Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.
~Robert A. Heinlein
So, who fits that category for you?
Most, if not all of us have people in our lives we dearly love.
When they’re happy, we’re happy, and conversely, a sad circumstance for them ensures sadness for us.
Love makes us vulnerable, because our feelings and sense of well-being is so closely intertwined with the persons we love.
Love is costly, because true love is pretty much an “all or nothing” proposition.
Regardless of the cost and despite the risk, I’d rather live with love than without it.
How about you?
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It’s about 2/3 to 3/4 finished! I wanted to run it by a friend for editing ideas, and then it’s going your way!
Would I like you to send it to me???? That’s an understatement – OF COURSE!!!! 🙂
Email me at ASwirlGirl@TheSwirlWorld.com. Put something like “Short Story from Jeff” in the headline.
I can’t wait to read it! Woot!
I have a short story all figured out, how’s that for being quick? :-)The title is “Jerry Does the Swirl.” The interaction with the woman neighbor at the subway station is moved up two years to Summer ’67, i do talk to her, the girl upstairs is 17 at the time of the balcony dance, (same summer, which is when that interaction did happen) i go to my first Dead show in the late fall, and then the upstairs girl, now 18, goes with me to my second show in Central Park in May ’68. Would you like me to send it to you when i’m done?
Look at all the material you have! You could take all of those incidences further (maybe make the 14-yearl old an 18-year old – you’re right; 19 and 14 would not be cute 🙂 ). You could also put a spin on the other event with the woman at the subway: The conversation goes farther; she continues to speak to you and things progress . . . . You seem to be very detail oriented, so capturing the sights, sounds and emotions would not be at all difficult for you.
Is this something you’d genuinely be interested in doing??? You’re great at sharing stories; writing a short story would not be a stretch for you at all!
I love to write, though i didn’t make a living doing that. That’s why i like writing music show reviews. Also get to show off my music knowledge.:-) Not sure what would have happened even if. My parents would have thrown me out even if i just dated her or hung out. They flipped out about my brother dating and then becoming engaged to a Puerto Rican woman. Totally based upon her being Puerto Rican. If they were to see them and then told one of them was Puerto Rican,, 999 out of a 1000 people would have picked my brother, with his dark brown hair and green eyes (vey unlike me), vs her, a green/blue eyed strawberry blonde. And for a family a lot better off than us economically. Irrational even within the irrational dominant system of “reason.”
The summer when i was headed towards 20, the younger girl of our upstairs neighbors was 13-14. One day, i was sitting in my room hanging out, looked out the window, saw her standing on their balcony in shorts. She started dancing to music playing on some radio, not sure if ours or theirs, moving her hips rather provocatively, and suddenly bent down, looking at me right through the railing and our window. I felt like i got caught, had no idea what to do. We never talked. Regardless of race, 19 and 14 don’t make a good mixture.
Maybe i could make up someone my age for a story? Or have it be about a young man getting seduced by an older woman? There was in fact an older woman, i believe living alone, whom i ran into in the elevator a couple of times,, quite attractive, she acted a bit giddy when she’d see me. The last summer i lived there, we walked to the local subway stop (an above-ground station) at the same time on a couple of occasions. She asked me once about my father giving me a ride in the morning. I said that wasn’t me. She said “Well, maybe it was your brother,” and no longer spoke to me. I asked him to not give me rides, as he wanted to, i actually enjoyed being on the crowded subway, some sort of contact with people outside my family or work or school, in fact a guarantee that i’d see some attractive black women during the course of the day (and there were a few regulars,, no surprise i had a 9 to 5 job. I’ve thought about how i could have told her the real story of what was going on, and could have become friends with her. Mmm, that could be an interesting story.
How interesting! Now that I think about it, the geographical location may have influenced the number of children per family – I’m pretty sure the number of children was higher in the South. I don’t believe in focusing on “what ifs,” yet I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if a few black girls your age (or even just one!) lived in your building. Hmmm . . . . are you a writer?? Seems like the setting for a good short story!
Well, many of the residents were single women or in a few cases women sharing a 2 bedroom, i get the feeling there were lots o teachers amongst them, maybe this was a case of a particular union local getting many of its members into the same building? Very high proportion of older singes. And the families tended to be quite small, e.g. our upstairs neighbors had two girls, 12=13 and 10-11 when we moved in. There were two guys my age, in fact both went to junior high with me. Funny how few “boomers” during the height of the ’60s.
That’s extremely odd, because at that time Black people were having larger families. That’s not only odd, I would venture to say it’s somewhat amazing!
Kind of odd that there wasn’t a single female of more or less my age in the building, what with 15 stories, each with a dozen or more apartments.
*Laughing out loud at this story, and especially at “a lonely and riled up young man”* Tee hee hee . . . . . 🙂
My 17th birthday, that is.
Wow! A privilege indeed.
