The love of my life; with name-dropping of philosophers, fugitive policemen and others

Childless women in their thirties staying in bed until the mid-afternoon, reading their first book by Schopenhauer, Seneca or Montaigne – contemplating the apathy with which they regard their own mortality over the first gin of the afternoon and rubbing one out before the news kills the passion – these are the kinds of women you don’t seem to meet dating online.

I just read the manifesto of the vengeful L.A. Cop-Killing Killer-Cop who is currently running rings around his former colleagues after swearing to take the corrupt all to hell with their loved ones for a lack of honour, honesty and common decency.

Armed to the teeth and trained alongside Navy Seals it does make you wonder why, not condoning the man’s actions but mindful of our own corrupt public servants, why none of our own have gone postal. Is it because we don’t close ranks on race in our country? Are there no honest men left in positions of power in Britain. Why are the only people with integrity and a vendetta against this state those without access to firearms?

The love of my life was a natural with a .357 Magnum but that isn’t, I hasten to add, because she’s Lithuanian but because she squeezed the trigger in the same way she approached life: with a firm grip, solid aim and wry smile. These days we never see one another despite both living in Edinburgh. It reminds me of the magnet my Mum has on her fridge: “I still miss my ex but my aim is improving.”

Schopenhauer believed that lust and love were just patsies to the biological imperative of producing healthy offspring; that opposites attracted for a reason: to iron out the features any caricaturist would seize upon; to create someone better, more capable, than the sum of its parts.

He saw the unhappy couples fighting in public who everyone cringed at – wondering how in hell this bitter spite ever got close enough for impregnation, let alone marriage – as testament to his thinking.

But what if as aware of this as we are, and combined with a layman’s sense of modern genetics (The X-Files and Richard Dawkins), we attempted to consciously force ourselves towards someone who can make us happy, rather than with whom we might only create an ordinary child? A partner who at first reckoning appears to be agreeably similar to ourselves. [For reference, please see first paragraph]

I don’t speak to most of the old friends who’ve mated aside from when on Facebook they parade pictures of the pudgy progeny their prodigious penises procured whom now they preen, pick up after and politely persuade to ponder the same pretentious pretences as their plump parents. Those that are left are either discussing the matter seriously with their partners or the thought of raising offspring is anathema.

I guess I’m just not dating the right kinds of girls at the moment. These women are solvent, confident and secure in themselves. They’ve strived and sacrificed to get where they are today. The roof over their head isn’t just another ephemeral concept to keep the rain off their books and clothes; no, they’re seeing their friends marrying off and think: “Shit, I don’t want to trundle off to the elephant’s graveyard by myself. Fuck that for a game of soldiers.”

The love of my life is married to the man who fell in love with her after I deserted her for a selfish plane trip to the other side of the world. It’s surely ten years now or thereabouts but whatever this is – assuaged guilt or an honest, empathic feeling of goodwill – I’m really happy for them.  All I really know is that they’re both Danish so will have beautiful children.

Seeking love as an oddity using only a half-hearted internet connection, frightening mug-shot and dry sense of humour exacerbated by cheap Scottish vodka is a hard day on anyone’s farm. With such a pathetic M.O. how does a man seek a woman who will be exploratory yet still at times patient in bed; who will not disregard actions or opinions different to hers as insulting, deluded or childish; and look instead to her partner as a whole, with motives, inclinations and background?

How soon is too soon to suggest that if you like my face enough to sit on it, why not spend some time to understand the noise it makes after it’s wiped clean of your discharge?

Perhaps it was too much Bukowski that led me to believe that art, no matter how base poetic and unattractively human, will always attract the kind of woman that attracts me. The kind that listens to Janis Joplin in the evening, Brian Eno to go to sleep and anything modern and decent enough to give her a reason to throw off the covers come dawn and find breakfast.

It’s fortunate for Bukowski and all of us that love him that he lived in the age of the bookshop and aeroplane. Nietzsche, as an example among many, died driven insane with illness and still far from the perpetuation he feared but who’s to say what might have happened if his lifetime occurred during the advent of radio, television or even the internet. It doesn’t take a genius to realise that it takes more than genius to be understood. It takes the sheer volume of popularity.

Perhaps I should get a job in a guitar shop; I had a most invigorating conversation just the other day in one as to the whys and wherefores of the Allen keys that are supplied with Gibson and Epiphone guitars. It turns out that Fender guitars use a less uniform size for truss rod adjustment than Ikea furniture.

That’s why I’m single. He could talk the hairshirt off a nun; yet I spent Saturday night writing a blog.

You might have already sensed that I’m howlin’ for the obvious, bored and on the verge of offering grapes to girls (if any of you got both the Adrian Mole and Schopenhauer reference then fuck it, marry me now; man or woman, the state just declared the British equal so let’s do it.)

There’s a beautiful Irish girl that lives in the room almost opposite me but we only ever seem to exchange words when she fires herself like a trap-door spider from whichever door she’s behind as I’m passing then gives me a look as if I’ve been sniffing the door-handle. It’s happened too many times to be a coincidence. Subconsciously I must be stalking her. I blame my bladder.

But those of you that know me remember all too well my track record of sleeping with housemates. Did it ever end well? Exactly, and that’s why I’m throwing this girl off the scent by being awkward, overweight and something like ten years older than her.

Well that’s quite enough of all that. I have a couple of complimentary tickets for exhibitions at the National Museums of Scotland left behind by my highly strung Catholic ex (she got to keep a pair of socks and my Ventolin inhaler) so I’m off to the Viking exhibition in town. Rock and fucking Roll.

Maybe I’ll meet the love of my life; maybe all that Scandinavian history will make me realise what I’ve left behind and I’ll pack up and go back to Denmark; or maybe I’ll just end up with a swollen knee, a collection of poorly focused photographs of bones and the need to tell you all about the time I saw the oldest known Scandinavian crucifix.

The love of my life was Icelandic and so was the first to show me, with a piece of her jewellery, that Thor’s Hammer can look very much like an inverted crucifix. Imagine my disappointment when she smiled knowingly and said it wasn’t.

Christ, I miss the love of my life.