Love counts on the inside

Love Counts on the Inside

By Doron  Braunshtein

(also known as)

Apollo Braun

Love Counts on the inside

נובלה

It is forbidden to say, “I love you.”

It is definitely forbidden to say, to anyone, ever, under any circumstance, I love love love love only you.

If you reach that wonderful sparkly stage of love, the best thing for you to do is to cling your lips to the lips of the one you love, more than your own life, and to say to her instead: blah blah blah.

The only man I have ever loved was the last I have ever loved and the first I have ever loved. Before that, I loved only women, women, women; a lot of women, even too many for my liking.

I was born as such: a woman who loves women.  I remember when I first told my mother that this is who I am.  She asked me, “what kind of person chooses such a terrible illness for themselves?” All I could say was “it is genetics, like happiness, Mother.”  I remember telling her with all the courage I could muster.  “Like happiness and like love, and like hate and like optimism.  Her tears were the fattest I had ever seen.  When I think of it now, those tears, the far away ones of my mother’s, those translucent tears of fall 1992, were the last to drop on my face.  Because we hugged and kissed one another on the cheek and we promised to forever stay mother and daughter. I love my mother.

No! No! Sorry! I don’t love my mother, because I love no one anymore.  The maximum I can reach with another is blah-blah-blah, which is as sparkly and humongous as possible. 

Dear Meir,

I am writing this letter to you knowing clearly that you will never read it, for the simple reason that I will not send it to you.  I won’t send it to you because never ever would I ever dare.  At least not in words, because understand, My Love, words are never what we imagined.  So many times we imagined heaven on earth, while in reality we were awarded a multifaceted and eternal hell.  So many times we told the people we thought were our loved ones, that we loved them, when what we meant to say is xxx, blah-blah-blah, or zero words. Because do you understand, My Dear- and I’m saying this with agony- words do not have any meaning anymore.  Same as people no longer have meaning for me in this life that we presumably live so fast, so much, in such apathy, in such unstoppable intensity.  And in such great emotion, in such love, let us admit in reality, that, My Dear Beloved, we are not alive.  Lives just live us, breathe inside of us, move with us, through us.  But the real life, the life I believed that I could have lived, the life I wanted the most is the life that will never flow through me again.

Yours,

Talia

It is forbidden to say, “I love you.”

It is definitely forbidden to say, to anyone, ever, under any circumstance, I love love love love only you.

If you reach that wonderful sparkly stage of love, the best thing for you to do is to cling your lips to the lips of the one you love, more than your own life, and to say to her instead: blah blah blah.

The only man I have ever loved was the last I have ever loved and the first I have ever loved. Before that, I loved only women, women, women; a lot of women, even too many for my liking.

I was born as such: a woman who loves women.  I remember when I first told my mother that this is who I am.  She asked me, “what kind of person chooses such a terrible illness for themselves?” All I could say was “it is genetics, like happiness, Mother.”  I remember telling her with all the courage I could muster.  “Like happiness and like love, and like hate and like optimism.  Her tears were the fattest I had ever seen.  When I think of it now, those tears, the far away ones of my mother’s, those translucent tears of fall 1992, were the last to drop on my face.  Because we hugged and kissed one another on the cheek and we promised to forever stay mother and daughter. I love my mother.

No! No! Sorry! I don’t love my mother, because I love no one anymore.  The maximum I can reach with another is blah-blah-blah, which is as sparkly and humongous as possible.

Sometimes I wonder exactly when I stopped loving.

I know exactly when I stopped, but prefer to deny myself the knowledge. When I am having a really bad time, I remember dead people I once knew; a good friend who died from this or that illness, or just acquaintances, or even people I have never met in my life, but that their names got mixed up somehow.

Disasters of others make me stronger.  Not even a slight connection to the issue of love, or more precisely, to the issue of the lack of love on my behalf.  I have a strong tie to denial.  The mere fact that certain people die while I remain alive makes me stronger and adds more life to me.

***

I met Meir in a shoe store on Shenkin street in Tel Aviv. 

Remembering

Remembering

Remembering

I am remembering now how I was always telling my girlfriends that I will meet the love of my life totally by chance in some godforsaken supermarket, where I would be standing in the corner where the milk is. Suddenly the milk would fall out of my hand to the floor and all of the milk would slowly drip-drip-drip, and someone would approach me and ask me if he can help, and I would look at him, and he would look at me, and I would know, that this is it-it-it.

