part 1
The love monkey and the beautiful dance the love monkey and the beautiful dance…

Kant's metaphysics has been lying on the bed-stand for thirteen days. She thinks probably no one has touched it. She knows she hasn't, but she doubts he has, either. Star, People, and Ok have been read and reread.

He hasn't said I love you in days. Has it been weeks? Has he ever said it? For some reason, she cannot recall. They are still fucking five times a week, which seems to be higher than the average, based on anecdotal stories and claims from friends.

He isn't home yet. She is watching reality television. The shows are blurring together.

I am blurring together. I am blurring together.

He isn't home yet, and in an instant she knows where he is.

He moves out a week later.

"Your smile is pretty."
"But I am inherently unlovable."
"Most things are."

He moves in six months later. He is emotionally available, with dull eyes, and a pot smoking habit. She doesn't mind it. She does mind his bad grammar, his politics, and his hairless cat. For some reason, if one of these was present without the other, she wouldn't mind its isolation. But it was the amalgamation of the three that rattled her a bit.

She also hates his sister. She is overweight, with children that find humour in spitting at each other and showing each other (and her, on Davis's birthday) their asses. This makes her change her mind about giving into maternal instincts.

"I have a problem with time. Time and anything related to time."
"You can't hate a theory."
"Is time a theory?"
"Isn't everything?"

But there is no conclusion. She generally distrusts conclusions. She enjoys all things open ended. He generally ponders, and hates, theories.

She is smoking her seventh last cigarette. He is at the grocery store. She misses him, but she just saw him fifty four minutes ago, and she laughs out loud about the unreasonableness of feelings.
"I missed you when you were gone."
"I thought about you when I passed the saltines."

She doesn't ask why, but it helps. Missing him makes her understand love.

Romance is elusive. So is time. So is staying. And many other things. Like theories.

The heart has a certain elasticity about it. It makes waves. It pumps blood. It pumps inspiration. The heart is the body's artist. This thought is comforting if you are broken hearted. Your heart will return to normal. You might even be exceptional. Although, being exceptional is elusive.

The reason he likes her smile, he has discovered in the year and two months (give or take days minutes) they have been coupled, is that her lips cover her gums and also the majority of her very large teeth (great for photographs, but in person, a bit awkward to stare at. Her lips are also very colorful without lipstick. She does dab a bit of gloss on her very colorful lips every morning, and sometimes after a meal. Also, if they fuck early in the day.

She has not been properly introduced. Her name is August, and she is not an elusive creature. If you happened to meet her in person, you would, despite the oddity of her name (maybe masculine, coming from Augustus), feel that she does the name August justice. She is very hot tempered and smells like the coming of fall. The one she chooses to live sleep listen to music discuss all things random and deep with is Davis. He is not a very attractive man, but he is emotionally available and his dull eyes have pierced her non existent soul.

The soul does not exist. Both August and Davis believe this with as much certainty as one can when one does not believe in conclusions and one despises theories. Souls are fabrications of the more tangible, like character, for example. A soul, then, may be another word for the essence of who a person is. It does not possess an aura. It is not passed on spiritually. Soul is a fancy term for you.

"I think I would like to just get in the car and drive away from here."
"I agree totally. Let's take one suitcase and live on love alone. Every once in awhile we will forget to brush our teeth but make out regardless. I will never wear another dab of lip gloss."
"I found a Ralph Lauren suitcase at the mall on sale last month. Closer to 23 days ago. Let's take that one. It will remind us of days when we cared about anything more than love."

No one believes this to be a good idea, for the record. At this moment, August and Davis don't either. But, being true to their word, and growing further apart from the city they were both raised in (somewhere in Ohio), decide that sometimes when you choose between two bad ideas, one bad idea might lead to a good one (but who knows what happens to the other bad idea.).

They give the cat to his sister.

It is safe to assume that when two people decide to live on love alone (which also realize still includes basic necessities like food and water and also air and maybe even a part time job) they do so in a remote location. On the outskirts of a town possibly. Location is only a part of living on love alone. Location and also some element of privacy.

On the outskirts of town, in a small rental house, which they are lucky enough to find (luck, as they both understand it can only come from love. Without love, the likelihood of luck is infinitesimal), they share two blankets, one pillow, one toilet out in the open (and in the middle of the room, but no one questions this location), and a shower. There is a microwave, and a stove. They have books. They are twenty minutes from town, and the landlord allows the rent to be paid in services, with a bit of allowance at the end of each month when he was feeling generous. His words, not mine.

Also, the landlord does not blink an eye when he is told that their reason for this arrangement is that they are attempting to live on love alone. Davis guesses the landlord has made the same attempt. Why else would he have bought a little house on the outskirts of town, after all?

This is not as romantic as it sounds. It is difficult to share the same sexual desire for someone when they use the toilet in front of you as you read Kant's metaphysics. Clearly, this takes much practice. Sexual desire, after a certain amount of time theory, becomes work. Maintaining anything takes work. Even continuing to appreciate Kant's metaphysics, although it is hard to believe.

Laughter heals everything. If the heart is an artist, than laughter is the paintbrush.

If laughter is the paintbrush, what is the canvas? I still have not figured that out. But, I am closer to thinking that the canvas is the body and mind, which is a home to the heart and the laughter. Still, I cannot say with a large degree of certainty.

When Davis once asked from the toilet in the center of the room if august thought things happened for a reason, she quickly got up from her stoop in the doorway, dropping during her swift movement a fiction book of no importance, and slapped him in the face.

"There is no reason to anything. Life is absurd. We are absurd."

