"Still crazy after all these years ..."
-- Singer-songwriter Paul Simon (B: 1941)
- - -
I didn't mean to eavesdrop -- and I didn't have to, really. I caught a few key words that told me all I needed to know.
The couple were in their mid-20s, their expressions fierce. She threw down the word "relationship" like a gauntlet. He countered, fingers mauling the cup that held his latte, with "compromise." He glowered. She met his glower and raised him a scowl.
The fight was off and running.
To their immediate right was another twosome who looked to be in their early 60s. He was engrossed in the sports section while she fretted over the daily crossword. At one point, she nonchalantly reached into her purse, extracted a pill case and thrust a handful of tablets at him.
"Take these," she said, in a voice that brooked no discussion. He held her eyes for a moment, grumbled, and did as he was told.
The contrast was sharp and instructive. Couple No. 1 was in the throes of a pheromone tornado. Their conversation held a tale of torment, betrayal, desire -- the whole catastrophe. Later that night he would escape their tiny apartment, slamming the door hard enough to make the hinges squeal. His buddies would commiserate as he nursed his wounds over a few beers.
On the other hand, he and his sulking girlfriend might crawl off to the respective corners of their metaphorical boxing ring. Eventually, they might begin to circle each other in the kind of seductive dance that ends up in a gloriously tussled bed -- and in babies.
Now, let's follow couple No. 2. Back in their well-appointed condo, he's on the couch, nodding off, the latest Michael Connally novel lying open on his lap; she's refinishing an oak table. After a time, she nudges him gently and they turn out the lights. In bed they spoon, familiar flesh against familiar flesh, trading the inanities and profundities of the day before they tacitly agree to silence. He nuzzles her neck -- an old habit that helps him fall asleep. In a matter of moments, she's breathing evenly.
On the other hand, tangled sheets are not strictly the purview of the young. Perhaps this night, couple No. 2 cups each other in places that haven't been cupped in a while: Some old longing has awakened them. Who knows why?
In our 20s and 30s, the twinkle in the eye of a potential mate is directly hardwired to organs that have nothing whatsoever to do with clear vision. We're drawn to the opposite sex by mysterious forces evidently beyond our control. In the battle between brains and musk, musk always wins.
Our job then is to make each other crazy -- to test, to test and to test again, if only to ensure we can count on this person to remain at our side over the long haul. Call it a vestige of our hunter-gatherer days, when loyalty was an aid to survival of the species, but there it is.
Ah, sex and the 60s. Age is a surefire balm for burning love, for those of us who have endured the fire. Ebbing hormones make friends of men and women. Generally speaking, once we've put the reproductive drive into park, we find we can finally lay down our arms. We wallow in companionship. We cherish constancy. And when we occasionally turn to each other in the dark, it's a deep, habitual intimacy that twirls our limbs together.
Still, I can't help feeling a vague sense of loss when I consider couple No. 1. No one ever wrote a love sonnet about compatibility.
I know, I know. For many of us, agony and desire are bound together in one heck of a complex knot. We disentangle them, carefully and wisely over time. The risk that intensity gets lost in the fray is an acceptable one.
Yet we all know older couples who still shoot sparks at each other like shorting toasters, but have managed to banish the misery that often goes with over-the-top love. Imagine all that passion without any of the angst.
In my view, bless them. They've hit the emotional jackpot.
