Physiology of a Love Affair

Foreword
In keeping with the tradition started with my last post, I will now have forewords to all my posts. Since I didn't have anything more concrete to say, I'll end the foreword with that. And yes, while I am at it, I'll be trying out a new style of writing, quite like ventriloquism, where a sock puppet "talks" to the performer, comments, criticizes etc. Here, the sock-puppet-speak is mentioned as asides (in parentheses).

Prologue
Most people who know me are already on the floor, laughing and rolling, possibly in vomit. They laugh at my arrogance, of trying to write a piece titled "P. of a L.A." They feel that I am perhaps ill-equipped to discuss the topic. They feel I do not have the required experience. But the trained mind laughs at such obvious logical fallacies. The t. m. discerns the fault in the very foundation that this reasoning is based on. For the lesser mortals, let me vault into an unnecessarily verbose and excruciatingly boring explanation. To be a heart surgeon, one need not necessarily have undergone a cardiac-bypass, or a valve replacement, or an angioplasty, or something equally horrendous sounding. To be a veterinary doctor, one need not be a dog: whether neutered or otherwise, a cat, a canary, or any other animal it is now fashionable to domesticate. Likewise, one need not ever have had a love affair to write about one with absolute certainty. It is here that individuals with extremely high intellectual capacities(similar to those of retarded dodos), such as yours truly, utilize their brilliance to serve mankind. They "think out" the actual mechanics involved, assuming that there are, infact, mechanics involved. Even if there are no mechanics involved, we still think of something. You don't expect the crème de la crème of human intelligence to falter because of such laughable problems, do you?
(Of course there are no asides yet. The sock puppet(SP) speaks only in the real stuff, moron)

The Real Stuff
Let me start off by specifying the immediate need for this article. Following my immensely popular (SP: yeah, right!) "The Complete Idiot's...." I was inundated (SP: blasphemy!) with calls from damsels in distress. They wanted something similar for womankind. Also, there were the usual feminist associations who, having never been picked up(SP: Lesbians!), completely hated the idea of someone else having fun(SP: Typical feminine jealousy.) and therefore asked me to take the stuff off my blog and issue heartfelt apologies for having insulted:
1. Womankind
2. Morons
3. Metrosexual men
4. The Red-Assed Baboon
5. The Republic of Dyspepsia
Of course this is only a representative list, the real thing contained some really obnoxious entries, like "Intelligent Men". Finally, after some careful persuasion (SP: And an impromptu pamphlet on "The Extremely Intelligent Woman's Guide to Hooking Obscenely Wealthy and Equally Dim-witted Men"), they relented and let the modern classic reside on my blog. But not before they made me promise to write a piece on honourable love affairs(SP: He got Community Service, actually). Ergo, I am writing perhaps the first treatise on the physiology of love affairs.

Most affairs of the heart begin with a rather funny kind of feeling in the solar plexus, quite like heartburn, actually. Particularly, the kind of heartburn that you get after consuming rather large portions of dairy products. The trick lies in identifying this feeling. Most learned men go, "This is not acidity. This is not gastroenteritis. This is not dysentery. It must be love!" (SP: Bring on the Nobel!) Following the ingenious diagnosis, it is time to take steps to further the cause of the epidemic. The first step would be to determine the causative: a cure for Tuberculosis could never have been found had it not been known that the disease is caused by Streptococcus. Likewise, in matters of the heart, one must take the pains of ascertaining the accurate cause of the ailment. Having established the real reason, the next step is to communicate to it the effect that it has been producing. Usually this is done through a mutual friend. Fate has a way of dropping mutual friends by the dozen on unsuspecting people. They would best be advised to keep the number of said mutual f's to a minimum. Selecting the least moronic m. f., one then endeavours to convey to the object of interest the state of one's internals and the effect it has been having on them. Or, in some cases, one waits for the pathogen to initiate the contact. This is particularly true of all the love affairs of yore which have not succeeded. Once a communication channel has been established, it is generally seen that one of the parties quickly expresses inability of continued interaction owing to censorship by progenitors. At this stage, the other party, equally quickly, makes vague threats of self-mutilation in response to which one or both parties exercise their vocal chords and/or tear ducts. By now the affair has probably matured enough to withstand each others dietary habits and therefore progresses from fungus lined nooks to deserted food plazas in terms of location. It remains in this stage for quite some time, gestating till one or both parties get accustomed to the stimulus provided by the other and a state of ennui sets in. If the boredom is enough, the love affair ends immediately, in marriage. Otherwise, if the parties are not barbaric enough, they simply part ways and agree never to see each other again. They then move on till they experience the next case of heartburn. Statistics reveal that the people in the second group are avid followers of “The Complete Idiot’s….”
(SP: Bravo!)