I never used to like Valentine’s Day, but now I love it. Then again, it’s probably because I had a date, and have had one for some time now. I haven’t always had the best of luck, especially as a child, but now, things have never looked brighter. I’m not just in love, but I love, and it’s cool.

So in the spirit of that love, I’d love to tell you about some of the things I love:

I love having my lessons ready for school.

I love my independence.

I love writing, and I love it so much, I schedule the topics in my mind, unless something else comes up that’s a little cooler than that … like a date with a hot girlfriend.

I love my kids. Despite how annoying, frustrating, self-centered, destructive, insane, off-kilter, entitled, sloppy, and often insulting some of them are, the majority of my kids are just that: kids, and you can’t do anything except love them for who they are. They have this energy that makes you want to vicariously live through them almost … I said almost. After all, I like this grown-up version of me.

I love teaching. That’s a whole ‘nother post.

I love orange soda, but it’s a long-lost love since I haven’t been drinking it that much. I’ve maybe that my kind on that citrus divinity once over the last year, and that’s serious.

I love seeing good writers, good bloggers, and good comments, ones that make me brim with ideas and responses throughout the day and keep me writing at night.

I love good sex, and when a quickie is considered 45 minutes.

I love my family and friends for all their support.

I love my creativity and empathy, as they are probably my strongest qualities, even greater than my humility (and sometimes lack thereof).

I love performing poems though I rarely get a chance due to lack of preparation or scheduling conflicts.

I love the Lower East Side, even if it’s become the bastion of gentrification.

I love Freecell, like geezus kristo! I play it during my free periods, on the train home, on the way back, on a trip, and at home when I’m bored.

I love travelling, and it looks like I’ll be doing a lot of that. I’m on an award tour, and I got Muhammad my man, going each and every place with a cam in my hand. Miami, DC, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, and maybe Montreal, here I come.

I love getting angry over educational politics, and just talking as much crap as possible until I become professional again.

I love being an underdog, because it just makes me want to get revenge on the naysayers. I would actually prefer to be the perpetual underdog.

On that line, I love when my team wins championships. My homeroom lost to my advanced class in the first game of the tourney. After that first horrendous loss, and their only loss of the tournament, they acted like sore losers, and I dug into them a little, especially the leader of my team. He’s already got a bad temper, but then he was selfish, shooting something 1 for 8 with no assists. After that game, I practiced after school with them, and taught them a little bit of everything. I attended a couple of their games, coaching them on the sidelines, and they won game after game. Today, fatefully, they went and played the same team that beat them, not once but twice in the same day, so I was excited. I was more pleased that they, for the most part, played with class, and worked hard. They shared the ball and passed like I’ve begged them to.

I love teaching them more than just math.

I love seeing how they overcame the odds.

I would love to see them grow after everything they’ve learned …

jose, who’s got a million things to share, but frankly, i need a nap …

A few weekends ago, I went to AnnMary’s crib, where I got to see Ray and my godson, Josiah. He’s a little browner now (as in more brown, people), and has got the ill forehead. It’s adorable how he’s got a big head like his father and his godfather. I told AnnMary that we might make this baby tri-lingual: English, Cantonese, and Spanish. He’d also learn merengue by at least pre-kindergarten from his own godfather ::ahem::, making him a certifiable ladykiller by 6 years old. At first, we laughed it off, but then she said something peculiar: “No, he’s not leaving me. I’ll always love him, and he doesn’t need any other women. Right Jo-Jo? You only need your mommy, yes you do.”

I can’t blame AnnMary; she’s the mom and that’s what moms usually say. Innocent mothers avoid that Oedipal complex as much as their sons do in their youth, but it’s rather unavoidable in its many forms. Our mothers are the first women we fall in love with. As gross as it sounds, it’s the first womb we come out of, and the first sexual encounter we have. Hence, it’s only right that mothers think of themselves as their sons’ first love. Yet, that mentality also creates a false sense of loyalty that inevitably puts most men in a dichotomous relationship between the “main woman” and the “other woman,” even if that “other woman” is not necessarily a romantic relationship.