But my girlfriends would always look at me with disregard and say blah-blah-blah.  But I knew they meant to say that they loved me, so I would smile at them and light myself a cigarette.

I love to smoke.  I know exactly when I started, and how many years I have been doing it, but I’d rather be in denial.  When I am going through really bad times, I do not smoke ever.  Only when I feel good do I light up a cigarette.  One of the few pleasures I have left in life: cigarettes and women.

***

In that shoe store, in the center of Tel Aviv, I met Meir for the first time.  He stood by me and encircled me, looking for something undefined.  I asked him if I could help him, and he asked if I worked there.  I laughed and said that I did not, and that I am just very nice.  Now it was his turn to smile and say that his shoes were in such bad condition, that he had decided to enter the first show store he say and to buy the first shoes he tried on. 

“Same as Cinderella,” I uttered in a silly tone, but he just kept on smiling.

Smiling

Smiling

Smiling

***

On our first date we sat in ‘Takamaro.’ I was never attracted to Japanese food, or to men either. Meir, on the other hand, was excited about the sushi and sashimi and the rest  During the entire meal, he let me speak about me, which is a rare achievement for a first date.  Usually the girls I am dating do not let me utter a single word while they are talking, and when I try to comment or remark, they just hurry to smile, or to catch the back of my hand, trying to hush me, and go on with their story.  But this Meir…there was something so big and enlightening in this guy who sat across from me.  I remember at a certain point in the conversation (he talked and I listened) I stopped him, smiled, and told him: “Meir, I am very scared that I am starting to blah-blah-blah you.” Then he asked me politely what I meant by blah-blah-blah.  But I did not answer.

Did not answer.

Did not answer.

Did not answer.

“Cup of coffee?”

“No thanks, I have a long day tomorrow, and I’d rather start it with a good night sleep.  I  would rather you drop me off at home.”

“So soon?”

“So soon.”

I entered my home and Sara the kitten jumped on me, and looked hungrier than ever.  I put her cat food in her bowl and checked the messages on my answering machine.  The only messages were from Inbal, my mythological ex-girlfriend. She left three messages:  In the first one I heard a smoking like sound. In the second she was eating, and in the third she was already crying.  I thought of calling her to ask what was going on with her, but I lacked the necessary eagerness, it was already late. And besides, I could not get that Meir out of my mind.

Blah-blah-blah.

Blah-blah-blah.

The worst thing that can happen to a person is love.  This is because love as we know it does not exist.  When it comes, the most disturbing question is, when will love go away, when will love finally leave, and the hardest question:  When will love finally come back, or will love ever come back, and with whom this time, and how temporary will love be then?

The only people who still believe in love are the same people who still believe in eternity.   I do not know that many who can.  It is like winning the lottery or being happy.  I do not know if it is easier for a woman who loves women or for a woman who loves men, and if it is harder for a man who love men, or man who love women.

I do not have many male friends in order to investigate the subject thoroughly, and I do not really want to do that research.  My mother once told me, “Have many friends- have many worries.”  I just asked her innocently what she meant.  “Many possessions- many worries,” she said, but she hushed me claiming that I do not know what I am saying, “the less- the better.”

With time, I discovered the huge luck I have by having mother like mine.  I am sure there are better in this world but I am surely satisfied with what life has granted me.  Not everyone I know has a mother like mine by his side.  Any time, any hour, any kind of trouble, she’s there.  Because, really, I know, whatever happens, and no matter how I get myself tangled up (I am known for my complications, that only I, who has no luck, can fall into) she will always come to my rescue.

I do not know why I am thinking of her all of a sudden. I saw her only yesterday.  She was so hysterical; she saw a movie on Alzheimer’s Disease and she though she had it.  So I raised my head up in the air and asked her how many fingers she saw, and she said she saw only five, so I said there are six on every hand.  There must be something in what she is saying and we must get her to a hospital immediately, or else she will get lost the woods and the next time someone finds her, her name will be Cinderella Binyamini and not Sara Binyamini, as it is now.

We both laughed because of my sweet cynicism, and because of my Cinderella.  An enlightened and big Cinderella, whose image does not stop flashing inside my head in thousands of eternal, miniature, colorful light bulbs, screaming, “Meir! “Mier!” “Meir!” as if it is the only name in all of this big and fucked up universe.