I remember the first time I heard Neil Young sing Only Love Can Break Your Heart, I was in my early twenties.  And I remember what I thought about the song.  “Nice little jingle, but I should get back to Keith Richards banging out his signature dirty riffs to All Down the Line.”

At that time I really never experienced the broken heart thing.  Sure I had my breakups with my “girlfriends”, but being so young, I easily subscribed to the Buddhist notion that attachment is the cause of all unhappiness.

I suppose that when you’re so young that you can’t even begin to get a whiff of your own mortality, how much can a break-up mean?  After all, you’re going to live forever.

That’s changed, because to quote Frank, “and now the end is near”.  Well, the end isn’t exactly near, but it is.

I had my heart broken recently.  You all know that.  I told you about my animated discussions with my carpet mites, face flat against the floor. I did however leave out other details pertaining to that episode.

• When I did the laundry, after I put the clothes in, I would stare through the plastic top and watch the water rain down, the tub fill up.  I found it comforting oddly enough.
• When I took the lint out of the dryer, I held it tightly for a moment before I trashed it.  I found it comforting oddly enough.
• The other day I sat in a chair for half an hour and watched a spider crawl up the wall, wishing I could have such a simple life, the same feeling I get when I watch a cat, Zen masters unto themselves, do nothing, which is 99% of the time.
• When I went out, I purposely put on my heavy leather duster coat, just to feel its heavy weight on my shoulders, much the way Robert DeNiro lugged his net of metal objects up the mountain in the movie The Mission, as a way of atoning for the sin of killing his brother.

Breakups are all about penance and redemption, unless you’re the kind of asshole who believes it’s always the other person’s fault.

But I digress.  Now I listen to Only Love Can Break Your Heart and understand exactly what that means.

Can the death of a loved one break your heart?  No, I don’t think so.  It can certainly kill part of you off, in that you’re changed forever by the loss, but it doesn’t break your heart.

(I remember when my mother died, I was seventeen, and I spent hours at a time listening to John Lennon sing “nothing’s gonna change my world”. (Across the Universe)  And I knew exactly why I listened to that song, that many times, at that time; Twas because I knew that part of me died alongside my mother and that nothing was going to change that for the rest of my life.  Part of my heart died on the day she died, but it didn’t break it.)

Now, let’s go on to the next part of the song, the line that comes after “only love can break your heart”.  Here’s the crux of the song, the main theme, the big lesson for all of us, but the hardest lesson of them all; “try to be sure right from the start”.

This is where most of us screw up, because you know what I say.  If you mix your genitalia together four times, you’re in a relationship my friend.

And you know what being in a relationship means my friend, it means this: “I am giving you permission to hurt me”.  Or put another way, I am giving you permission to break my heart.

How hard is it to apply the lesson – try to be sure right from the start?  It’s bloody difficult.  It goes against all our primordial selves are programmed to do, have sex and go to heaven.

I’ve never seen heaven.  I’ve only felt it.

You’re in your late thirties, or forties or fifties and you haven’t had a hand caress you in months or years.  And someone walks through your door who looks just fabulous to you.  They look great, smell great and the date(s) was/were great.

And yet, through all that greatness you know it likely can’t work and your gut is telling you why and you know your gut is right, as always.  But instead of listening to the little man or women inside of us, what do we do?  We turn them off, shut them down and proceed down the shadow of the valley of heartbreak death, all for the sake of serving our short-term needs.

Ok, now would you like to ask me how to walk away from temptations of the flesh in order to spare ourselves of a painful, “watch the spider” heartbreak?

I have no idea! Well, I do, as this column proves, but I’m way too pathetic.  I think it’s my Venus in Scorpio thing that undermines all that I do.

I bumped into a stunningly beautiful, brilliant Greek Goddess recently who knew exactly what to do, how to put credence into the “try to be sure right from the start” thing.  She left.

After a wonderful night of talking, eating, slow dancing to Frank Sinatra, she got up and left with these words: “I want to sleep with you but I don’t think it can work.  You’ll never move to Burlington and I’ll never move to Toronto”.

Is a man even capable of saying “I want to sleep with you but it can’t work”?

I know we can say no, but I’m not sure we’re evolved enough to say why.

As she walked out the door, Frank was singing “Five minutes more”, which ends with him saying these words – “oh come on” with a sigh, which was exactly what I was saying – oh c’mon Angela, with a heavier sigh.

