laughter

**too much information warning: if reading corny, lovey-dovey stuff makes you squeamish, please skip the first paragraph and proceed to the second... or maybe skip the whole post**

two nights ago, i laid in bed and cried. i wasn't crying because i was sad or because i was angry or because i was sexually frustrated. no. i was crying because i love chris so much that it fills me up and spills out. sometimes this overflow takes the form of hysterical giggling, sometimes it takes the form of tears. my tears (oh, god, i think i am making myself nauseous with this stuff, but alas, the story needs to be told) that night were fueld by a mental picture that i couldn't erase from my head or my heart; it just kept replaying over and over again. chris was sitting on our moldy green couch, and he was laughing. yeah, that's it. that's all. but bear with me! this is not some hysterial, overly-romantic rambling about how very very cuuuuute my boyfriend is when he laughs. this is a hysterical, overly-romantic rambling about the nature of laughter itself.

chris's laughter is unique in my world. and i don't use that world lightly; i recognize that unique means singular, not just weird or strange or a little bit different but not really that different. what makes his so special? well, i don't want to get to the climax before you've had some foreplay, so i'll save that for later.

how often do you really listen to people laugh? i mean, we hear it, we hear it all the time, but how often to we really listen? what does laughter have to say? what does it mean? i have one friend who only chuckles quietly under his breath, never letting loose with a laugh. another friend laughs, really laughs, when someone has put down another person; he only laughs at other people's discomfort or awkwardness or social retardation. another friend laughs at his own jokes, never anyone else's. when you really listen, you can hear in laughter a multitude of emotions: sarcasm, cycnicism, derision, happiness, amusement, embarassment, hysterics. laughter is like a hidden language, or maybe a dead language, one that we use to communicate but is rarely understood or correctly interpreted. the next time you hear someone laugh, turn on your universal translator and listen for that language. do you hear discomfort under the peals? cyncism under the snorts? sexual attraction under the giggles?

since i've never been one for a whole lot of foreplay, let's get to the important part. what makes chris's laughter unique is that, unlike many others, and i would argue unlike all others, his laughter does not contain one iota of anything negative, his language is easily understood. when he laughs, the only things i hear are enjoyment, amusement, and genuine delight. i want to say that his is like the laughter of a child, but even children sometimes laugh at other people's misfortune, even their tinkling laughter can contain a hint of dislike. when chris laughs, his eyes crinkle up and he flashes teeth all the way back to his molars, and if you really freaking listen you hear nothing but pure joy.

i wish i could laugh like that, but since i can't, i'm just happy to be able to inspire it.