“There is only one serious question. And that is: Who knows how to make love stay? Answer me that and I will tell you whether or not to kill yourself.”—Tom Robbins
In 1980, Tom Robbins published his third and best novel, Still Life With Woodpecker, which ostensibly and absurdly dealt with a love affair between an environmentalist princess and an outlaw, but whose actual purpose was to wrestle with the question of “how to make love stay.” Robbins poked at this ancient mystery from several angles and even posed an occasional suggestion:
“Tell love you are going to Junior’s Deli on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn to pick up a cheesecake, and if love stays, it can have half. It will stay.”
If Albert Camus, from whom Robbins derived his one serious question, was an absurdist, Tom had him beat in spades. For Robbins, a novel was like an electric trampoline. It allowed him to spring to fantastic heights of preposterous storytelling, but there was always a lot of brilliance to be found between the lines. I bought a dozen Woodpeckers and gave them out to friends. Not because Robbins ever answered his question but because he asked it.
Long before Still Life With Woodpecker began stirring anyone’s consciousness, back in the mid-1960s, the hippies were dealing with the same question. Many of them were the children of divorce or at least frozen marriages, loveless unions which continued for alleged pragmatic reasons despite the utter absence of affection, or worse. The hippies decided that love should be free-flowing, not something you put in a box and hid in a cave. Because you loved a person, you did not own him or her. You could love others; so, in fact, could they. This led sometimes to expanded families, where all shared the work and many shared one another. Communes arose. “Rainbow Families” appeared. Maybe, under these different circumstances, love would stay. Ah, but the best laid plans of mice and tie-dyed men often go awry. Human Nature is a tough rival. Jealousy never sleeps. All lovers have their favorites and inevitably gravitate toward them.
The same thing happened with open marriages. Since many unions foundered on the rocks of faithlessness, why not eliminate that possibility by allowing the pleasures of the flesh to one another? If noone felt sexually deprived, maybe love would stay. In theory, a reasonable notion. In practice, not so much. Human Nature pops in once again to suggest that one partner is having a much better time than the other, such a good time, in fact, that he may be bringing in a new pitcher from the bullpen. Fear of abandonment rushes in. Not only does love not stay, she barely comes over for tea anymore.
Robbins jumps in with another idea: “Tell love you want a memento of it and obtain a lock of its hair. Burn the hair in a dime-store incense burner with yin/yang symbols on three sides. Face southwest. Talk fast over the burning hair in a convincingly exotic language. Remove the ashes of the burnt hair and use them to paint a moustache on your face. Find love. Tell her you are someone new. It will stay.” Oh Tom, you old kidder!
The truth of the matter is there are no secret incantations, no magic amulets that will guarantee that love hangs around. There are things which help, however. Their names are Good Luck, Attention To Business and The Right Partner at The Right Time. If you have all these, you’ve got a fighting chance. If you don’t, you’re hamburger.
The Right Partner
For most of us, the Right Time is never directly out of high school no matter who the partner is. The post-high school marriage is the mulligan allowed everyone, the perfectly understandable mistake made by inexperienced romantics, no hard feelings. How do you know what you want, the logical question goes, if you have only experienced life with one person? For every successful post-high school marriage, there are twenty failures and even the one-in-twenty miracles have plenty of tears, raised voices and chair-throwing. Children often enter the picture early, restricting opportunities for adventure, limiting travel, denying career possibilities. It’s a bad idea, even if it worked for you, and you probably know it. Love should picket these weddings carrying a big sign which reads “SEE YOU LATER!”
If we are successful in avoiding high school nuptials, the coast is far from clear. College just makes us think we are smarter, more experienced in the ways of love, when the truth is we are merely shallow boneheads on the subject, in desperate need of further experimentation. When I was twenty-two, I met The Right Partner at The Wrong Time. Marilyn Todd was beautiful, brilliant, spirited and faithful, deserving of a better fate than her eventual marriage to a philandering husband. Like many my age, I was unsuited to the task, still looking around, living under the false assumption that Love would hang around. Love knew better. It moved with Marilyn to a successful second marriage in Austin, leaving me older and wiser.
I waited seven years and tried it again, this time with The Wrong Person, lovely as she was. Harolyn Locklair was a fashion model from Miami, and she looked like it. Once, crossing University Avenue in Gainesville wearing abbreviated shorts, she almost caused two cars to drive off the road, so engrossed were the wide-eyed male drivers. She was also kind, intelligent and adventuresome. Trouble is, men are inclined to award too many points for the bathing suit part of the contest and too little for everything else. Things like compatability, social interests, life goals. You can have a perfectly acceptable human being looking to head West while you are bent on going East, and the whole affair falls apart. Love gets confused about how to cope and quickly leaves the room.