That’s as intelligent as I got.  “Oh, come on Angela”.   I think my IQ at that moment was 46.

But Angela was a woman who had learned her lessons.  What was the point of starting anything if you know it’s only going to break your heart?  I had to give her full credit.

And so, when you’re heading out for date four, knowing there’s a 100% chance you’re going to have sex for the fourth time, with someone you know it can’t work with, go to YouTube, find Neil Young’s Only Love Can Break Your Heart, then politely cancel and take a cold shower.

Yeah, right!

If you’d like to contact Peter, feel free to write him at peter@geronimocode.com

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My New Bedtime Fantasy

FLASHING WARNING: Separated Men

Finding “The One,” Should we be More Practical?

I want to talk about my newest, ongoing, “driving me forward” bedtime fantasy.  This twisted new fantasy is the new fuel that has launched me to join yet another dating site and contact virtually every single woman between the ages of 42 and 52.  I can go to any dating site now and know the bio of most Toronto women right down to their astrological sign.  That’s how passionate I feel about doing whatever needs to be done to live my out this perverted dream.

Are you curious to know what the fantasy is?

I thought so, so with no further ado, here it is: A good woman, lying beside me in bed, in flannel pajamas, toes touching, heads propped up – reading together in silence.

(Ah yes, to be comfortable in your silence together.  There is no better barometer for your relationship.   The wonderful, kind and insightful Michael Kaufman once told me that – www.michaelkaufman.com.)

Nothing these days is turning me on more than that image.  I don’t “take care of myself” to the vision of the image, rather, I may let out a sigh, exhaled under the cool abyss of my blankets.  After the sigh, I turn on my side to embrace the only thing I can embrace – my pillow.

Sick eh?

I’m a young baby-boomer.  My sexual formative years happened during the golden age, a time before HIV, when every girl and they were just girls back then, was on the pill.  Evolutionarily speaking, that time came and went in the blink of an eye.  But I was smack in the middle of it, acting out my fantasies like I was a young Caligula, but with a good heart.  Back then, my penis made almost all of my life-decisions for me.  I’m still playing catch-up.

What happened?

I got older. I did.  Two of The Beatles have long since passed and there’s really no room, nor a need for another notch on my bed.

A long time ago, I watched lonely, divorced, isolated detective Al Pacino pull up beside a hooker and ask her to get in.  She then asked him what he had in mind.  “I just want you to sleep with me”, and he handed her one hundred dollars.  She was dumbfounded of course, but CUT TO: the hooker awake, spooning Al, who was fast asleep in a fetal position.

I remember what Commodus told Lucilla in Gladiator when he was watching her son sleep; “He sleeps well, because he knows he is loved”.  I never forgot that moment.   And so, Al Pacino could finally sleep well.  It mattered not that it was a hooker, all women, and I mean all women have a serious nurturing side that begs to be appreciated.

I’m in the mood to sleep well too now.  I didn’t care back then.  I do now.

My son Noah, nineteen, not only left the nest, but he’s trekking around in Chile and Costa Rica with his girlfriend.  The bedroom I built for him stares back to me in mocking silence.  His only presence is manifested by the maps of Chile on the wall so I can follow his wanderings from 5,000 miles away.

I never understood why the elderly fed pigeons.  I do now.

I never understood the notion that as you got older, “companionship” becomes more important.  I do now.  It’s the stuff that we who have trod so many miles deserve and require to be happy.

I can go no further with this column without puffing out my chest to remind you, and myself, that when the primal calls for it, this Satyr is still enthusiastic about answering the siren call, to gallop on to fulfill said  equestrian duty.

But my “performance menu” for an evening’s festivities and frolicking must now include “comfortable in silence” moments and that’s new.

There was a time in my single fatherhood where I could revel in my celibacy.   That era is over with now.  Now it’s time to revel and live out my new bedtime fantasy – lying in bed with a “partner”, in flannel pajamas, toes touching, heads propped up, reading a good book, comfortable in our silence.

I feel so human today.

Feel free to contact Peter at peter@geronimocode.com to tell him your own haunting story. Be sure to check out his site at www.geronimocode.com also.

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Haunted by Ex Sex

“Baby, This is Sex, Not Love”

I’m haunted by my Ex Katherine. Not by that went wrong with our relationship, but what went right with our relationship – our love life.

