Love is odd. I can't put a logical finger on it. I've noticed that we all have a personal definition of the physical form that would be ideal. The attributes that we would find the most desireable. Then there is the influence of society and the media. But; what really is the reality of it all.

Let me use myself as an example. I was raised in the fifties in a very strict atmosphere that was anti upper class and anti education.Tthere were only a few glimmers snuck in by my mother. Otherwise the code of life was very unenlighteded and defined by a yes or no answer, never a maybe.

The night I met my wife I was stunned. She met my physical ideal perfectly. However she was the girlfriend then later wife of a man I throughly disliked. The "code" required strict adherence to "thou shall not covet---". There you have it. I ruined my life.

Twenty years later my first wife had found someone 'better'. I was devistated. Holly had left her husband nine years earlier and disappeared. Then a month after my divorce was final she walked into a store where I was.

The rest is history. We were living together two weeks later. The girl I wanted in the first place. Although worse for wear. Then again I didn't look twenty anymore either.

The mind meld took years. I had become educated in the fine arts and theater. She liked shoot em ups. The first time I took her to the symphony she wistled during the ovation. Opera was pretty but she didn't have a taste for it. Travel, well as long as there is shopping and gift shops. Museums were a new world for her. Antiquities? She still doesn't have a good feel for them.

So why is it fantastic? I really don't know. I've been an ovo-lacto vegetarian since I was seventeen making this the fourtith year. She makes T-Rex look like a vegan. She watches TV. I don't. I read to learn. She reads romance novels. I take up causes. She dosen't get it.

I love adventure and risk she seeks security. After fifteen years she still can't read a map. The last time I went for a walk in the woods with her, and it will be the last time, she was finally quiet so that we might see an animal. We were a hundred miles from the nearest hospital and she had been told absolutly no food. It was the season bears fatten. She tapped my shoulder and handed me a peanutbutter and jelly sandwich. Never again.

But it works and we are very happy. The key is that we talk. Openly, frankly, and with the education that both of us have gotten from various trip to therapy. We respect each other and are more eglatarian than any other couple we know and we continue to learn. Well except for the lawn and car repair.

She has made an effort to learn about the things I love and I have come to accept that teddy bears and weapons can coexist. A teddy bear riding an african spear like a witch is only one example. There ougta be a law.

The hardest thing that she tryed to get used to is my work in show business. She has finally learned that it really doesn't represent a business at all. She once asked while waiting backstage for me at the opera if everybody was crazy. She got a resounding yes. It took a long time to get her to dress in black. A flourscent pink t-shirt backstage for Pavoritti got her an instant seat not onstage but on a five gallon bucket on the steel near the spot lights. She was also convinced that we shouldn't be backstage, you could see the fear well up in her eyes. One night, on my step daughter's eighteenth birthday we arranged for her to be responsible for the lighting rig that Alice Cooper was using. Holly froze when Alice walked by then went into a panic. She's better now but it took a long time to convence her that both her daughter and I were working there that night.

So why does it work so good? We work at it and we both want it to suceed. Even though the next time we go to Europe I'm not wasting time while she looks at everything in Harrods and Harveys.