Love Is Blindness

Folks are already taking notice of one of the biggest themes in Criminal: that sometimes love can blind you from all other reason. It can make you do things you ordinarily wouldn’t do, can make you like things you wouldn’t ordinarily like, and in general can cause you to become a completely different version of yourself–one you can’t even explain to your family or friends. To help celebrate Criminal‘s release this week, I asked some of my author friends to talk about a time when a love (of anything)  had maybe skewed their normal perception of things. From Ayn Rand, to TV show characters, to the Twilight Zone magazine, here were their obsessions:

Lucas Klauss (Everything You Need to Survive the Apocalypse):
My freshman year of college, I became infatuated with a woman. I didn’t know her and she was never even aware of my existence. But I’m pretty sure that if I, like one of her heroes, had singlehandedly invented a time machine and used it exclusively for the selfish purpose of meeting her, Ayn Rand would have thought I was pretty amazing too.

I understand now how common it is fall head-over-heels for Rand and her novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, especially as a young person. But back then I felt that my devotion to her fiction and philosophy meant I was in some way special—at least in comparison to the barbarians living on my dorm hall. And at a time when I often felt insecure, lonely, and directionless, I needed that ego boost. To this day, I credit her bootstraps philosophy and odes to individual audacity with helping me find the courage to pursue a career in writing.

But what I didn’t see then is that, by falling for Rand, I was really becoming enamored of myself. The dominant mood of her novels and political writing, even stronger than her sense of awe at human achievement, is one of defiant alienation. Rand and her characters revel in being misunderstood outsiders—and, far too often, so did I.

At a university where football games were school-wide celebrations, I skipped the pre-game parties and sold my tickets to other students at hugely inflated prices—and then used the money to buy DVDs to watch by myself. In a town with tens of thousands of people from all over the South, the country, and the world, I pretty much stuck with the people I knew from my high school an hour down the road. And as a guy who entered college with basically no romantic experience, I left college as a guy with basically no romantic experience.

Looking back on my time with Ayn Rand, like looking back on any failed relationship, it’s tempting to place most of the blame on her. But that would be ridiculous, particularly since she was dead at the time. Rand’s worldview was a justification for my insularity, not the cause of it. And if I invented a time machine now, I wouldn’t go back and stop myself from reading The Fountainhead or Rand from writing it. What a sad waste, when there are so many incredible things in spacetime beyond my precious self.

I’d probably go check out the dinosaurs instead. And ultimately, strangely, I’d have Ayn Rand to thank for it.

Rebecca Serle (When You Were Mine):

When I was fifteen I fell passionately, obsessively in love with a boy. His name was Max Evans, he was from another planet (figuratively and literally), and he was fictional. He was the lead on a little-known show called “Roswell,” and I thought we were soul mates. I was so convinced of this, in fact, that I remember thinking, with my already make-believe inclined brain, that maybe aliens existed. Maybe Max Evans was just one of many sweet, caring, brooding, devastatingly handsome high school extraterrestrials. Graham Becker never got ache. That had to mean something.

I loved Max, but I was not loyal. No, I had a wandering eye. I starting seeing Pacey Witter on the side, and soon our love was in full bloom. Max didn’t know. He didn’t have to. After all, what Pacey and I shared took place far from Roswell…and only on Thursday nights. And then there was Angel. But we don’t have time to get into that.

These boys all shared something in common, and no, sadly, it was not me. They were fearless in the face of love. They would do anything for these girls—the ones with the perfect hair who would disappear into their arms like the light at sunset. I wanted that. But at fifteen, living vicariously through Liz, Joey and Buffy would have to do.

I could tell you how I grew up and got over this. How now, a real adult, I am far on the other side from these adolescent fantasies. But the truth is, it didn’t end in high school. The fictional romances of my life have always messed with the real ones. There was the time an ex neglected to buy me a wall (not cool). Or when it turned out the college guy didn’t really know how to fly (that was just a metaphor). They have tripped me up. They have set my expectations disastrously high. And yet—

Maybe that isn’t such a bad thing. Maybe true love has a little bit of magic in it, a little bit of scripted dialogue, some music swells, a perfect rain kiss. I mean, Stefan Salvatore is currently single.

Elizabeth Eulberg (Revenge of the Girl With the Great Personality, Take a Bow, Lonely Hearts Club, et al):

Trust your gut.

