The Apple of My Eye

Crazy

By now you probably expect me to declare that the thrill of the chase wears off after a while, and that the inexorable emptiness inside, which is sure to follow, is greater than any feelings of accomplishment or triumph I might have experienced playing the game. Well, part of that is true, I won't lie, but that does not mean you want to stop playing the game. It's still fun all the same.

The bit that is true is the part where you feel a little hollow at the end of each successful happenstance encounter. There's a bunch of mixed feelings, sure. You don't know whether to feel great about yourself for closing so many deals so easily or whether to feel remorseful for treating women like cum dumpsters. I think doubt is a good thing, though. Especially self-doubt. If anything, it gets you to reflect upon your shit and reconsider certain philosophies. It's not evil to go out there and have fun. It's not felonious or malevolent to try to have your way with as many girls as are willing to indulge you and not be looking to build a relationship with any of them. After all, they're having fun, too, are they not? At least I hope so.

I once fell madly in love with a woman I still claim, to this day, was the love of my life. (Yes, Star. Come on.) I built an affectionate and even idyllic relationship with that woman, saw it all come crashing down with lightning speed, and still have the scars to prove it. But I like to think of myself as adaptable, you know? I found a way to intellectualize my suffering and continue to move forward. The pain isn't gone, but it's something I've learned to live with. Some of my circumstances I certainly chose, others were inescapable. For one, I chose to get out into the light again and just be myself and have nothing but a good time. Because I owed that to myself. Staying home minding my children and living in celibacy, reminiscing about my wild days with Star and crying because it was all gone too soon would be self-pitying, and that ain't healthy. That would only have led me to despair, and what kind of fun daddy would I be to my girls if I looked droopy all the time?

That shit is not for me. Although I still loved Star in my heart and in my mind, I had accepted the fact that she and I could not be. (And no, I'm not in the mood to go over all the reasons again.) It was the best love I'd ever had, yes, its intensity incredible, its rewards absolutely priceless, but it had reached that proverbial fork in the road where it simply could not go on. So I had to deal with it. And while I'd be the first to admit I made uncountable mistakes dealing with it-or not dealing with it, take your pick-I handled it, okay? I handled the fuck out of that shit. For a while I was wandering the streets, trying to make sense of what I had been through, feeling all flummoxed and in dire need of some chill-out time, grief-stricken and tormented by the pains of hell that withdrawal from the addictive chemicals of love can bring. And in the end, I don't know if the love I took was equal to the love I had made, but I knew this: I made it out alive.

And now that I had made it out alive, I intended to live the shit out of my life, as opposed to surrendering to the stuffiness and prudishness of the bigots always ready to jump at the next chance to harass me with their judgment. Fuckers who grudge what they themselves cannot enjoy. I knew what I had done, and I knew what I had to do now. I had my responsibilities, and I lived up to them and took care of business. And if I decided to recreate my rapacious appetite for women, this time with a vengeance, that's for damn sure, so what? It was my fucking problem and no one else's. And every girl that did get involved with me in the months and years that followed my relationship with Star, be it for one hour, one month, or one year, they were always volunteers, never victims. In this game, there is no such thing as an innocent bystander, for crying out loud.

Okay, so now that I got that out of my chest, let me go ahead and come clean about this: all the fooling around I was doing was nothing but my method of not feeling anything. Losing Star, or choosing to lose her, as some would put it, and watching her suffer over me, not to mention the whole crisis with Chloe going nuts herself, my daughter Victoria crying quietly in the silence of the night, all that shit had been a fucking emotional tsunami, a brutally depressive time. I dare anyone to go through anything like that and not become disfigured to a monstrous extent. But I fucking dealt with it. I embraced it. I learned to live with the consequences of my choices. I told myself, at least I had felt something, you know? Whatever it was. Better to have loved and lost and all that. It's an old chestnut, but it's very true. Very accurate. I tell you, I'll take pain over boredom any old day.