Primers for Lovers

One Valentine's Day, we were married-- after years of living with and loving each other., years of courting, cuddling, and slight fightings. We were happy but back at home, when we were talking about everything, my partner reproached me for loss of new topics to talk about and overdose of I love yous. We both turned silent; we tried not to sleep in the same bedroom and instead separated ourselves from another so that we could contemplate new topics. But I could not sleep. I felt a deja vu in my head. The loss of topics already happened between us two for a lot of time but I felt that it also happened already a long time ago.

Then someone slipped a letter to my door.

* * *

Dear Lover,

A long time ago, lovers around the globe complained in two things:

First, lovers already exhausted all kinds of topics that they could talk about. One would be irritated how a partner would repeat the same topic they just discussed a day or hour ago. Of course, this problem emerged when the lovers were always together or perhaps, a better way to put it, the trouble came when lovers "badly" miss each other that they have to meet, text each other, chat each other, and write letters to each other.

They will talk about sex, their parents, their jobs, their hobbies, their problems, some news, gossips on friends, their dream houses, their dream families, their life plans, their childhood, and everything under the sun and under the stars and under the bed and under the blanket and under the bedrock of topics. Just simply under everything.

Not that they talk all the time-- because of course lovers would not just talk but also eat, have sex, but they just simply cannot think of new topics to talk about. When they already run out of new topics, the only resort for couples is silence, a dreadful silence, a dreadful game of saying we run out of topics, a dreadful way of asking a partner whether or not he or she could formulate a new topic and if not, let us end this freaking date and call it a day or even better (or worse) let us divorce or separate. Well, divorce or separation is a fear among couple. The loss of topics increased the rate of divorce and separation.

In order to address this, the government established online exchange forums and even seminars, and research conferences to talk about the said problem. Here, couples gathered and traded new topics (some for free and some with payment). Contests were also held to devise new topics and winners were rewarded with great prizes. Intense lessons on history were done so that couples would talk about past historical events. History lessons were then followed by other subjects that couples would study to learn so that they could talk about new topics.

A sociolinguistic economist declared that topic was a resource already exhausted universally. Also, space administrations all over the world are sending rockets, satellites, and spacecrafts to discover cultured humanoid lifeforms to whom they can collect new topics. Sociolinguistic zoologists were even studying animal language to find out if they can learn new topics from animal couples. Astrologists and prophets proclaimed that the scarcity of topics was not just a sociolinguistic apocalypse but a cosmic symptom of the nearing Doomsday. The loss of topics, they said, were divine punishments for man's greed to name everything when the world was created.

In connection to this is the second problem. When lovers ran out of topics, they, as stated earlier, resorted to silence but of course, lovers would prefer to exchange I love you just to break the silence between them and lovers would of course use the magic sentence in every greeting and every goodbye.

Lovers ran out of words and ways to say I love you. I love you seemed to become a robotic and programmed automatic response among couples who ran out of topics to talk about and were tired of blurting to each other the dreadful "next topic please." Oh dear, only if topics were mugs of beer ready to be ordered in bars.

Couples loved each other so much that when they fight, they used to say I love you to say sorry and to renew or resume their love. When they part ways, they substitute I love you to take care, honey I gonna miss you. When they are apart, I love you means I miss you. When they meet again, I love you means I missed you, honey.

The world had enough I love yous. The world was deafened and trashed with many voices and letters with these words and its variations such as 143 (sometimes affixed to a colon plus asterisk), abbreviated ILY (sometimes added with SM or SO MUCH or other abbreviated adverbs, compliments, superlatives, and modifiers), and AlDub You.

And of course, I love you would always have the robotic and programmed automatic response I love you too and 1432. Cliche responses to the question, how are you, also brough troubles as they became robotic, programmed, and automatic. How are you? I am okay. I am fine. They were vague and lovers would interpret at some times as their partner's way of saying I am not okay or I am not fine; I am just pretending that I am so I say the opposite. Lovers would even discover that it is their partner's way of saying do not talk to me; I am busy; I want to end this conversation; can we talk later?

Plus, invitations to cinema, roses, teddy bears, love letters, Cupids, hearts, flash mobs, kneeling to propose, weddings, surprise weddings, weddings with twist, weddings in unusual venues and costumes and themes-- all symbolic ways to say I love you-- were exhausted. They all became cliche.

Couples already tried the sign language and even attempted creating new sign languages for them. The problem was confusion among couples especially those couples with two different cultures. One sign means I love you in a culture but in another, it means fuck off. Some tried to upgrade the non-verbal way in saying I love you by inventing dances and learning the Braille. Almost every couple already learned new languages just to say I love you. But languages were exhausted too.