I tell myself that all the time, and generally, my gut is spot on. The only problem is that if you’re not truthful to yourself, your instincts can only take you so far.

I was in a relationship a few years ago, I wouldn’t call it “love” but it would be fair to say it was a relationship that I was very excited about and thought could be something big. Then he cheated on me. He confessed the next day. He was drunk, he didn’t know her, blah, blah, blah. At first I was upset, and walked away. But then I did something stupid. I took him back.

Don’t do it; you know it’ll happen again.

The entire time we were together my conscience kept nagging me and nagging me, but I ignored it. I thought I could reason with my gut.

How can you really trust him again?

He told me. He didn’t have to tell me, he wanted to be honest. I should respect him for coming clean.

Oh really? How do you know he’s not doing it right now? Where is he anyways? Why is he not returning your calls?

He’s busy. We’re both busy and traveling for our jobs. I don’t understand how he has time for a relationship with me. There’s no way there’s somebody else. Plus, I don’t want to be one of those needy girls.

You’re an idiot. I’m out.

I kept lying to myself. Something was bothering me, but I told myself whatever I thought I should hear instead of the truth. My stomach was in constant knots, and I felt sick. Not the I’m-so-in-love-and-happy-my-stomach-is-doing-flips, but the you’re-an-idiot-and-you-know-it-you-don’t-deserve-to-be-treated-like-this kind.

So I finally decided to confront him. I knew something was wrong, and it was time that I stopped lying to myself and found out the truth. So I asked him, “How many people are you dating?” His response, “One.” Oh, okay…

Hey, remember me? I’m baaack. Are you really going to fall for that?

So then, I kid you not, I said, “Including me or in addition to me?” He paused and then replied, “In addition to you.” Yep, what was I thinking? What a d-bag! So I ended things that minute and vowed to never ignore my intuition again. Not even for a cute boy.

Ahem.

Okay, honestly, he wasn’t that cute. I have no idea what I was thinking. But he did loosely inspire an idiot ex-boyfriend in one of my books so I at least got something out of it!

Yep, a successful writing career and he’s still a loser.

Why did I ever stop listening to you?

Don’t ever do it again.

Oh, I won’t. Believe me, I won’t.

Jeff Hirsch (The Eleventh Plague, The Darkest Path):
I couldn’t even tell you the name of my first love. All I can say is where I found it: in the pages of the short-lived Twilight Zone Magazine.

TZ came in the mail each month and it was crammed full of horror stories, sci-fi stories, fantasy stories, magical realist stores–all by some of the biggest speculative fiction writers of the day. Reading those stories was like having my mind blown apart and reassembled. I was just starting to write at the time and, as is often the case with teen infatuations, I ended up bending my entire life around this thing I loved. I wrote Twilight Zone stories and I wrote a lot of them.

Of course, like all teen loves, a long term thing wasn’t in the cards. Over the years I dove into a succession of equally intense relationships. I fell for Tom Waits hard and began writing rhythmic be-bop poetry about small time low-lives and carnival barkers. (Which, as a middle class teen from Virginia are things I knew oh so much about) Tennessee Williams got me attempting grand, lyrical plays about faded glory and dark family secrets. When I encountered Erik Ehn and Jose Rivera and Caryl Churhill and Naomi Iizuka in grad school all I wanted to do was write reality-bending, language-based freakouts.

Now I’m older my head isn’t quite so easily turned. The boundaries between who I am and the things I love are stronger, allowing me to be influenced without being overwhelmed. I guess the expected–and easy–moral to the story would be that I finally stopped trying to write like other
people and became my own true self. That sounds good, but I don’t think it’s an accurate way to look at how a writer, or any artist, matures.

You don’t leave your influences behind. Just like with romantic relationships, each one bends the trajectory of your life. I think most writers and artists are the culmination of their influences. We take things in, discard some and keep others. What’s originality anyway? Or creativity? I don’t think it’s a divine spark, something wholly new and individual. I think it’s more in the way we combine and process our influences.

In the end, maybe who we are is the combination of everything we’ve ever loved.

So, as you can see, the love of pretty much anything can obsess you, whether it’s a real person or not. So I’d love to hear, in comments, about how perhaps you’ve been blinded by love, either seriously or in a silly way.

Thanks, everyone, for sharing your stories, and here’s to all of us ultimately finding love that allows us to see things clearly.