Short Story: The Meaning Of Love

Short Story: The Meaning Of Love

I was lying on a beach with a man who carried 'the meaning of love' on a piece of paper in his pocket. 'The Gypsy', as he liked to call himself, had written it in an inspirational moment by the sea and it just so turned out that several years later, he was unfolding the scrawled out lines with their smudging ink and handing them to me.

Now I have heard and read some lines in my time but this particular gypsy had no interest in the female of the species and his only motive for handing over the paper was to share the meaning of love. It was like he had been wandering on that beach forever, searching for one person to whom he could provide all the answers.

'Love is unique,' I replied, after pondering for some seconds in the sand. 'I have no use for this note.' Without focusing on the stained words, I placed it back in the pocket, blissfully unknowing.

Anyway, just as coincidences go, I had actually discovered my own meaning of love in the woods the previous evening. I had just been too drunk to write it down.

'And what would you have written?' asked the Gypsy.

'I would have written that 'I was happy'. Just for a second.'

Yes, I remembered being bizarrely happy.

Bizarre because I was naked in a snake infested wood and had somehow fallen asleep with a Polish man named Herbert. We woke up in a haze to warm raindrops landing on our cheeks. Too busy having bizarre conversations to search for our clothes in the leaves.

Happy because, although I'd only met this man maybe two hours earlier, we were both convinced we'd found our soul mate and were going to spend the rest of our lives together.

Maybe my note should have said 'the meaning of Vegas,' because I'm pretty sure if that's where I'd been I'd have woken up as 'Mrs something-or-other-Owski'.

But luckily, we were not, and so there were no marriage papers to be signed. I remember we were quite angry about that at the time. Because for those few short hours we were more in love than any other two people on the planet.

Or, it should have said, 'the meaning of drugs.'

But this love was something more than that. It was finding a person, who, just at that point in place and time, was in the exact same position as myself. The blue eyes lost in a crowd. The red hair amongst the masses of brown. Alone and unaware, until that point, of the true meaning of love.

'And what happened next?' asked the intrigued Gypsy who fiddled with his paper like he wanted to write it all down.

Truth be told, I wasn't really sure.

I bet in Vegas, police officers don't shout at the crazy naked people. But at music festivals in Taiwan, true and naked love is as impossible as a midnight marriage. We had to leave. 'Meet me on the beach.' I remember promising. 'Ten minutes I swear. I'll be there.'

But, like all things and above all love, they're confusing and erratic and the next thing you know your best friend is throwing up behind the tent pegs and I didn't go to the beach because it was then a matter of 'the meaning of friendship.'

Friendship can sometimes mean you are required to hold back your friend's hair for an hour while she vomits on your flip flops. It can also be something as simple as a spending sunrise with a gypsy, who didn't name himself at all, but rather acquired a label in the world where people carry papers of numbers, figures, qualifications and names.

Heartbroken and in pursuit of 'the meaning of love', I had wandered by the shore in stinky shoes at dawn, half of my attire missing in the forest somewhere. The first Western man I saw had me questioning, 'could it be him?' But he turned out to be no-one more than a travelling Gypsy, and not a ginger, hung-over Pol.

'So? We can walk up the beach. We can find him,' said the eager gentleman with the shorts and the note and nothing more.

'It's over dude,' I replied, reality sinking in.

'You're right,' he said, and we listened to the waves for a while. I slept and when I woke the Gypsy man was gone. He wasn't anyone. He didn't have anything. But he has more than most, he has the meaning of love written in his pocket.

I guess he was continuing his mission. Looking for a lost soul who genuinely sought answers. I secretly hoped that it would read 'ha ha, fooled ya!' They're the kind of messages I receive from men nowadays.

Or, perhaps the Gypsy would have surprised me. Love wouldn't be a mad hippy rage or a romp in a bush. It would be something institutionalised, as conforming and sterile as a barcode or tax-filing.

Whatever it said, my days as a Polish bride or as Robinson Crusoe are numbered. Whether I like it or not, I get the feeling that life is a ticking time bomb. Only the genuine gypsies with notes and pockets survive. The rest of us get eaten up by the barcodes. Who knows, I'm yet to meet the guy who's carrying around 'the meaning of life'.