Ideal Love
A guy wins a girl's phone number in a drunken poker game and they fall in love.
An excerpt:
"I'm talking about—I mean, there's a perfect mate out there, if you can find her, and I guess I found her. And she's not—I mean, that Dylan Thomas thing was peculiar, that was my fault, my problem, not hers—but, you know—"
"But wait—from a scientific standpoint, mathematical standpoint I mean—but, wait, you haven't, haven't even, haven't even been to bed with her yet, right?"
"Not yet, no, but tonight—I'm really going to try tonight, got the rubbers and everything—-"
"Oh yeah, right, tonight, I've gotta go to the library tonight, you're bringing her here, that's right—I—but how do you know then, she might be frigid—"
"She's not frigid, dammit, she loves sex, she—"
"Yeah, but you know, these, these technical virgins sometimes, they, you know, they like all the foreplay, not the, not the real sex part, I mean the screwing, you know? I mean, holy shit, how do you know she's the right one until you actually, you know, actually screw her? You know?"
"Well, but—"
"But, wait now, from a math standpoint, I was saying, this ideal love, the Plato thing, right? Do some math—"
"I'm not taking math."
"Well, holy shit, take some now. There are what? two billion people, about, so say a billion men, a billion women, and they match up just right, just for the sake of argument."
"Wait, dammit, that's not fair—"
"Why not? Wait, listen just for a minute—so, okay, some are too old maybe, if you think that way, some are too young, so let's say—what's fair?—" He grabbed a pad and scribbled. Larry leaned back in the butterfly chair and closed his eyes, saw momentarily soft round breasts and dark tangled underbrush. "So let's say, five percent? Holy shit, even one percent, that's too low, one out of a hundred, but even that's ten million, right? And out of ten million, one's your perfect mate? But, holy shit, how do you find her? What if you never meet her?"
"But that's—it's gotta be built in that—not that you meet her maybe, some people never meet her, that's why there are bad marriages and divorces and stuff—but that you have a chance to meet her, anyway—"
"But could she be Jewish, then? Or a Negro?"
"Sure, why not, even Chinese if she's here, I mean a Chinese-American, but—"
"But, holy shit, then it's not what you're saying really, I mean then I don't see how there's just one, I mean, there might be ten or a hundred or—"
"No—"
"But why not? Holy shit, it doesn't make any sense! I mean, really, I'm not, I know you're in love with her and everything, I mean I'm not knocking that or knocking Naomi or anything, I'm just talking about this theory and—I mean, holy shit, how many girls you gonna meet in your lifetime? A thousand maybe, even more?"
"Oh, maybe, yeah, I mean just in high school I knew maybe a hundred, I mean to say Hi to by name, but—"
"Yeah, but—and, wait, but how many have you gone out with? A dozen maybe?"
"Oh, yeah, maybe, let's see—yeah, ten, twelve, I guess."
"See what I mean? I mean, holy shit, ten or twelve out of, what'd I say? Ten million, right? And you already met the right one? See what I mean? I mean, holy shit, Naomi is great, like I said, I'm not knocking her, it's just this, just this ideal love thing, theory, it really doesn't make much sense, see what I mean?"
Buy Love, Sex, and Other Calamities as a paperback or Kindle e-book.
Next: The Boy Lover