative abyss, in spite of the fact that mum (mom) and dad (dad) speak only in screams these days, have separate rooms and utilise your naïve shell as a conduit with which to communicate with each other in a display of passive-aggression unseen since the halcyon days of… actually, every day in our working lives.

And yet this flagrant saturation gathers apace - your mind now rendered a sieve being bombarded by Polaroids of grinning nuclear-families; John Sands greeting cards italicised to within an inch of decency proclaiming the most unreasonably saccharine prose, not to mention popular radio assaulting your defences with Boy Band filth masquerading as aural good-times (no, not the thing you do with your mouth).

It is, therefore, no wonder that we alight upon our adolescence mired in expectation and longing; an alleged soul-mate but one LOL/"Like"/gym-tense away and as an inevitable as the misery of another day.

Juvenile love, and, more correctly - lust - is the most awkward of all – a cacophony of desperate tongues, quivering hands and breathy platitudes sourced primarily from the most unthanked of role-models and supervisors: Television.

It is upon this tainted throne that we first allow the carcinogenic talons of commitment to inflict the first of many incisions upon our form, believing this to be the resting place of our ambitions until Brianna elopes with the captain of the Football/Mahjong/Croquet team – never to bat an eyelid in our direction again as we are simply “too nice” or something equally disquieting.

The hurt and embarrassment of such a termination can be felt for many moons, especially amidst the inescapable “banter” from supposed chums who are equally unaware that their very own Latitia is on the very cusp of experimenting with her "BFF" Caprice having finally tired of the overwhelming body-odour and violent tongue-bashings they have been victims of.

Perhaps the fortunate do walk among us, assimilating somehow with the most rarefied of creatures – one who can relate and hence one who is relatable.

It is often bellowed that opposites attract, however this is perplexing outside of the realm of quantum-physics and that of but one of many Scandinavian gifts - Lego.

In fact, an alleged trope of monogamous-bliss is that the less one has in common with another, the better; two immovable objects flung against each other violently and left to make good on the initial energy expended, however involuntary.

And yet popular music still speaks to us in tongues, coiled with the promise of easy prey whom prefer to focus only on the fleeting fickleness and not the deep chill of reality.

That love song never spoke of the eternal winter left behind after the initial warmth of unfamiliarity and adventure; the dulcet tones wafting from your FM crevice hiding the truth that dare not speak its name.

That ode to love never verbalised the evenings of piercing silence that followed another tenuous argument, nor the tears shed in private at having wasted not only days or weeks or even months, but rather years on a lost cause; an abandoned lot to call your very own.

“You Are The Wind Beneath My Wings” is of course infinitely more marketable than “You Are the Dull Ache at the Base of My Brain-Stem”, even if the latter would come to define the bulk of your tenure at the prickled wheel of this sinking vessel.

“I Will Aways Love You” will naturally appease the stake-holders to a far greater extent than “Who Are You, and What Have You Done With My Lover?”, even though the latter will more accurately depict the metamorphosis of a treasure to a terror.

Once more the almighty Dollar/Rupee/Kronor and its omnipresent brethren lays the foundation and lulls the unwary into a sense of emotional-cringe, even though the protagonists’ target (or antagonist, ultimately) is but an equally-scarred organism with similar pitfalls and insecurities, and is, in actuality, not the raven-haired, lingerie-clad messiah from the Dokken video upon which to typify your humanity and deal in absolutes unto.

Belief is fuelled in the abovementioned throughout ones’ formative years, and once this is ruthlessly exposed as the turd floating on the surface of this de-chlorinated pool nobody has cared to acknowledge or even sanitise, it is all-too-easy to flounce into the protracted arms of despair.

However, this need not be the atomic mass of the serrated steel currently aerating your veins, nor the fibre-optic cable facilitating your autoerotic-asphyxiation, for there is meaning amidst the illin’.

