Back to blog

The perfect love…that is what set off my giggles.

You know that old jokey saying about when they passed out brains you must have been behind the door because you never got any? Well…if ever anyone or any Deity was passing out perfect Love, I was for sure behind the door because in my over seven decades of living i have had plenty of what I would most definitely call love, but none if it was perfect….in fact, all of it was far from!

That being said – much to my mature delight- it all was actually as perfect as any mortal has the right to experience. But what is perfection, anyway?

I think we’ve agreed by now that there is no such thing as “perfect” though that has certainly not kept any of mankind from striving to achieve it anyway….it’s as if it’s very non-existence is what goads us on to make it happen…like some sort of taunting joke, we are egged on to try and try and try to realize the impossible…..which of course is what makes it all so much fun, and so much agony at the same time.

I have had what I would humbly call two loves that have come as close as possible to being that shaggy idea of “perfect” as possible: my first husband Paul, who I married and needed and adored and made love to passionately years before he realized he was gay. Sadly he died three years ago of a rapid destructive lung cancer, but not before we not only understood our devotion to each other was authentic and eternal and not before i introduced him the next love of his life, Stephen…I was my gay husband’s ultimate matchmaker, and therein hangs so many stories that i have written a 70,000 word book about it……i doubt anyone shall ever read those 70,000 words, but I did have to write them…and so I did…entitled FOR BETTER OR FOR BETTER…..it rests comfortably in my bottom desk drawer.
Seocond chance at perfection in love came along 25 years ago – or has it been 26, but who’s counting?- in the form of a gorgeous young actor who I taught at NYU and who fell promptly in love with me when I let him know how gifted I knew him to be….Peter. Whereas I thought it would be a casual fling , harboring the belief that every young actor needed a passionate affair with an older actress for HIS memoir – it turns out our love was legitimate and long-lasting and we are coming up on our 23rd year of marriage ! Peter is 25 years younger than me, and if there was ever a recipe for disaster it was our falling in love, but instead it has turned into the very thing we both needed to understand the actual nature of perfect imperfection! Life’s lessons are many, and I have learned lots of them in the embrace of this dear handsome younger man. I guess that’s what I’d call perfect, but it sure has been a pain the ass a lot was well. But that’s life…in fact that’s as LIFE as Life gets! Peter is always the one who reminds me of that. He is so smart. And i do love him as perfectly as I am able.

But really , to have missed the perfect love?
Good luck to all who seek it, no matter what.