Business People in Love
Business people in love? I watch them, dark suit-clad, kissing as passionately as two business people can kiss at two o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon. From the bus stop where I’m standing, they look like two teenagers in lust. It strikes me as comical, the way she in her no-nonsense pumps leans into him. He clutches her face with one hand and a leather briefcase with the other. I can’t tell which he is holding tighter, but there is a desire being displayed before me that is both compelling and frightening. Frightening because it threatens the very status quo they both seem to represent with their smart pinstripes and buttoned-down, corporate lawyerly charm.
Business people in love. Surely there are thousands, maybe even millions of them, here, there and everywhere. But normally we do not witness these business people kissing their business counterparts on lunch hour. We feel secure in the knowledge that these business people know how to keep their feelings under wraps during business hours. They work hard and play hard, but they never kiss hard or experience anything akin to the mushiness of love during the 9 to 5 grind.
They may ask for their lattés with friendly smiles, but underneath they are sharks that keep swimming in search of fresh blood. They may look like human beings, but they rarely experience emotions, unless of course you count anger.
Business people. In love! I can’t get over it. And they are still locked together in this posed embrace. Perhaps that is the point. It is another surface, another mirage, another circus sideshow in which I am the freak for watching. Is this a studied embrace or a real display of affection? It is impossible to tell from this distance. It is impossible to ask them, contorted as they are, lips mashed together, tongues caressing, breathing each others’ breath. The business people are oblivious, as they should be if they are truly in love. Yet their oblivion could be defiant, purposeful. Maybe they know exactly who is observing them. Is this another attempt to get a raise? Perhaps it’s a way to get back at an unfaithful lover? These business people cannot really be In Love. Can they? What do they know about four letter words that do not begin with D, S or F?
This is silly of me. Business people are allowed to fall in love. Surely they do this sort of thing all the time, just like the rest of us. They’re not robots, they’re not broken human beings who only lust after money. They are human and they want to be loved. Right? Yet I can’t remember ever seeing another business-suited couple kissing like that. Not out in the open, on the sidewalk of a busy street, oblivious to the world driving past them. So it strikes me as odd, as very odd indeed, and makes me want to record the moment for posterity. To pick it apart and analyze it. To theorize about those business people and their love. It is ridiculous, but I cannot help it. I want to know the whys and wherefores. I want to understand this mysterious thing people call “love.”
So maybe I am the alien creature, recording human emotions and attempting to understand what is so obvious, so easy. Perhaps it is the writer who has never experienced love, who does not trust herself to be real, to fall, to kiss the way those two business people kiss–honestly, openly and without fear. I wonder, because this is my nature, but I do not believe it, not really. I know that inside I am a vulnerable, messy human being who has loved deeply, and I know that somehow, somewhere, when I least expect it, that lightning bolt will hit again, knocking me unconscious and sending me hurtling into a relationship with a lover that has the potential to destroy me. I know that these business people are like me, for a few moments of their lives, before they return to their desks and get back to the hard work that only business people can do.
Val Capone is an occasional Black Heart correspondent.