Great comfort can be had in knowing that one will almost certainly never actually meet their perfect match, nor travel to the Belarusian village they currently inhabit with extensions of their already-extended families, and nor will they ever truly obtain that which will satisfy the darkest of desires.

As with all intangibles, it is the agony of uncertainty and discontent that renders one fresh-of-face and facade and hence brimming with enthusiasm to face the next roasting at the hands of the peculiar sentient-being blackening the doorway and later refusing to change the channel.

It is in this vein, and somewhere abreast the many lights of our collective dialysis-machine that we must face the greatest unspoken truth – love isn’t love at all, but please do stay for the canapés.

Ebony – A Darkness So Complete

2005 marked a year that was not merely another crazed etching on the wall of sickness posing as this pitiful existence, nor can it be hastily dismissed like much of the confetti that serves to this very day as lodging for the maniac now rummaging in your sock-drawer.

Nostalgia cannot possibly mask the ugliness of finding oneself cast in a vile pantomime as a peddler of Western Evils ™ manufactured for substantially less than fuck-all by fellow human beings dealing with issues far more diverse and profound than juvenile slop such as the hurt caused by Shaela’s identical scarf or Zayden’s new spoiler.

Days of discounts passed like so many Phenylalanine-fuelled stools; the stench of an unrequited desire to be accepted mingling with bleached polyesters and synthetic rubbers; the gentle caress of death but a balaclava and glass shard away, and yet still somewhere beyond the already-drawn curtain on this forgotten stage.

“Hollow” is a term bandied about by pubescent Screamo-philes and their illegitimate spawn upon receiving their welfare entitlements; a term so abused and sullied as to become cliché like so much of this bastardised language.

And yet a pervading emptiness can wash over a being with neither favour nor forewarning, culminating in a profound sense of loss and alienation within that invariably cannot be interpreted, much less verbalised to what remains a frothing cesspool of abrasive judgement and loathing.

Without the benefit of hindsight it is simple to mistake good-time friends and passing acquaintances as an effective barometer of your worth as a pre-fossil; the fleeting joy of congregational interaction merely masking the sore absence of a meaningful counterpoint.

Quite how you blessed my attempt at a life remains a mystery to this day, and more importantly serves as an amusing affront to both medicine and morality, not to mention serving as the intricate crushed-velvet of a dinner story to thrill the masses.

What began as a moderate throbbing within my urinary tract was later confirmed as an actual immaculate conception, and with it the opportunity to rear a minion in my own image.

As you gestated inside my urethra, my dreams became flesh and my melancholy but a footnote in the annals of a story untold, yet reinvigorated.
For months I carried you beneath my leathers, proud of you already and eager to greet you with moist kisses and ultimately the placenta you sprang from at your inaugural hazing.

Your birth was as excruciating as it was liberating – my sweaty form left heaving on the bathroom floor amidst a mound of milk-bar porn and novel strains of gonorrhoea; a previously diminutive yet intact penis now forfeit as you tore it asunder with the vigour of a precocious sprite eager to joust with this new-found life.

As I gazed down at the mass of nerves, tendons and sex-jellies that comprised my genitals for so many years – but that which now lay discarded like abattoir off-cuts in this makeshift birth-chamber – I saw you for the first time.

A most unsettling and foreign sensation washed over my now simultaneously maternal and paternal shell; could this be…. love?

The lime of your eyes was as disarming as it was endearing, the sharpness of your teeth already both a threat and a delight, your jet-black pelt shimmering with the juices of an improbable afterbirth highlighting your nubile majesty and instilling a pride previously unfelt since a provincial swimming-carnival victory against invalids.

A connection beyond that of the dial-up was quickly established as your name passed my lips for the very first time – a name so evocative in its creation and elocution that you are still praised for it to this very day – and as I clutched you to my heaving breast for this inaugural occasion I felt your brave heart beating, a heart so pure one cannot help but embrace its rhythmic throng as the tribal-throb du jour.

Well-wishers and do-gooders miraculously recalled your fathers’ existence once more throughout your formative days, and you received these frequent incursions against your innocence with the good grace instilled by a higher-power that remains unwritten and hence uncompromised and disproved, even now.