Mathematicians tried to create formulas and codes that when solved would mean I love you. The problem was that many couples hated math or were too busy to solve them and these formulas and codes were also exhausted. Every partner already knows every formula and code that means I love you.

One mathematician even attempted to solve the final digits of pi just to tell his wife that love was like his pi, endless. Cheesy! Couples competed then to solve the final digits of pi to surpass what this mathematician did-- the longer the digits were, the greater the love. This was fun until they realized that this was endlessly tiresome and were becoming cliche.

Scientists even created pick up lines based on scientific concepts such as the theory of relativity, radiation, nuclear fusion and fission, the natural selection, genetics, oxidations, etc. One would hear, "Oh you increased the rate of my dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine (and other love-causing hormones)."

To solve the scarcity of topics and death of I love you concerns, the government strictly imposed that whoever would deliver cliche topics and cliche ways of saying I love you to his partner would be executed.

Thousands of couples were executed not only because they violated the law but because when one's partner was in the death row, the partner could not help it but to beg for execution too. Many became single while many also used the law against their partner. They would complain that their partner talked about a cliche topic or gave them a cliche way of saying I love you. This is because some partners were not faithful or were just driven by money to find a partner.

But she and I joined the Alliance of Silence and Separation (ASS), an underground movement of couples who would not talk to partner for a long time either through silence or through separation. Mute and deaf couples took advantage. The group was underground because the government treated silence and separation as a symbolic way of saying I love you and because the group grew larger, the government treated silence and separation as symbolic manners of saying I love you that would later become cliche. The members were gradually exterminated.

And she and I escaped and hid to invent a memory-remover. We removed everyone's memory, without a trace that memories were removed (like in my favorite movie, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), so that everyone would forget not only the cliche topics and cliche ways of saying I love you, but everything that happened. Funny that they were having deja vu over some things familiar.

So you, dear reader, I am sending this letter as a wedding gift just in case you and the world would need this. Spread this. Follow all attempts we had. And before the government impose that law, get the memory-remover in the attached address I sent.

This worked with your ancestors, your grandparents, and your parents. Their memories were removed and when they woke up, they start anew with the same old topics.

Good luck.

Sincerely Yours,

Friend

P.S.

I was running out of ways to end this letter.

* * *

The letter had no name of its sender. I was thinking of this and thinking of keeping this letter a secret in the wastebasket. (I was a bit surprised to find another copy of the letter in the wastebasket.) In fear that my wife would find them, I burned them.

I am blessed already. We are a perfect couple. She's having Alzheimer's at her age (an unusual yet benign case for she is not that jumpy like old people are), memories gradually escaping her, while I am a freak by accident. Every day I wake up without recollection of yesterday's events. Yeah, just like 50 First Dates.

A friend suggested to me to make a video that would recall that my wife and I are lovers, and a video of yesterday's recap or even recaps in greater span of the past and not just yesterday. And so I do them-- with packs of newspapers for current events update-- every day at 11 pm, just before 12 am and just before my disease strikes-- the two videos compressed in 10 minutes. I never cheated or messed up our memories or any information on yesterdays. I never failed to make videos. I have to stay awake or find time to create them. Also, no one ever messed up our conditions in some crazy way like making us believe that yesterday is three weeks ago. At the same time, we were patient, whenever one forgets or repeat old topics.

(Anyway, the friend who suggested to me to create videos of recaps, is a bit crazy. I saw  him this afternoon kissing my wife claiming that my wife already forgets that they are once lovers. Yuck! Earlier, this morning, this friend kissed me too and said that he used to be in some videos "we" create but he decided to burn when I met my wife. How confusing! Is he a maniacal gay? I think he is messing our relationship! Thanks God, he was already out of our sight. Thanks God I would not remember him tomorrow.)

So who needs new topic if all we have to do is to express our love to each other and have a chitchat no matter how cliche and old the topic is? After all, we won't remember them and after all, we all gonna die someday. Who the hell needs a memory-remover? We were just enjoying each other, the moment, the remaining time.

We do not need topics. We simply need each other.

I entered her bedroom, had sex, and after that, sat beside each other-- our faces smiling then becoming blank then smiling again then back to blank-- speechless. The unspoken is more than words. Words and silence may be cliche. We may run out of topics. But we would never need to "start anew." We simply have to take a rest, take a break of silence, take a vacation from each other for a while, and when we return, we have new topics to talk about, new stories to tell, and new memories to make. We would just keep on moving forward. After all, if one indeed love someone, no matter how repetitive and cliche one is, he or she would stay.

Expression is never the problem. Staying is.