Ordering Catullus's works

51: The poem that I think came first among Catullus's works has to be Catullus 51. He sees Lesbia for what I can only imagine was one of the first times and is immediately awe stricken by her. This could either be taken literally that he saw her for the first time and thought, "By Jove! She is so amazing; I must make her mine!," or it could be taken slightly metaphorically. This would entail that they had a closer encounter (If you know what I mean) than simply running into each other on the street, and that he fell in love with her because of that.
2: Next, I would say poem 2 came in. At this point, Lesbia is playing with her bird. I chose this to be metaphoric towards her husband. She plays with him and acts like she loves him, but Catullus "knows" that she does it all thinking about him. After all, who's the cunning linguist here?
83: Then, I'd say poem 83 comes along. Catullus is now pretty confident of what he "knew" in poem 2, so he thinks it must go without questioning that Lesbia is just bursting at the seems with love for him and isn't even hiding it that hard from her husband, but he's too stupid to notice. Maybe, maybe not. Probably not.
3: This is where I think poem 3 comes in. Lesbia's husband dies. "How dare you kill him," says Catullus. "Why would you do something to make my poor, poor Lesbia sad. Can't you see she's already sad enough not being with me every second of every day?" Maybe he wasn't quite so blatant, but that's basically what Catullus is feeling in that moment (The character Catullus, not the poet).
5, 7: I think poem 5 and 7 come in here (in that order). They both compliment one another (I imagine 7 to be an extension of 5) in that they ask Lesbia to kiss Catullus an unreasonable amount of times. This is probably at a point in time when Lesbia's husband is dead, so there's nothing holding back the love between Lesbia "and Catullus." Yep. Just Catullus. She's not loving anybody else.
70: I'd put Catullus 70 here. He suddenly realizes that Lesbia doesn't really love him. Maybe he asked for her to marry him and she declined, saying that it wan't like that or something, but he found out. Then he gets mad.
8: He's trying to hold it together now. He's going to pull through this. Obdura. Who else will love her, now anyway... wait. WHO ELSE WILL LOVE HER!?! Wait a second, I bet Catullus isn't her only lover!

Oh no you didn't!

75: He can't love her, but he can't not love her either. #SoTornRightNow
85: This is eating at him now. He can't even write more than 2 lines.
72: Now he's getting a bit more logical as time soothes his emotional scars. He rationalizes it. The thing that is driving him to her so much is nothing but lust, while he has lost the R-E-S-P-E-C-T he once had for her.
11: Catullus compares himself to a flower being pulled in by the plow that is Lesbia. She's not a kind person who has gently picked him from the soil. She's a heartless plow that ripped him out of the ground along with dozens of others she cares no more about.
87: I imagine that some time has passed (but not a lot, maybe a couple years) since 11 now. Catullus is looking back with pride. He loved her so much. What he doesn't mention is how much she didn't, almost as a sort of way of saying that he's over her and willing to move on and be the bigger man while she is a heartless scumbag. He doesn't say anything about what she is, but he implies it in a way that makes him seem nice still. Genius!
109: Now I imagine quite a bit of time has passed. He is looking back on it and wishes just for that moment that things had turned out differently. He wishes the gods could turn back time and make her statements of love truthful, not like what they were in 70. Alternatively, this could be directly after 70, in the moment, as a more lustful, "GODS, PLEASE MAKE HER LOVE ME!!!!!!!!!!!"

Off Topic:

Catullus: I can't help but think of this every
time I read his name anywhere.

Balance in Catullus 70 and 72

Both Catullus 70 and Catullus 72 refer to an unreachable balance between what Lesbia sees between them and what Catullus sees between them. Lesbia has a more realistic view in which they are only enjoying each other's company for the sake of leisure. Catullus, on the other hand, refuses to accept that they are experiencing anything less than a full romantic relationship.

In Catullus 70, Catullus writes, "dicit: sed mulier cupido quod dicit amanti, in vento et rapida scribere oportet aqua (lines 3-4)," which basically means that men should be careful not to believe what their lovers say in the act and to "write [it] in wind and water," as it should figuratively flow away immediately in the ever-moving current that both wind and water possess. This is basically his way of saying that the passionate words Lesbia uses with him while bonding are to be taken cum grano salis. This fact is, of course following his claim that Lesbia once said that she'd rather be with him than Jupiter, a statement that he had believed to be true until he learned it to be untrue. Their strong polarizations of these thoughts show that they are not budging from their stances to find a happy conclusion, much like the House Republicans and the supporters of the Affordable Care Act right now.

