Concept coined

Pretty Lady tries not to be too tediously frequent in pointing out the brilliance of her dear friend Cary; she feels that generally, her friends are literate and perspicacious enough to enjoy his words without additional commentary. However, there was one particular passage recently which she feels is destined for psychological canonization, and she cannot help repeating it.

For a man who has abused you to complain of the pain it causes him when you leave him only suggests that it is in his abuse of you itself that he finds pleasure and comfort. That is a chilling thought. But it is unavoidable: If the object of his abuse causes him pain when it disappears, then it must be in the abuse itself that he finds pleasure.

One of the consolation prizes of Pretty Lady's checkered romantic past has been that it has given her unlimited opportunity to contemplate the kaleidescopic nature of what Love is Not. On the face of it, lack of love ought to be an easily discernable characteristic to spot, commonplace as it is.

But surprisingly, this notion that Love is a Feeling, which Excuses All, seems to be a nearly universal misconception. Friends, Pretty Lady is sorry to burst your bubble. That Overwhelming Compulsion, that Passion, that drive which causes you to call Pretty Lady at 1 AM and blither like a drunken idiot, that mandate which impels you to stride into antique jewelry stores and look over the merchandise as though there were actually a possibility that you could afford a piece of it, that vague and indeterminate Thing which brings you to crouch in her bushes at midnight--that's not Love. That is Fantasy, Narcissism, and ad hoc abuse.

That force, if it had acted, which caused you to stop and think when you accosted that strange blonde lady in the plaza, might have been Love. It might have been so, had you considered something other than the exigency of your own fear, coupled with the yearnings of your gonads, and considered, "is it in the best interests of the woman I Love, to pursue thus blatantly every other random woman who happens to slightly resemble her, in a physical way? It makes ME feel marginally safer, in its flighty assurance that my own life as a whole is less likely to lack, entirely, the presence of blonde women, however inferior to Her. But is this behavior in service to Love? Really truly?

Pretty Lady has heard earnest protestations of Love from men who were in the process, simultaneously, of subjecting her to excrutiatingly painful bouts of unnecessary sleep deprivation. She has heard them from fellows who were self-righteously touting their right to engage in perverted sexual acts with other women at every opportunity. She has endured an "I love you" from a man who was finalizing the process of destroying her hard-earned livelihood, flushing her capital investment, and casting her nearly penniless into the night, without even rudimentary practical or emotional support. She has heard it from alleged 'friends,' for whom 'friendship' appeared to consist of passive-aggressive control, manipulation, parasitism, and subtle emotional sabotage.

Let it be known that when Pretty Lady says "I love you," she does not mean any of these things. What she means is, "I wish and will the best of all possible worlds to converge within your life, forever and ever amen. I consciously monitor my own behavior in order to promote this; or at the very least, to refrain from performing acts which will obviate this occurence in your life. More I cannot say or do--for you, my darling, are the captain of your own destiny. To interfere with your sovereignty over your own life would be an insult, a vote of n0-confidence and a blot upon your obvious perfection."

When she thinks about it, then, it seems to Pretty Lady that Love is less a feeling, than a force of apprehension. It may not Do; it may merely Be.

(Pretty Lady doesn't know what got into her this evening. Perhaps she has been working too hard. Thankfully, next month's rent is covered; so please to put up with a modicum of exhausted pomposity.)