ransvestia

They are here today, gone tomorrow; and once gone, there is not one I will ever see again, or miss, or remember. I had not reflected about this until quite lately, because I have always thought of myself as a recluse.

But actually, I enjoy company, and I have had a long lasting and valuable friendship relations with several women in my life. Some have been with and some wholly without sex. All have been rewarding and valuable. I don't think I am really a loner. I have felt the solitude of my life, and I regret that. It has not been an unhappy life, but it has been lonely. It would have been precious to have some- one to share it with.

As the years pass by, one must expect that the onset of old age can build up a penchant for sentimentality and silliness. Still, I believe that rather than friendship I have always been longing and searching for the sentiment of love in a romantic sense; searching, and it seems, not finding.

I read story after story in TVia, for example, that seem to end, at least I have that impression, in a somewhat flat and uncertain mood: TV couples continue living together "as sisters". All well and good, I understand the dilemma. But it is still absurd that the authors find themselves apologizing because the couples are still married — as most of us are and, presumably, still lovers. Could it not be thought that they become lovers in a romantic sense?

What is so wrong with romantic love? Or have we become so imbued with masculine materialism and just plain toughness, that it escapes us today that love can be a romantic experience, and not just a sexual or erotic experience?

In any marriage, free personality development must imply that each be the guardian of her partner's personality, the guardian, the protector, the mentor, the sister, the lover. Romantic love, instead of blotting out the differences, recognizes that there must be differences; it means learning, observing, and understanding the differences, living with them and loving them.

And to a TV couple, it means surely also rejoicing that added to- getherness which is either there, or that union can not be there; a togetherness and a reliance that never can be taken for granted, that