After being laid naked, fetal-positioned, paralyzed, and wanting by our breakup, I want to attempt a sequel with my Ex.  I am willing to work harder on our vertical life together for the sake of getting back to our spectacular horizontal life together.   How much harder?  I am willing to change.

But am I being naïve? Or, is a fulfilling love life worth fighting extra hard for?  Should I be happy with what I had, count my blessings and move on?

Katherine and I were two completely different people with two completely different sets of values.  Katherine was whimsical, perky and light-hearted defined by a Martha Stuart palette of powder blues, pinks and floral arrangements.

Until Katherine came along, I didn’t know what the word whimsical meant.  The word came up when she tried to tell me what kind of stuff she liked in her home.  I actually had to ask her to explain the word whimsical to me.

Once I understood it’s meaning, I knew that I was the Anti-Christ of whimsical. I gravitate towards mute colours and images that were popular in the Middle Ages –gentle brown tones of mud mixed in with a dollop of existential or “*Eeyorian” angst.  (*Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh)

I am more “whimsi-bleak” or “whimsi- the world is a *charnel house” kind of guy.  (*Reference = Samual Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.)

I suppose if I asked Katherine what a charnel house was, she would reply, “Oh goody, I’m in the mood for a barbeque.”

Her Hugh Grant, Sandra Bullock-type film choices represented somewhat of a counterpoint to my Stalingrad, The Wehrmacht in Russia, Sin City or Gladiator preferences.

And finally, she loved her two cats the way I love my son, but my attitude towards pets (or people) is; if you can’t flush the toilet, get the hell out!

And so, you would think that breaking up with this woman would be a simple matter.   Once broken up, I wouldn’t have to worry about my testicles being slashed by her jealous cats and I could watch whatever movie I wanted in my brown living room.

But it hasn’t been a simple matter.  In fact, it’s been living hell.  Sometimes I lay on the floor, unable to focus on much.  Well, I can do this; Face flattened on the floor, I try to differentiate between the carpet fibers and carpet mites.

Why so f***ed up?  My Ex and I may not have been soul mates (whatever the hell that is) but we sure as hell were once-in-a-lifetime sexmates.

Together Katherine and I had a wonderful, unabashed, deeply connected love life that was framed by a natural and mutual caring and trust.

Horizontally we were a match made in heaven and the relationship was effortless.  Unfortunately, vertically, we were at odds and the relationship took work.  We had a lot of fun together, a lot of laughs, and traveled well together, but our relationship, like many, could only succeed if you “checked in” a lot because we were very different kinds of people, defined by a different set of values.

But I didn’t check in a lot and we dissolved.

Here’s the conundrum.  In any relationship, there is always something “qualitative” about the nature of your union. Consequently, there is always room for a sense of doubt.  For example, “she does this well, but doesn’t do that well.  He makes me happy this way, but not in that way”, etc. etc.

However, when you have a great love life together, that’s not qualitative, it’s absolute! And isn’t absoluteness exactly what we crave in our relationships?  Extreme pleasure is absolute and addictive and life seems too short to live without it.  Try harder I say.

So here’s the question-how far should we go to try to make a relationship work because you have a great sex life with your partner?

If you’re waiting for me to come up with an answer, forget it.

I haven’t a clue right now.  I’m still talking to carpet mites.

How much do I miss sex with the Ex?  Let me put it this way; “Katherine darling, it’s done.  I’ve piled up all my brown furniture in the backyard together with my testosterone/war-themed DVDs.  Got a match?”

Yes, I’m willing to compromise and try to have another go at our relationship, because a day doesn’t pass when I don’t think of my Ex, the road trips, the laughs and of course, our love life.

“Never give up on someone you can’t go a day without thinking about.”   I read that from a stranger’s page on Facebook that was devoted to the millions of us suffering from a broken heart.

There’s another reason why I’m thinking of making contact with my Ex again.  These words drifted into my head after I made yet another half-hearted effort to spend time with someone else; “After he kissed someone new, he found himself unintentionally whispering his Ex’s name, out loud, as if he were accepting the moment as a penance for his sins, rather than the celebration of life it was supposed to be.”

Just because I lie on the carpeted floor, talk to mites and hear voices in my head doesn’t mean I’m haunted by my Ex does it?

Of course it does.

Feel free to contact Peter at peter@geronimocode.com to tell him your own haunting story. Be sure to check out his site at www.geronimocode.com also.