Love and Paradise at Superdawg

How does one write a love story that is not tragic? Must all love be tragic as all love must end as the story ends? The plots are basic. The characters love, but they are flawed and the love ends. The story is tragic because the lovers had a glimpse of paradise, but humanity prevailed: mistakes were made, lives and loves were lost, and grief makes the most bitter sort of loneliness. Or, there is the other option. The characters either search or wait for someone to love; life and circumstances get in the way, but this time love prevails. The plot ends with the final image and the narrator claims “and they loved.” But then the book is closed. The end, and the silence that comes with it. We know that love ends when there are no longer any more words to be spoken.

But, I want to revise. I want to reverse the plot and begin with two tragic figures who find love, and therefore redemption. I can no longer tolerate the banishment of the flawed and damaged human, which is every human, from that which is the Edenic paradise we all hope to find and prove ourselves worthy of admittance. I have lost hope and find no such ability, and yet, here lies the crux of my revision. I have decided that I no longer want Eden or paradise or the land of God where all is love. If this love is unavailable, I choose to find another love elsewhere, though elsewhere must lie in the land of the flawed, where the Devil waits, and our bodies willingly succumb to temptation. And this is where these two particular characters of this particular story find themselves.

These characters are searching for their own personal redemptions and chances to prove some sort of worthiness despite their faults of being born as a man and as a woman. They have been looking for that sort of spiritual love that is promised, but are beginning to grow skeptical. They have yet to revise their terms, but they are ready to begin to revise their strategy. “We’ve been going about it all wrong,” our characters begin to say. Plot option #2 never seems to occur in this life. Life and circumstances have yet to move out of the way. The kind of love they desire has yet to prevail.

If we look at it from a metaphoric standpoint, the trip to Superdawg is suddenly a quest to remember a past that is as deep as the past goes, deep as the beginning, the genesis of all stories. It is a story of memory, the remembrance of something Edenic. It is a tale of searching, longing, and hoping. To go back to the beginning is always the first strategy of the revisionist.

It terms of setting, the Superdawg is the representation of American nostalgia, which is very fitting as our two characters are American and are feeling nostalgic. The venue is a hot dog stand and car hop at the Devon and Milwaukee intersection in northwest Chicago. The packaging of the hot dogs proudly cites the vending history “since 1948” and the design probably hasn’t changed much since that time. To visit Superdawg is to return to the era of post-WWII capitalism and the creation of the nuclear family, all of whom happen to love wieners in phosphorescent green relish to go along with their fries and malts. This is Americana in its prime. Or rather, this is Americana in its prime until we remember that the immediate post-WWII image of America is also the image of blond-haired blue-eyed Dicks and Janes who chase after their dog Spot, happy in the land of pre-Civil Rights, pre-burning-of-the-bras America, but that is a different story. The Superdawg, for this story, is simply lost America, simply simplified America.

There is one other important feature to this setting. On the roof of the hot-dog hut stand two dogs. The boy dog wears what appears to be wrestling or caveman attire. He is masculine and his strength is heroic, and at night, the red lights of his eyes flash one then the other, wink wink, to the girl hot dog. Her bluely lit eyes flash back simultaneously, blink blink, clicking together at the same time. The image is clear, in terms of the metaphoric standpoint. The boy hot dog flashes his red demonic eyes to the girl. Like the fly in the Italian Renaissance paintings that depict Christian scenes of the Madonna and Child, we remember that the devil and temptation are always present. Wink wink, flashes the seducer’s eyes, but remember, this is before the fall. This is our nostalgia, which is always our Eden. This is the land of God where all that is God is all that is love, rendering the language of love unnecessary. Love is not spoken; it is breathed and shines through every porous fabric. The word “love” itself is no longer stated because to define love is to say that love is neither hate nor ambivalence, neither of which exists on this side of Heaven’s gate. The definition dissolves and language dissolves. In the beginning, there was the word, and the word was always “God,” always singular. The garden has become simply God. Simply, simplified God.

