I have, as my title, "My Secret Shameful Love," might suggest, a secret love, which is, you know, shameful, and also? Secret. I have enjoyed her embrace in my sunroom, in full view of the yuppies and hookers and homeless guys passing outside the window, and on the street downtown. This morning, she made me smile that way as we walked on Randolph Street past the Cadillac Theater. The tourists by the Allegro and the commuters walking in the other direction gave us the fish eye, and continued on their way. Writing these posts has given me a strength I never had before to admit the truth, to bring out into the light all the parts I have heretofore kept shadowed. And so at last I can admit this most shameful of loves.

            I love snow.

I love the way it looks and feels and smells. I love the hush outside when it's falling. When I had a driveway, I used to love to go outside and shovel the snow off it, until my obnoxious elderly next-door-neighbor would come out with his fucking snowblower and shatter the calm and stink up the air, and also, not coincidentally, leave a nice slick patch of ice for any passing pedestrians. As much as I love snow, so much do I hate snowblowers; if anyone is to blow my secret shameful love, it will be me. Or, you know, the guy who clears the sidewalks for my condo. He's pretty much a eunuch, though, so that's okay; no jealousy, snow-clearing guy. All respect. Sorry about your bike-riding accident.

            Our dalliance started out the way most loves in Hollywood movies do, with the two protagonists hating one another. At the age of 17, I had never laid eyes on snow; my visits north of my subtropical home in Miami all took place in summertime. Hell, my parents had moved down to Miami Beach in large part to escape snow, and they didn't need any reminders of winter in Brooklyn. So we met cute, snow and I: stepping out of the music building on my college campus in Maine, a building that would later witness one of the epic kickings of my ass (I failed Music Appreciation in that building) (apparently I was not properly appreciative) (actually, I forgot to do the listening until the night before the final; as there were 18 hours of listenings, and only 8 hours until the final, I said, "Fuck it," smoked a joint and went to bed) (the test was half theory and half recognition; I scored a perfect 50), I took one, two three steps in my totally-slick-on-the-bottom Frye boots (you can see how this might not end well), at which point the world upended itself and I was enjoying a new perspective on the falling snow: looking up at it from the ground, where I was lying on my ass. Huh, I thought. That pretty stuff is taunting me; I refuse to be intimidated. Up I got, and one, two, three steps later, down I went on that very selfsame ass. Again. Some more. Fuck! I thought. This is going to be tricky. She's playing hard-to-get. Or, I considered, not playing at all, but just hard to get. Carefully I picked myself up yet again, brushed off the offers of help, despite the tiny nubbin of bloody bone sticking out of my wrist, and carefully attempted to make my way back to my dorm. I say, "attempted," because that bitch snow (sorry, my love; beautiful crazy brilliant bitch, just like all the women I've really loved) smacked me down yet again. And as I lay on the ground outside the music building, contemplating the feasibility of remaining in my dorm room until spring, a black and blue mark the size of a dinner plate already forming on my ass, I thought the phrase that I would repeat to every woman who so thoroughly kicked my ass that I could make no other reply: I love you, darling.

            Also: nice use of the Rule Of Threes, snow.

            Snow rebuffed my pleas for years, as demonstrated by the multiple sprained wrists and ankles I suffered the first few years after I met her, the time my car almost went off I-95 on my way to the Portland Jetport, her wet taunting fingers inside my L.L. Bean parka and down my back, and in my face and my ears, like a frozen wet willy. Even when I moved to Chicago, snow rejected me, formed deep ruts my car couldn't pull out of to park, spun me off Lake Shore Drive. But I knew she'd come around.

            And she has. She lies horizontal on the wind outside my sunroom, allowing me to admire her. I love feeling her all around me, seeing her white hands close around me, blocking all else out. She makes me feel warm in the morning and calm at night. I should be ashamed, but god help me, when it's hot outside, all I can think of is her.

            I know everyone hates you, baby, but they just don't understand you the way I do. And for fuck's sake, it's Chicago; if they don't like snow, they should move to a bayou. Or worse, a canyon in Los Angeles.