“Would you still love me if I were a cockroach?” he insisted on hearing my answer to the most cringe question in the 21st century. I didn’t want to answer, and I still adamantly don’t. Who asks this kind of question on a date, let alone the third?
I stared at him, slowly blinking. I was wondering if he knew how absurd and ludicrous he sounded. Maybe he didn’t, but I hoped my face would convey the exasperation I felt.
On a serious note, I don’t know why people take great pleasure in asking dull-witted, nearly laughable questions. These questions don’t just work with cockroaches. They also work with worms, spiders, or whatever other repellent insects humankind has found worthy of enumerating and calibrating the extent to which humans would go for love.
Again, the concept of love being reduced to hypotheticals and exoskeletons.
Why doesn’t one ask, “Would you still love me if I were a serial killer?” or “If I had cheated in my past 17 relationships, in light of the fact that I only got caught 17 times, would you still date me?” Absurd, but at least it’s more logical than the previous question this guy kept asking me with a serious, solemn face. He could even curtail and tone it down by asking if I would still love him if his breath stinks or if he snores like a 70-year-old, waiting-to-die man. Spoiler: he does snore like that.
I mean, be for real. Why do we resort to a full-blown metamorphosis into a creature with a bad reputation? Malaysians literally call a flying cockroach “babi.” And now he wants me to tell him if I’d take a shine to that creepy-crawly as a lover.
“Cock…roach,” I repeated in my head. What a bizarre word, when you think about it. Unlike ‘butter’ and ‘fly,’ or ‘grass’ and ‘hopper,’ these two fiendishly disgusting words are stitched together to form yet another fiendishly disgusting word. “I don’t think so,” the answer easily escaped my mouth.
His face changed when I said that. But what did he expect me to do? Had he expected me to giggle endearingly and say, “Yes, of course, darling, I’d cradle your six legs and whisper sweet nothings to your antennae”? God knows I wouldn’t even stay in the same building as Mr. Roach. I took a sip of water. Time—my only ally.
“I don’t even like you as a human yet,” I said. I know it sounded spiteful, but I was just trying to wisecrack. A playful banter, you know? And, wonderfully enough, he let out a slight grin.
“I know it’s not cockroaches you’re worrying about.” That wasn’t the last thing he heard from me—it’s far from that. But if I were to write down every bit of our conversation, you’d be reading an inexpensive 500-page paperback.
To encapsulate, things have gotten deeper since then, and we’re still going steady to this very day. Might as well tie the knot any minute. We talked about it and cleared things up. I hated cockroaches, which led to my response being an undeviating and incontestable “no.”
The nature and essence of that question were supposed to simply make us chuckle or chortle, not to take things a little too philosophically. Plainly enough, asking “Would you love me at my worst?” too soon would have made it ten times cringier. But not just that—it might be harder to answer that “much more realistic” question than that frivolous cockroach one.
Would I love him as a cockroach? No. And as we were speaking back then, I wasn’t even sure I’d love him as his worst self. And that’s the real question, wasn’t it? That was what he wanted to know. He wanted an affirmation that I’d love him at his most fallible. If I would love him as an ever-erring, error-prone mammal that he is. Instead of using the word “human,” he disguised it with insects.
“Would you still love me when I start to become… unlovable?”
Oh, yes. That’s the word he should have used: unlovable. A cockroach is unlovable; that’s why we use it in lieu of ourselves. We were really just costuming it in absurdity. We humans are the masters of concealment, after all.
“Unlovable” has so many definitions, so many connotations and interpretations, depending on who you ask. To me, it’s simply the things humans possess that I dislike or disagree with. In the realm of love, it could be everything unattractive and obnoxious someone carries. The most taboo revelations of all—not money, not height, not even sex. It can be everything from bad eating habits, laziness, messy rooms, nerdy interests, guilty pleasures, bodily imperfections, insecurities, mood swings, and so many more unspoken things. Those concealable things. Those we keep from the public eye and only materialise in the comfort of solitude.
Surely when humans fall in love, they will most likely live together. And suddenly, all of the hidden things start to be discovered. Our self-surmised “sheer hideousness” that we stashed away eventually comes out. And our beloved significant other would need to get accustomed to and seasoned in our foibles. That’s the basic presumption. But it’s also deeply human to have ubiquitous doubts. That’s why we question.
It’s just the fear that one day someone will see the real us and decide to leave. So, instead of asking about the things that are unlovable about us and how far they would love those unlovables, we joke about roaches.
If he had asked me if I would love his unbearable self—his messy hairstyle, his quirky sense of humour, his blood-curdling snore, all of his alien idiosyncrasies—obviously, I’d have said no. As a matter of fact, I’m still not keen on those sometimes. But never once did I question being with him, choosing him. It’s the “human” in him that I love.
I’d choose his snore over anyone else’s noiseless sleep every single time. And I would not choose someone else’s however-enticing hair over his uncombed, tousled one. And the list goes on. I didn’t understand why. It didn’t make sense to me that I could loathe small things about him while also finding cherishment in doing so. I find it compelling that I’m able to love him more in spite of those dearths and inadequacies—or even weaknesses, if you’d prefer to call them that.
Now, I’ve come to the conclusion that perfection is a revolting idea. It’s sickening, at least to me. Nobody is perfect, and we’re meant to be imperfect. Not just that—we’re meant to find delight in doing so.
When he first met me, he tried to be perfect. He wanted so badly to wed me that he thought he needed to be quintessentially flawless—that he needed to be my ideal type so that he would be worthy of me. How chucklesome.
That’s why he didn’t laugh like he normally does. He didn’t let out his rowdy laugh so that I wouldn’t be scared to date a mirthful guy who laughs all the time and takes almost nothing seriously. He wouldn’t sleep before I did on the overnight train to Paris so that I wouldn’t get annoyed when he snuffled in his sleep. He didn’t even wear any sleeveless shirts around me—or no shirt at all, for that matter—even when he wanted to, in the compulsion of summer sunshine, so that I wouldn’t see his scars, which he self-proclaimed as unsightly.
I understood his point of view. Many of us want to be, or at least come across as perfect. So we hide ourselves from plain sight. I’m not just talking about a man to marry; I’m talking about everyone you choose to be in close proximity with in life. Siblings, friends, you name it. Show them the real you.
“Would you love me if I’m human?” Perhaps this is the most fitting question now.
Because the last time I met him, he wasn’t at his most “human” self—he was acting like a saint. Do I need to remind us of our nature? As far as I’m concerned, we are as far from being paragons of virtue as we are from Earendel. So we ought not to be.
And little did he know, I love to whine and grumble about all of his “human” imperfections. Those vagaries are what keep our love vigorous. Humans surely can be alarmingly ugly at times, but let’s not disregard our beauty.
“Cause all of me loves all of you
Love your curves and all your edges
All your perfect imperfections”
All of Me, John Legend
Since he loves this song so much, he should have known better than to shilly-shally about my unconditional love, or that of others. It’s time we believe in true, unequivocal love. It’s about time we romanticise our harmless, ignorable blemishes.
Also, let’s steer clear of using cockroaches, lizards, or anything along those lines for metaphorical “what if” questions. It’s an oddly specific and slightly unsettling place to draw inspiration from. Come on, boys (or girls), be creative in expressing your love.
To be in love is to be seen—and to stay, even when what is seen is not beautiful.
Oel ngati kameie.
Yours, imperfectly,
LOX