Male bonding is frequently the butt of many a joke (especially with this added innuendo), however it is fair to state that our rapport was both instant and formidable. The chill of winter evenings dissipated expediently in your company, whilst traipsing through the front door after 9 rounds with despair did not begin or end with a chardonnay-enema, but rather another warm embrace a wife could never provide – even in rare times of contentment.

Left to your own devices you forged a fierce reputation as a scaler of monolithic gardenia and the prime antagonist for many of your brethren. Battles raged long into the evenings until such a time as your insatiable libido had carved its way through the anus of many an assailant and satiety was at hand.

In spite of this exuberance you have been lusted for by many, and continue to be to this very day.

After being left shattered by the self-conducted passing of a young friend, it was you who provided much comfort as the inevitable black descended and fuelled the inevitable onset of blame and despair.

The simple elegance of your company and warmth of persona proved a robust focal-point in this time of great confusion and loathing, and this is something I will be eternally grateful for.

In many ways you have been, and still remain the man I have long aspired to be – handsome, resourceful, cunning, athletic and yet always humble and approachable to an entire spectrum of creatures from lepers to lovers, kiddies to kippers, cads to caddies and everything in-between.

The prospect of consummating with a woman is now as redundant as it is morbidly disgusting, however you have transcended your own genus and have hence evolved into the strong male presence conspicuously absent in this thorned lasso commonly referred to as meaningful existence by escaped lunatics.

It is for this reason that I idolise you and shall continue to do so until this porcine flesh disintegrates to a backdrop of cackling and sighs of relief.

Heroes rarely remain as such, either through tabloid reports of peculiar sexual leanings involving moist cabbage and/or dried crustacea, and the inevitable sausage-hiding skulduggery which always stems from the loneliness of millions, and yet ultimate enslavement unto unscrupulous producers beholden to the asinine taste of the clientele beholden to whichever synapse quivers unto the current bass-line.

Word of your ultimately terminal illness arrived only after several medical mishaps unseen since the glory days of Medieval Malpractice, serialised from never to now on BBCABCNBCHBO, which mercifully provided great relief in the form of fuelling the angst even further.

The delicious combination of words such as “poor prognosis”, “cancer” and the ever-cheeky “end-stage FIV” facilitated a triple-pike into a sea of $2.00 Shiraz; tears manifesting randomly for the first time in years to remind me that I am not as ashen as I once thought.

It is a horrible thing to be helpless, although thankfully the levels of this desperation never manifested in the clasping of hands and closing of eyes in acquiescence to an alleged microbe praised in scriptures devoid of fanciful illustrations that would maximise its appeal and thus marketability to lucrative sponges everywhere.

The intrinsic value of seeking a second-opinion cannot be understated, whether this pertains to the fluorescent rash residing on your niblets, or the purists’ market value of your vintage sport-sock portfolio.

Discussing actual treatment options as opposed to which flavour of euthanasia you are partial to was as refreshing as it was educational; on the rare occasion one has the opportunity to liaise with a human being this must be seized upon like so many disputed territories.

Living “Day-by-Day” is no longer the domain of John Rambo or his countless victims (both eviscerated by gunfire and failing stocks), but rather this is a spike I shall mount with every available orifice and I shall continue to fellate the unwary before the stubble on my liars' chin reveals either my gender or species, undeniably before the food stamps are plucked from my tentacles in the hopes of raising suitable funds for both your fashion tastes and the uppers you require.

Having pawned my crystal-ball for a new set of spinning hubcaps I cannot foretell what the inevitably apocalyptic future holds, but please know this – I love you, I cherish you, and I will do everything possible for you until I am beaten to fluff by creditors and placed in an iron-lung without a lavatory or 5.1 surround.

As Sir Wesley Snipes once remarked before delivering yet another ax-kick to the face of decency and PG-13 syndication, “Always bet on black”.