René Roberts

Were The Beatles high when they decided that all we need is love? Maybe they should have said that all we need, are all the things we love. That’s much closer to the truth, right? We love so many things. We love money. We love reading and writing. We love to travel. We love lazy Sunday afternoons. We love rain and we love the wild. So, I say, all we need are the things that we love. It just so happens that romance, is one of them.

Love, at least the amorous or intimate kind, is a moody little bitch. She wears many faces and she’s a shape-shifter of note. Sometimes she pops up where you’d least expect her. Like weeds, she can grow through concrete without much effort. She doesn’t even need human intervention. In fact, she prefers you stay the hell out of it. Love is a little like that extra set of batteries you bought the other day. When you look for it, you won’t find it. Let me just “Straightify” it for the breeders (that’s you Samantha, Chantel and Erin). For you gals it’s like that pair of highly fashionable sunglasses you got for free with the Cosmo last month. If you look for it, you won’t find it.

It will find you.

While you’re wrestling with the loss of the first love of your life, that one you put your life on hold for for over five years, love’s still looking for you. That love you mourned at the graveyard in the ugliest, flattest, most barren part of the Free State; it wasn’t reciprocated. It wasn’t reciprocated because love was still looking for you. Love will find her way to you when you give up. She can be a cock teaser like that. But one day, at a simple birthday party she can come knocking on your door. You can answer and give her a mouth full for taking her sweet damn time. Then you can welcome her inside and prepare to be blown away.

Love can grab your hand in the eighth grade when you lay eyes on that senior and decide that you’ll build a family with him or her one day. It works. You fall in love and start dating. Your friends are all so jealous of you. How can you find true love in the eighth grade while they battle with their skin and pray for nice big boobies. But love gets bored. So she plays around a little bit. She creates an obstacle course and somewhere along the way you decide, fuck it. You split up. Love feels crappy for messing around and sends him or her back to you a few years later. She rewards you with two beautiful boys and your high school sweetheart’s unconditional love.

Love has a shit load of work. Like The Black Eyed Peas said. Where is the love? Sometimes she get’s sidetracked and she messes up the orders. You end up with someone else’s true love. The more she gets sidetracked the bigger the backlog. So she leaves you in limbo until she can get back to you. In the mean time you’re killing each other. You didn’t order adultery and she didn’t order ordinary. You wait and you wait. But you’re turning fifty now and you start drumming your fingers impatiently. Love is getting so irritated with you, she shoves you higher up the waiting list and finally your order arrives. You’re transformed into a love-sick puppy although you’re trapped in the body of an old dog now. You’re taught all these new tricks though and you finally forgive love for the initial stuff up.

Love is sneaky. She hides in the pocket of your best friend sometimes. All of a sudden that boy or girl that used to be the neighbour you played hooky with, seems so much taller or bustier. He or she turns into someone so interesting and one day love pops out of his or her pocket and smacks you in the face, yelling : Surprise!

She can be invincible too. You can fight her tooth and nail for the longest time. You can throw your long work hours at her. You can try and run from her all around the world. You can hit her with betrayal and try to kill her with ignorance. She might find you on the one continent and chase you all the way to another. But she always finds you.

There’s no expiry date on love. It takes her as long as it takes her.

She finds you where she finds you.

She pays no attention to religion, race or sex. Orientation means jack shit to her.

She makes the rules.

And whether you want to admit it or not : You want to play.