Love Don't Cost a Thing

I awoke this morning and turned on my television to listen to music as I prepared for another day in the American Gulag and back to back I heard Beyonce's "Halo" and Miley Cyrus's "Adore". My mind was suddenly sized by memories of the only 2 men in my life whom I have loved. The men for whom I sacrificed everything and ended up in this supermax cell to write about it all. Love is hard to define. How does one describe a state of mind that renders you literally full of intense sensation yet senseless at the same time? Since every love song ever written does the job better than I could, I'll simply stick to my own thoughts today. First there was Omar. I was a young idealistic congressional intern (a liberal democrat working for a staunchly conservative republican but more on that another time). He was a young drug dealer from Zacatecas, Mexico. How could this not end in disaster one must wonder now? But then I took leave of my senses wholly immersed in bliss, oblivious to all the laws I was led to break to make him happy. It is only fitting that my most vivid memory of him is us sitting in a chauffeured towncar holding hands literally on the steps of the state capitol building as I mentally prepared myself to face the media. another animal I've always loved unreasonably. He put his face close to mine, so close our noses touched, and whispered his love while the media banged the windows impatient for their meal. And then I stepped out, Mr. Untouchable, standing on those steps knowing the venue I had chosen for this interview would confuse the public and infuriate the powerful men who wanted my head. And as I stood under the backdrop of the Capitol dome, my lover slipped away into the darkness of the night leaving me alone to face those insatiable buzzards who would follow me my entire life always praying to find my corpse. I made him rich, he made me incarcerated. He sold me out to the Secret Service and was absolved of his crimes for handing them the villain. Me. For awhile there was reason to my personal relationships. And then there was Edwin. Violent gangbanger with a Hollywood smile. Out relationship was as corrupt as it was passionate. We loved as hard as we fought. But we were not free to live as we chose. We were constrained by the rules of prison guards as much as we were by organized crime. And one day our bosses handed down the edict that another must die. To his credit Edwin considered risking his own life for me. But I chose to take up arms with him. That final day we rarely spoke. Too aware that our end was near. And then silently we danced into the fired of hell leaving rivers of blood behind us. I will never forget the cops standing there with cameras as they waited to assemble an extraction team. Fitting since all my relationships end in the glare of cameras. My life is incredibly complex and conflicted. The very things I love often are my greatest sources of torment. My mother. My fascination with being written about in the press. My lovers. I truly am my own worst enemy. But truly there is something bittersweet about Love. That unparalleled emotion that lies dormant in our hearts inaccessible to all but a few with no preference for good men or bad. Nothing in my life has hurt me so much yet felt to beautiful the whole time. But now I am alone. Left to ponder the past provoked by the soaring lyrics of Sasha Fierce. Like Romeo and Juliet my love is in the end a Shakespearian tragedy. And this is my entry, until next the pen touches paper may all who follow my online leave you hearts open for love, the one thing that hurts so good.

By My Hand - Jeremy Pinson 2/19/14