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T. C. Boyle: The Love of My Life

In "The Love of My Life", T. Coraghessan Boyle tells the story of a teenage couple, China Jeremy, whose mindless actions completely transform their lives? In the beginning of the short story ,and Boyle paints a pretty picture of a couple obsessively in love with one another. The two have just graduated from high school with a world full of promise ahead. They are both children loved by their parents. Everything in their lives seems in place for them to have happy and successful futures. Their carelessness in conceiving a baby and their subsequent choice to discard of it in a dumpster sets the stage for a future full of misery. "There was no feeling like this, no triumph, no high - it was like being unconquerable, like floating. They kissed every time they met. They said I love you "a hundred times a day". After they discover they are expecting a baby they are in constant battle with each other, "Because they argued now, they wrangled and fought and debated . Jeremy reluctantly answers yes when China asks him if he still loves her.
He has "no smile on his face. No human expression at all. They didn't kiss - they didn't even touch. Jeremy cannot even conjure an image of China in his mind while he is away from her
Jeremy similarly tries to picture his mother but he cannot. He probably feels the same dis attachement from China as he did from his mother, who is shacked up for the weekend with a man that she has been dating. China is even prepared to testify against Jeremy in his trial saying that he acted alone because she never saw the baby.

China is about to graduate from high school with a G.P.A. in the top ten, and has already been accepted to her first choice college after which she plans to go to grad school. Jeremy's G.P.A. too will put his in the top ten of his class and he has already been accepted to Brown College. The excitement of being freshmen in college is short-lived. The great expectations that Jeremy has for college are thwarted on discovering that China is carrying his baby. Ironically, the things that had mattered the most to him just a few days earlier are no longer important because he can no longer have them now that he is expecting a baby. Their new found freedom from high school is short lived. It is while the couple has gone camping that China becomes pregnant and that brings a screeching halt to their blissful existence. He wore a plastic anklet that set off an alarm if he went out the door, and so did she. They are definitely not free at all. However, China forgets her pills when they go camping. China's statement is ironic, almost ominous: "I will, never be like those breeders that bring their puffed-up squalling little red-faced babies to class. From the moment the couple finds out that they are expecting a baby, China takes control and imposes her will on Jeremy. She refuses to get rid of the pregnancy even though it is what Jeremy wants to do and is willing to pay for. China obstinately refuses to see a doctor despite Jeremy's numerous pleadings. She orders him to rent the hotel room. It is China's idea to dispose of the baby. When she gives birth to the baby she commands Jeremy to "get rid of it. Just get rid of it Ironically, however, when trouble hits the fan, and they get arrested, it suddenly becomes important to China to consult with Jeremy. All she wanted - and she didn't care what they did to her, beat her, torture her, drag her weeping through the streets . Because what really mattered was what he was thinking. It is a little too late for China to consider Jeremy's opinion on the issue. Had it mattered to her from the very beginning what Jeremy had to say, they probably would not be in the predicament they are in.

Jeremy and China seem to have an eerie fascination with the T.V. The couple rents" slasher movies for the ritualized comfort of them  (613). According to Jeremy, they are movies where "Teens have sex, and then they pay for it in their body parts  (613). Strangely, the two become the cast of a real life unfolding drama of their own. They are the teens having sex, and the baby they conceive is the price they pay in body parts. As China prepares to give birth, in her deliriousness, she lives out a scene from the movie Alien. As Jeremy interrupts, the reader realizes that Jeremy could have said the words emanating from the T.V. Jeremy also perceives himself as being in a movie during his arrest, a scene he has watched severally on the tube. He even has his responses at the interrogation planned out as an actor following a script. As Jeremy and China talk in the hallway of the courtroom, the
"cameras kept annihilating them with flash after flash of light. They are living vicariously in the movies they constantly watch. It is ironic that their real life drama does not have the "ritualized comfort" that they derive from the movies that their lives mimic. "The Love of My Life is a story with a sharp, unexpected turn. Boyle dramatically changes the story from one of love and great hope to one of isolation and doom. Everything that China and Jeremy have spent a lifetime building is ironically crashed in one fatal decision.

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