The plot goes something like this: A man and a woman have an affair. It is not the first affair for either. There have been past loves, lovers, and heartbreaks. They are reaching the age of cynicism that comes with too many failed relationships, too many nights spent alone and lonely. And yet, this affair has begun, despite all past occurrences giving testimony as to why new affairs should not begin. What does bind them is the belief that somehow, together, through each other, they can find redemption and deliverance from past grievances. The relationship itself has become a reconciliation of all past errors, the too many words spoken, the too many words unspoken, the failed compromises, and the one compromise too many.

So, the man and the woman go to Superdawg and they tell each other that the affair is over. There will be no more sex, they say, because like always, sex has only complicated the affair. Remember, this affair was never about sex. It was about loneliness and searching for the kind of redemption that allows them once again to love and be loved. “We’ve gone about it all wrong,” they repeat. They think for the moment that they are ready to deny their bodies in hopes of finding that which is spiritual.

But, the problem lies in the return. Once the garden was abandoned, Adam and Eve found themselves unable to reenter. And yet, they, and we, still try to find the hidden door with the secret key, waiting, hoping, longing, to find ourselves once again in the paradise that is Eden, as the Christians might say. (Or in our mother’s wombs, as the Freudians might say. The space of the womb and the space of Eden are similar. We feel immortal and inherently connected to the universe that surrounds us.) But, the impossibility of return makes our tale an endless tale that is doomed to repeat itself throughout all remaining time and narrative, as all stories lie in the conflict of trying to find what was lost.

But, what if the return were possible? This is fiction, so let us say that it is possible. The doors to Eden have been opened and redemption can be found. The man and the woman go to Superdawg carrying their nostalgia for the days when love was boundless and infinite and laid upon their laps always as a gift from God Himself. And in this trek toward the simplicity of the past, the man and the woman do not need to clarify that there will be no sex because love is now spiritual on this other side of Eden’s door. They can breath in the air of the other and know they are loved while the new-age gurus shout “hallelujah” because love and God and the cosmos are finally one at long last and spirits soar and the body is no longer relevant because this is the love that follows through the grave and our man and woman love and become the stars and the very universe itself.

Yes, this is all quite within the realm of possibility, but wink wink, the red lights flash and the incubus of temptation is always present, and the man and the woman remember that they paid a price for this quiet bliss.

Caught up in the spiritual connection and binding of souls, the man and the woman begin to feel their bodies ache. Their spirits have become one with the cosmos but the body stands alone and living. It is the body that desires to break free as individual, complete and separate from the world that is God. It is the body that desires to walk back out through the door that lead to Paradise and the devil winks and tempts and shows them the way. In this paradise of love, the soul quiets itself, but the body’s ears strain to hear, and its eyes blink slowly back, unable to look away from the wink wink of red flashing eyes. After all, they discover the search always lied in the hunger of their bodies. The devil is still winking and they want to take in the body and the blood to find and absorb holy and sacred love and knowledge into the bloodstream, as if knowing and loving were like the most nutritious sort of vitamins that circulate forward, inch by inch, beating to their hearts.

And now, we have left our man and woman in their metaphoric Eden, symbolic of simpler times, before the sexual revolution when all children were loved by their parents, and the feeling of oneness is breathed in, quickly filling their lungs. But the devil winks, and desire burns, and bodies want to once again be alive, and in between every breath, the man and the woman yearn to break themselves free and our paradise is no longer as simple as it once seemed. In the land of the immortal, the life of the body is no longer sacred, but the desire to consume is still present; the body always hungers. So let us break them free and return them once again to this side of Eden’s doors where the body lives and breathes and fucks and dies, becoming yet another kind of holiness. The man and the woman get in the car and drive closer to the city center. His hand touches her leg. She leans toward him, and the heat of her breath brushes against his neck. Quietly whispered in the darkness of the car is the softness of the hesitantly murmured words “I love you,” and outside, the road is illuminated by the occasional orange street lights that have created another system of fiery stars, and the light flickers across their skin as if their bodies were set in flames and beginning to brightly burn.