The Etownian >> Opinion
After the thrill
Sunday February 21 2010
Jack was introduced to Diane at one of the infamous drunken orgies also known as the Saturday night SWEET dances. Jack wasn’t sure what it was that made this moment so specia — maybe the distinct perfume of vomit lingering in the air, or perhaps the layer of perspiration coating the linoleum floors. Whatever it was, something just felt right on that blustery February night. Father Destiny had led blind Cupid to the KÂV, and his golden arrow had pierced through Jack’s pink polo and straight into his thumping 20-something heart. Diane felt the same. She had gone to the dance hoping to grind up on a few drunk guys, but there was something special about this particular intoxicated hornball. She knew it from the moment he put his lips chillingly close to her ear and said, “I think we have Spanish together.”The next few months were chock-full of blissful infatuation. “The honeymoon period” definitely lived up to its title. Jack and Diane were inseparable, so much so that their friends gave them a celebrity couple surname: Dick. Jack found it absolutely charming that Diane sometimes talked out of the side of her mouth like Drew Barrymore (without the drug problem). He loved her striking green eyes, the way she flipped her hair every other second, and, most of all, he loved the way she made him feel, especially when she was sensually eating one of those cafeteria ice cream cones. “Thank God for Dining Services,” he’d whisper to himself while he tucked “his feelings” beneath his belt.
Diane looked at Jack as if he were the closest thing she’d ever get to Noah from “The Notebook.” She secretly wished that she would develop severe Alzheimer’s so he would spend every day of his adult life re-telling her the story of their love. But, for now, he was young and handsome, and she relished in every bit of his attention. She would stare lovingly at him for hours on end, giggling every time he would belch and blow his beer breath in her face. Diane loved the way Jack told her stories of drunken adventures, like the time he woke up in front of Founders in a pile of crusted vomit and old cigarette butts.
It was heaven for the first few months. But, inevitably, time passes. After the infatuation had subsided, both Jack and Diane found themselves in what Dr. Phil would call “a rut.” Suddenly, all of those little things that they had once found so endearing became irritating. When Diane talked out of the side of her mouth, Jack was now reminded of Stephen Hawking instead of Drew Barrymore, and the color of her eyes looked more like puke green than emerald. Every time she flipped her hair he wanted to gouge his eyes out with her Hello Kitty pencil. The ice cream cone thing was still hot, though.
Similarly, Jack began to resemble Noah less and less to Diane. He never rowed her out into a lake full of swans or built her dream house when he was tortured by her absence. This wasn’t what she had signed up for. She wanted Leo DiCaprio, not Dog the Bounty Hunter. If she had to hear about how many beer bongs he could do in the span of 20 minutes one more time, she was going to gouge her eyes out with her Hello Kitty pencil.
The question is: do you throw away love with yesterday’s trash when the little things start to get you down? Or do you learn to accept that no one is perfect and look past the small annoyances? I think sometimes you have to remember that love is a rare bird. When you cage it, it can keep you up at night with its incessant squawking, but it’s so damn beautiful that you can’t bring yourself to slip some poison in its water dish. In the end, it’s about teaching yourself to sleep through the noise.
The Etownian >> Opinion