Interesting memory. This month in 1964, shortly before my 17th, we moved to a new place in New York (a whole three blocks away from what had been home), a new building, a co-op. My parents were quite dismayed to find out once we were in that about half our neighbors were black (“Negroes” was the polite term back then). Didn’t matter that many of them were actually of a higher material living standard than we were,. Hatred is often irrational. Less than a year later, my mom suddenly acted as if she saw a ghost. Turns out she was seeing one of our neighbors on her balcony, a woman in her 40s, in shorts and a skimpy shirt, working on her numerous plants. My own reaction was quite contrary, but of course i never let my mom know what i thought, she acted as if this was the end of civilization. Lots of older attractive women, age and racial differences made for a lonely and riled up young man. I stayed there till graduating college in January 1970, when i moved out to the Bay Area.
Oh, ok. If you ever decide to get on FB, be sure to look us up. Demita’s podcast is in three parts. It was originally slated for 30 minutes but it went on much longer. She was such a wonderful person! I still can’t believe she’s gone. To my knowledge, mine was the last podcast/interview she did. I’m blessed and privileged beyond measure.
Not on Facebook. Keep intending to check out the Demita Usher podcast.
What makes for the attractions? I think much of our attraction preferences comes from our inner system of transmitters and receptors and the wiring in the hypothalamus part of he brain, same circuitry that neuroscientist Simon LeVey has researched in regards to sexual orientation. There’s probably some social influence involved as well, but i tend to think more comes from the in-“built” factors .
As i said, my attraction existed in spite of strong social pressures to the contrary. I did act upon them when younger, though not till well after i moved out on my own. Working on the Cal campus and frequently interacting with black women certainly created a more favorable situation for me to act upon these feelings. Things never worked out, but then they never worked out for me with anyone, regardless of race, including the woman i married.. The future? Who knows? By the way,the woman at the store i mentioned above is just a friend, i think that’s all she ever wanted, that’s all i want.
Hey Jeff,
Thanks for letting me know you’re not receiving updates to posts – I’ll have to get my webmaster to look into why.
We often hear from WM who tell us they discovered an attraction to BW when in their early teens. Some of them acted on it; many did not and many for the reasons you stated. As they moved through life and came more into their own (whether by experiencing divorce, death of a spouse, etc.) they made the decion to move forward and act upon their attraction to BW. Who can understand/explain preference or attraction? We are wonderfully complex human beings and as the saying goes, “it is what it is.”
Happy to know you were able to find us when you went searching! Not sure if you’re on Facebook; if you are, we have a very active Facebook page you can access by clicking here. We also have a Facebook page dedicated to Military Swirl Couples. Have you checked out our podcast? If so, what do you think? We enjoy receiving a lot of feedback from the members of Swirl Nation and always look for ways to improve.
Oops, i just noticed this response to an earlier post. I’m not getting the email notification of new posts, even though i check the box below.
I started reading this blog just a couple of weeks ago.
Back in early february, i started becoming friends with a woman who works a t a store i frequent. She started working there last year, we quite suddenly clicked during the rainy season, which for us was mostly noted in its absence, when we started talking about that, then went on to other things, always thought she seemed interesting. And she’s black. For me, this triggered old feelings/memories, regarding my apparent frequent attraction to black women, which i stated noticing back when i became aware of general attraction to women as a “tween” I’m not attached to all or even most women. I find roughly the same fraction of women attractive regardless of race/ethnicity, but on average black women whom i find attractive i find more attractive than women of other ethnicities. Emphasize “on average.” This was in spite of my upbringing and parental admonitions.
So, like many things nowadays, i went to the Web to search out the topic, was surprised to find out quite a few sites dealing with black women/white men relationships, a couple of them had forums, but those seemed to be in suspended animation, i think they may have been the target of attacks. Just when i was ready to participate. And then i came upon this site.
“A relationship based on love involves give and take; reciprocity is essential. Otherwise, what do you really have? You don’t have love, that’s for sure!”
Absolutely!!
Jeff,
I believe accepting and putting up with the type of behavior you describe – the selfishness that causes people to forget the other person “doesn’t simply exist to provide them with happiness without ever needing nourishment for their soul” – is also akin to begging for love. A relationship based on love involves give and take; reciprocity is essential. Otherwise, what do you really have? You don’t have love, that’s for sure!
How long have you been reading the blog??
Hi Michelle,
Glad to see we agree on begging for love. And i agree, most people at this point are too selfish to ever remember that a relationship involves another person besides themselves, who doesn’t simply exist to provide them with happiness without ever needing nourishment for their soul. We’ve become much more selfish as a society since i entered the relationships world.
Hi Jeff,
I understand your point about the happiness and well-being of mankind., and I agree that love between two people has to run much deeper. I expressed these sentiments in this post because sadly, it seems that most people fail miserably at even meeting the basic level of desiring someone else’s happiness. Am I a cynic? Maybe – but I’d prefer to believe I’m a realist.
And as for whether I’d die for love or beg for it – I’ll die for it in a heartbeat, but to beg for it? NOT! 🙂
The happiness of the entire human family, and the entire planet’s well-being, human, living, and otherwise, is essential to the health of all of us, Don’t we need a better notion of love in regards to our relation to a special person or persons? Love is costly, but there are limits. I’d die for love, but i’d never beg for love.