The Reality of Love

This summer I have dipped into the seedy underbelly of community college.  Having lost credits upon transferring schools, sucking it up and taking a summer class became a necessity.  I choose public speaking not only because it was guaranteed to transfer, but also because I figured it would be exceptionally easy.  Thus far, my prediction has been accurate and I have breezed through the first few weeks without so much as cracking a book.  

Three days a week I go to class and am given fairly obvious advice on rhythm, poise, and diction that most of my fellow classmates can't quite seem to grasp.  For most, the seemingly repetitive nature of the class would be rather dull, but every Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday I awake with a certain curious excitement.  I have been through countless hours of high school, attended classes at two reputable colleges, and studied with friends from all over the world, and yet there is nothing quite like community college.  The class is full of college dropouts who fancy themselves as "hipsters" questioning the social construct of education while at the same time puttering through the very system that they carry such disdain for, and middle aged women going through a mid-life crisis, hoping that education will be the key in redefining themselves.  We often do b.s. group work and I mutter comments about the class being a complete joke while others look at me startled, because to them giving a five minute lecture or writing an analysis on some famous speech is pretty damn arduous.  

What interests me though is not what the professor forces down our throats during lecture, but rather what I learn from those around me.  I always seem to end up in the same group working with the mother of two who met her husband in the 7th grade, the divorced Russian who has teenagers and seems fascinated by my experiences with the opposite sex, and the woman in her 50s with a seemingly endless supply of tales about men.  I find it unusual how comfortable they all seem with me.  Surprisingly however, their stories of love, men, and sex don't revolve around romantic dinners and passionate encounters, but rather about disappointment and heartbreak.  Through all the failure a certain animosity has grown.  Gone from their minds is the possibility that a man can not only be your lover, but your best friend as well.  Instead are the stories of men standing them up on dates, and as they like to say "constantly thinking with their dicks."  To them, men are selfish, and incapable of any real emotion.  Its as if their heart has been broken one too many times, and the romantic notion of love that they must have once had is gone and irreplaceable.  

I find it sad that they think of men this way.  They are so convinced that they are even comfortable sharing their beliefs with me.  Now it is obvious that I haven't always been the best dater.  I've cheated on high school girlfriends, and hooked up with girls in college and then never called, but I like to think that a piece of all of us is capable of raw and boundless love.  When expressing this opinion, my classmates label me a "romantic" and "too young and innocent" to really know what love is all about.  If this is true, I hope for my sake I never discover the truth.  I'd much rather live in illusion, than deal with the reality that they face.