August was also on her period that day. But she is still right. There is no reason to anything.

Minutes feels like months when there is no television. They pass the time doing things like writing poetry (neither is very good at it, but it strengthens their love immensely) and playing dominoes. Also, they like to fake box each other. No contact below the belt. Sometimes they read out loud to each other. Or stare into each other's eyes for days. Days could actually mean minutes, but they abandoned time on the road to the outskirts of town. They hardly distinguish light from dark. Except when they go into town for bread, or soup, or tampons.

"You kids are the ones here living on love alone. Do you plan to have kids?"
"No, we don't plan."
"Good. Because, kids make love disappear."
"Probably not love. Probably sex."

The woman from the market gives him a free box of condoms.

When love is the strongest emotion coursing through your body, it is difficult to feel anger. It happens, but love makes most opinions quite tolerable. This is not to say that Davis was angry at the woman for giving him the condoms, or for implying that kids were the obliterators of love (probably sex, though), but he did notice the slightest hint of irritation creeping up his dirty white tee shirt, nestling into his beard and his brain, and eventually leaking out from his pores (and also his eye sockets).

In fact, they used the condoms. All twelve in a matter of two days. So, in the end, Davis was not that angry.

This did not prevent august from getting pregnant the following month.

Or miscarrying the next.

Or the cycle repeating two months later.

Eventually, it was assumed that august could not bear children, and no one was more relieved then she.

Except maybe Davis, who was still scarred from his sister's kids, who spat everywhere and showed everyone their asses. Although, on the outskirts of town, in a little house, was probably the best place to do those things.

"Remember when we met?" (They enjoy recalling memories of their relationship. They thought that this kept things fresh and returned faltering emotions).
"I remember. You said you liked my smile. And I told you I was unlovable."
"Did you feel unlovable?"
"I felt grief. John had never fallen out of love with his first love, and couldn't love us both. I asked him to leave. First I asked him if he wanted me to have his baby, and would that make him love me more. He said no. And he walked away. I knew right then that love does not leave. Therefore, it was not love."
"But he was the one who left."
"Real love takes two heart artists, my beautiful, beautiful man. God can make a person just for you, but that doesn't mean that god made you for that person. I think by god, i mean the universe, which has patterns and operates by strict codes of conduct."
"Do you ever think of him?"
"No. But, every once in awhile, I think about television."

They met at a drugstore, August and Davis did. Davis was refilling a prescription for his mother, and August was buying lip gloss. They stared at each other in line, after August stared at the back of his wonderful head, and when he turned around he spoke first. Remember?

Sometimes they made up stories of their first meeting. Some days, it was on a cruise. August was singing, and Davis loved her voice. Davis was the cop who pulled August over for going through a stop light. Davis was a waiter at the restaurant August ate at. They were walking their dogs at the same time.

No matter the circumstance, the words are the same.

Their love grows. It grows from minimally carpeted floors, one pillow, and bi monthly visits to the market. It grows from bad soup and picking flowers and reciting poetry. It grows from story telling. It grows from retelling the stories each has heard so many times before. It grows from sex. The sex that sometimes smells funny from their infrequent showering, and lack of soap. It grows from freedom.

Freedom is not as elusive as romance. It falls between August and romance in the dictionary of elusiveness. It requires a bravery that no one attacks with the strength of a warrior. But, love requires freedom, and thus requires bravery.

August and Davis are soldiers.

They are freedom fighters.

They opened the cages.

They wear medals of honor. I didn't realize honor had to be capitalized. You learn something new everyday, don't you? Probably not. But it sure feels like it sometimes.

Sometimes action can feel like love. Energy and attraction make something that feels like it, anyhow. True love can only be discovered through boredom. Love then creates the energy. Hence, true love does not need nights on the town or extensive travelling. It needs a room with a door and pillow and blankets, since love cannot change body temperature.

Love does not need space. Space should be taken up with love (on another note, this bit of genius was uttered by August from the toilet in the middle of the room).

"Through college, I had boyfriends who needed space. I always wondered what that meant."
"It meant they didn't love you, my beautiful girl, still beautiful as she shits in the middle of the room."
"Oh, I know this now. But before, I kept a calendar of space. If he asked for space, I would mark x's though the days I would give. One line, if i would call but not visit. To remind him of my existence, of course. But they didn't want to be reminded of my existence. Isn't that funny? When existence doesn't matter?"
"Funny. But I’m not laughing."
"Funny. I'm not, either. Love does not need space. Space needs love."

She farts to reiterate her point.

The love growing and continuing in the house was a creation of an energy that neither of them knew existed. A kiss felt like they were on vicodin. Fucking felt like they were on coke. A simple touch was speed. It was exercise and core training and rock climbing. Saying the word love was a new drug. It was a serotonin boost. It was an antidepressant. It was an upper. It was undiluted action.

As they continue to live for love, time becomes less important. Time theory, as they become used to referring to it as. Oh, they realize it exists (at least in theory), by little things. Like Davis’s beard. Like August's growing pubic hair. Time is consistent with growth (like growth of body hair).

Imagine how bored you might be, if you were August and Davis, and you were living on love alone, and days would go by when the only words that were uttered were "I love you," fifty to one thousand times a day. No good morning or good night. No discussion of weather or politics or your mother's diabetes.

Oh, the boredom may be unbearable. But, you would have to get into the mind of either August or Davis to understand that what you would see as boring, days of staring, three words, and constant love making, felt like a true utopia. Boredom, quite simply, does not exist.
Boredom is not elusive. It is common. It is a symptom of misery. Feel free to take that in any way you'd like.