It usually starts well past the aunts, female cousins, and friends’ moms because they usually pose no threat. He may look towards them sometimes and fancy whether they might make a better parent for them. They may even inspire visions of fornication in his youth, but usually the boy runs right back to his mother. The treat to the relationship between mother and son is that first girl that the boy likes. The mother’s there with her eagle eye, smiling with her full grin, but also shaping how the boy should think about the girl. Usually, the mother’s there giving sound advice on being a gentleman and just asking about his whereabouts, but implicitly letting him know that she’s the first woman, even when she doesn’t recognize it at first.

But the boy gets comfortable, and sees more than one woman, and that’s when the mother tries to pull in the reigns, which causes an equal and opposite reaction from the boy who starts to see his romantic life as a chance to cheat on his first relationship with his mother. That’s why most guys don’t give details of their whereabouts to their mother. The uncanny part is, the mother can pretty much tell all along what’s happening with his son; after all, taking residence in one’s womb for 9 months lets mothers psychologically hook up to the dude’s mental computer.

Once the boy gains some footing, and the mother realizes that her son’s grown up and out of that first relationship, they enter a new relationship where the mother’s still an adviser, but no longer the first woman. He has a relationship, which of course adds to the old axiom “You can tell how he’s going to treat you by how he treats his mother.” Yet, it’s the mother who he runs to for relationship advice, which of course explains, for some of you ladies, why your ex would come back to you and tell you their relationship problems. Even in the relationship, both women (whoever those two happen to be at the point) always make the man choose, and usually at the expense of the other.

Then of course comes the issue of cheating. All these conjectures I’ve made make me wonder if the idea of always having two women to be beholden to may contribute to the idea of cheating. We can always reason it all out by saying that a mother’s love is different from a girlfriend’s love, but indeed we learned the second by the first. We also think about how, after that mother’s love has changed during the growing phases, who fills in the role of the second woman? While we’ve all speculated the many ways a man would cheat, we never really speculate the myriad of reasons it happens.

And really, as a man, the only way to distract yourself from this onerous act of human behavior is to

1) immerse yourself in a non-human love (i.e. your artwork, poetry, etc.)
2) reasoning that the one you’re with is really the best option and there’s no need for anyone else
or
3) starting a family, knowing that the person you’re with might bear fruit to a daughter who will permanently fill in the role of the second lady. Not so much in a perverted way, but love nonetheless. And so begins the cycle of the Electra complex.

I’ve personally observed this with other men too often (not so much me, though I can see hints of this in my own life), and it’s eerie how they treat their girlfriends, and then treat their mothers after having seen them with their mothers over the years. At least their main women. Many dudes who treat their women like crap tend to have a frustrating relationship with their moms, while dudes who never had a mother around shut down so quickly after they get their heart broken.

Then again, little Jo-Jo doesn’t have to worry about that just yet. He can revel in random women pinching his cheeks and wanting to hold him in their bosoms while the men in the family laugh or get jealous at all that attention. And if anything, he knows he’s always got his mother’s love.

jose, who is sure to get a million and one questions, but this is strictly not a conjecture and not based on scientific research … unless someone has scientific research, then I welcome it, thanks …

p.s. - criticisms are welcome, too. i wrote this post over only a few hours of sleep …

Today, I performed for my kids and they didn’t believe I wrote this myself. Surprise, surprise.

Some of you know me from other incarnations on the Internet. Today, I’m writing on a theme I’ve written before. Just check it.

“For She” © 2007 Jose Vilson

Her spells lay me captive
Her silhouette triggers memories
Of the places in my mind she touched
When she inserted her finger
Through my ears and softly scrapped my lobs
As if she was testing them before
She laid her tongue on it
Outlining my more masculine features
And complementing them with her own femininity
I was already spellbound by her intelligence
She made words I mastered seem brand new
Her deepest seduction came from when she never spoke of it
The activity we could sense between us
The thoughts I already had as she pressed her upper body To my own I tried resistance
But in time, even winter has to give way to summer’s irresistible heat
And ‘twas the season in my more secret areas
She’s now the image I remembered having back when I first thought of having a girl lie on my lap and tease me so
She’s now the goddess so many dreamers and rhapsodists dedicated their sonnets to
She’s now unbuttoning the top of the collar
I thought was too safely locked to begin with
She’s now reaching into another echelon of heaven
And she’s now climbing down my body
But she’s now reaching into my soul
Making peace with the major G_ds
My mind is unclear and totally in lock with hers
Our liquid forms become one through osmosis
Our synergy is focused
But something’s amiss
For such a woman has yet to exist …

peace,

jose