Love in the time of Censorship.

Tom and Jerry is now rated PG13! It’s Tom and Jerry for chrissakes!! C’mon! We all watched it and a few of us went out there and became extremists. But violently speaking, the majority of us turned out alright, right? Ok, I’ll admit, it’s not so much the Tom and Jerry thing that’s bothering me, it’s more that the hype around sex and violence is made such a big deal out of, that when you give a kid a Bob Dylan record nobody even raises an eyebrow. Kids can’t watch the same cartoons as us but they can and do listen to the same music and nobody questions it? What’s my problem with love songs, you ask? They’re deceiving, and have been for generations! 

Love songs make you believe that the person you fall in love with will be able to express his love for you as romantically as Bob Dylan or the Counting Crows. And the disappointment, on learning that not everyone is as lyrically in tune with the world of romance as these heartbroken conjurers of poetry are, is likely to cause much more damage to a kid than watching a cat and mouse beat the living daylights out of each other with pots and pans. At least the violence depicted in Tom and Jerry is real and not some cover up trick for the real thing.

Love is real, as is heartbreak… but these guys make it sound like it’s an amazing, beautiful feeling. It’s not! Having your heart broken and dealing with the emotions of falling in love are the most painful things you could ever experience. A physical wound will heal faster because you can see it and heal it. You could live with the pain of a broken heart forever and noone will see it, so noone will care and when they step on it, they won’t know because they can’t see it…but you’ll still feel it. And it’s not the kind of pain that’ll go away with a painkiller and there’s no heartbreak ward in the hospital that you can check into. You are in it alone and only you can get yourself out of it. And no matter how many times you listen to ‘Something’ by the Beatles or (if you have bad taste) ‘Total eclipse of the heart’ by Bonnie Tyler, the pain is not going to go away. But you’ll still listen to it on repeat... making yourself more miserable and falling deeper into the hole of self-pity.

People will warn you about sex, drugs and violence…but nobody prepares you for heartbreak. The only thing you can hope for is that it hits you so hard and so fast that it dulls you and your heart, forever. Should you be so lucky, you’ll have on that invisible cloak that all of us have been wishing for since we were kids. You’ll think you’ve conquered the world; that you’re indestructible. But in truth, they’ve taken your soul and rendered you dead. But it’s such a smooth, clean kill that there’s not a trace of evidence.  No evidence means not guilty, so the love song gets off scot-free. In the meantime, while the heartbreak casualties increase, censorship boards continue to waste their time with sex and violence. I don’t get it.

Burn Ward

Why do we need to see the person we recently had sex with so badly? Random? Yes. But it’s true isn’t it?

I was in the car today with a friend, who was talking to another friend on the phone, when she put it out there, like it was a fact of life, “In any case, you feel like you have to see the guy the day after you’ve had sex with him. That’s just normal.”  She had just hung it up on the wall with the rest of the things we take for granted like period cramps, hunger pangs and hangovers.  I had never thought about it before. I just assumed it was a curse that would kill me piece by piece until I saw ‘his’ face. But looks like we all go through it. So now that it’s out there… in the open, flitting about freely… will I save myself some heart burn in the future, knowing that it’s just another one of those dreadful things that I must endure like everyone else till it passes? Or is it another one of those things that no matter how much or how little you know, will affect you in the same way every time contact is made? A bit like the oil splatter from frying chips.

Man Overboard

So what’s the deal with this women’s lib thing I wonder? I always considered myself to be one of those old fashioned, 'man open door' type chicks until I found myself single, in a city where sex is free flowing, and nobody expects anything in return. You go out, hook up and meet the next day as though nothing happened. That phenomenon has always scared me a tad. I can’t say I haven’t done it. I’m just saying I can’t do it anymore. Maybe it’s my heart that’s kicking in? Maybe my head’s fading? Or maybe I just don’t live in denial anymore? Who knows? But the fact is I now suffer huge heartburns when I hook up with someone I know and am friends with. I know, because yes, I caved and tried to blend in and no, it didn't do the trick. I’m not saying all sex is meaningful I’m sure I can still go out and find anonymous sex if I was looking for it. But I’m not anymore. Because I do believe that sex with another person should lead to something more endearing, otherwise I would just invest in a collection of sex toys instead. So yes, even if it’s just great conversation, a guy who makes you laugh hysterically, or someone who’s hug will lift the weight of the world off your shoulders…there has to be that added extra. The only problem is, once you have that added extra you automatically have emotions attached to it. It’s something you don’t want to get rid off and hold onto for as long as it makes you happy.

So I decided, that since all the pricks I knew were only interested in the newly painted sign on my forehead that read ‘single and available for one night only’ (which I hadn’t noticed of course) were going to get nowhere with me, I finally made the bold move of asking a guy on a date. He’s the sweet, nice, ‘good on paper’ kind of guy, who’s untapped potential had recently set my emotions on fire. At first there was this whole confusion, because his film had just released and he was fretting with every drop in box office figures. And so our date was postponed, indefinitely. I thought it was nerves and being in such a precarious situation, he was allowed them. He then postponed our date further by informing me he was leaving town to get his mojo back. Again, I excused him. Four days after he returned, he messaged to say he was back and asked when we were doing dinner. We fixed dinner for the next night at my favourite restaurant in town. He picked me up, I paid for dinner. Our date ran five hours long…and I thought we had a pretty good time. Good time enough for second date potential. He dropped me home and after accusing me of almost breaking his car door, he promised to take me out in return.  It sounded like a promising end to our first date.  And then he snapped his fingers and vanished into thin air. No ‘thank you’ message or ‘wassup’ message. Zip! Zero!...ummm…Nothing!

Three days later, I get a text saying “ I think I’ve become a 24 zombie” referring to his recent addiction to the popular televesion series. Then he somehow managed to invite me and my nearest buds to a 9 course meal at his restaurant in a neighbouring city. So we arrived, along with his mother, sister, friends…et al. It was a fabulous meal, and the whole experience of driving out of town for a meal was even more exciting. We came back knackered, and most of our company smashed beyond motor skill coordination.

The next day, he broke his agenda down very precisely for me… his head hurt, he intended on watching 24, attending his grandmother’s birthday in the evening and then going to the gym at some point in between it all. After which, he proceeded to ask me out for a movie the next day. I unfortunately passed out for the next 5 hours and only replied later on, by which time he had already made a plan to watch the movie of my choice with someone else on another day, but said we could watch another movie. I agreed.

The fated day of our movie date came along and he first asked if we could just meet for coffee as he wasn’t feeling up to doing a movie which later led to a complete cancellation of our plans on the account of his coming down with the flu. So in my empathic state, I asked him the next day if he was feeling any better? His response was that he felt slightly better. So I advised him to pop the vitamin c and wished him a speedy recovery to which I got the monosyllabic ‘ya’ in reply.  That was it. I had checked all my boxes off and he had failed. In truth, I just couldn’t deal with the practicality of it all…the death of romance was not something I was willing to deal with, at least not at this phase.

So now I’m led to think this poor guy has either been hurt real bad or he’s just not interested. But mostly I’m just thinking…what a waste of an effort! And So much for women’s lib! I got onto to the net today and his status update read ‘It begins with a glimpse or a passing thought and it ends in heartbreak’. I’m all out of tricks with him now and back to waiting for my knight in shining armor. Yes he does exist! And he will come knocking on my door. Won’t he?