Fortunately for all of us, life does not proffer the one-time-only storied soulmate with whom absolute compatability is a given. Life provides us with further options and experience hones our capacities for selection. If Marge hates sex and you are The Heinie Monster, better move along. If Siobhan loves her herd of goats and you like them best in barbecue, keep walking. The trick is not to kid yourself, not to be so enchanted by Desiree that you fail to see she’s standing next to a trap door to the alligator pit. Yep, that Lucretia is a knockout but Bingo seven nights a week might cast a pall. Or Shirley over there—what a package—easy on the eyes, cooks a mean pot roast and is an absolute whiz with a bow and arrow. Sad to report, alas, that Shirley erupts into jealousy at the drop of an eyelash and oh, did I mention, is an absolute whiz with the bow and arrow? Hopefully, years of experience provide the learned hunter some clues to help him on his way. One especially propitious rule to follow is Parse Carefully and Avoid Craig’slist.
Attention To Business
“The highest function of love is that it makes the loved one a unique and irreplaceable being.”---Tom Robbins
Once the final crop has been harvested, it is folly to assume the job is done. As with all things, regular maintenance must be performed. Too many men assume that a good marriage is merely a matter of keeping to a regular schedule, avoiding egregious blunders with regard to Other Women and always providing the answers she wants to hear. This is wrong, wrong, WRONG! Your job is to do things which enhance her life, otherwise she might as well be married to Larry, the lawn-care guy. Life-enhancing things are not, by the way, dinners at Subway. Think big. Clues to unspoken interests are offered daily. Listen to her when she speaks to her friends. Investigate what she’s reading, what she posts on Facebook. Create occasional surprises. When traveling, consider balancing a night at Fenway Park with a trip to the botanical gardens. It’s not that difficult. It just requires a simple quality called Consideration.
The Best Women, the ones you want to saddle up with for that ride into the sunset, are not demanding, but neither are they doormats. They insist on being equals, and why shouldn’t they? Nobody wants to be given a list of instructions to blindly follow for the rest of their days and the exceptions to this rule are not the people you should be looking for. Life is a Great Adventure, the planning and execution of which must be shared. Fun for All and All for Fun. And while we’re at it, let’s get on with it. Celebrations deferred are Celebrations denied. That hike down into the Grand Canyon is best performed on the good side of hip replacement. Climbing to the top of Half Dome is never a walk in the park, but easier done before retirement age. And if you’re already past the point of no return, there’s always the Aurora Borealis.
It’s hard work, this business of making love stay, and there are no guarantees. But the road map above offers some guidance. The older couples among us have figured most of this stuff out and that’s why they’re older couples. The rest of you have your marching orders. And while it’s critical to partner with The Right Person, it’s also wise to consider Tom Robbins’ parting words:
“We waste time looking for the perfect lover instead of creating the perfect love.”
The Cedar Key Sojourn
It’s as predictable as death and taxes, but much more enjoyable. If this is February 14th, Bill and Siobhan must be in Cedar Key for the champagne sunset and a following dinner at the Island Hotel. There may be fancier restaurants around but none of them are on the Gulf of Mexico and only an hour away. This Valentine’s Day business has been going on for countless years now and is in danger of becoming an institution. Two years ago, after thirty years of Living in Sin, Bill tardily popped the question of marriage and Siobhan agreed, the nuptials being performed 16 months later in Las Vegas. Our Gainesville pal, Barbara Chiarel, told this story to a lady friend ten years engaged and clamoring for a ceremony. The friend backed off, went silent for a year and recently got her wedding. This sort of thing is not recommended for everyone, of course, only the excessively patient.
Pictures of the proceedings are necessary, believe it or not, to prove the island city actually exists. Some readers have had the audacity to think we’re perpetrating a fraud, not unlike the obviously phony moon landing. Others, like Fontaine Maverick of San Marcos, Texas, just like to see the pictures. Fontaine has been promising to come to Cedar Key for several years now but she hasn’t showed up yet. Fortunately for her, if she doesn’t make it for another twenty annums, it will still be the same.
Assisting us this year with the picture-taking were Steven Marquez from San Diego and his future bride from Washington state, he just finished with a hitch in the military, she only recently out of college. Wise beyond their years, they are traveling across the country from West coast to East, turning around in Tampa and returning via Colorado before settling down to unfortunate business like jobs and continued education. It’s always encouraging to see young people who have already discovered the cookbook and cut out the recipe. We wish them Good Fortune. Maybe they’ll be two of the lucky ones. Maybe they’ll even figure out how to Make Love Stay.
That’s all, folks….