In Catullus 72, Catullus basically backs up his claim in 70 by saying that he used to love her with a deeper emotional respect, but now he feels that she is undeserving of such respect, but he still loves her passionately. He says, "dilexi tum te non tantum ut vulgus amicam, sed pater ut gnatos diligit et generos. nunc te cognovi: quare etsi impensius uror, multo mi tamen es vilior et levior," (lines 3-6). When he says that he loved her as a father loves his sons, he's saying that he emotionally respected and supported her, and that it wasn't about the certain things they did together, as that would be quite weird between a father and his son. He then clarifies this by saying how even though he feels more passionately for her, she is worth less to him. He yearns for her physical affection more now, but he has lost that respect he once had as she shows herself to be a very popular person.

This struggle where Catullus wants her to be his lifelong romantic partner, but Lesbia wants only to have fun with him leads them to an awkward impasse from which neither side is willing to compromise at all (although if one of them does, it's probably going to be Catullus since Lesbia probably would care probably very little to lose one of her (according to Catullus 11) 300 lovers whereas Catullus would not want to lose the little he has with Lesbia). This balance will never be able to find a middle ground, either one must lose or neither can win.

Catullus V vs Catullus VII

             Catullus 5 and Catullus 7 are very similar because the bulk of Catullus 5 (lines 7-13) is about how many kisses he would like from Lesbia, and the entirety of Catullus 7 attempts to pinpoint that exact number again.

             Clearly, Catullus wants a lot of kisses seeing as how he wants her to be sure to count the first 3,300 of them precisely (V, lines 7-9) before kissing some more (lines 10-11). 

Catullus also refers in both of the poem to a potential for people to think poorly of them for kissing so much.              In Catullus V (line 12), he says, "ne quis malus invidere possit," and in VII (lines 11-12) he says , "nec pernumerare curiosi possint nec mala fascinmare linqua." These both refer to other people looking at the kissing negatively. It's almost as if he expects misjudgment of any love with her ("rumoresque senum severiorum omnes unius aestimemus assis" (V, lines 2-3)), and wants them to be put aside as not even a problem. He's trying to convince her that she should be with him, though asking for as many kisses as the number of grains of Libyan sand in Cyrene (VII, lines 3-4) might be a bit of a stretch for a request.

           They do differ, though. To begin with, there were a lot more than 3,300 grains of sand in Cyrene. Seriously, though, he does use metaphors in his hyperbole of the number of kisses he wants in Catullus VII than in five (At least I hope it's a hyperbole!). For example, in VII, he says, "...[the number of kisses is] as great as is the number of the Libyan sand that lies on Siliphium-bearing Cyrene, between the oracle of sultry Jove and the sacred tomb of old Battus; or as many as are the stars, when night is silent, that see the stolen loves of men..." That is 6 consecutive lines of metaphors (lines 3-8), while Catullus 5 has only literal talking of how many kisses he wants (technically more hyperbolic than literal, but certainly not metaphoric). In Catullus 5, he just straight up says that he wants so many kisses that they keep going after 3,300 kisses. ("Give me 1,000 kisses, then 100, then another 1,000, then a second hundred, then continuously another 1,000, then 100\. Then, when we have made many thousands, we will disturb that [count]..." (lines 7-11)

              That's pretty much all there is to it. In both of them he tries to seduce Lesbia by giving her the daunting task of an unreasonable number of kisses (Though not literally that much, just a lot of kisses).

Catullus V

In Catullus 5, He tries to seduce Lesbia with "the YOLO tactic." What this essentially is

is saying,"You only have one life to live, so why waste it not loving me when you could be loving me?" It may sound arrogant when stated clearly like that, the arrogance is much better disguised by clever wording such as Catullus's. He starts off his argument by proving to her that he's on her side. He's showing that he believes the rumors going around about her are false. Whether or not he really does is unimportant. What is important is that he also adds that loving him is directly connected to disregarding the rumors. It almost seems as though he's trying to say that in order to disprove those rumors, she must love him. He then goes on to compare the amount of time they have to live to the eternity in which the sun can live (Well, it's actually only expected to have about twelve billion years, over four and a half of which are over, but it's still dwarfing to our own life expectancies). If that doesn't give you the pressure to do as much as possible in as little time as you can, I don't know what will. Then, he tries to be romantic by exaggerating the number of kisses she should give him. Personally, I think that 3,300 kisses sounds too daunting. He sums it all up by adding some romantic garbage (albeit very beautiful garbage) to the end.

Regretfully, a song I thought I would never want to speak of normally came to mind

when trying to think of a song or poem that used the same argument to try and convince someone to love the songwriter/poet. The song is... Live While We're Young by One Direction. The lyrics, found here, in the chorus especially instruct that the intended recipient forget about all doubts or worries and at least pretend that they're in love with the singer (in this case five guys--OH MY!) because YOLO. One lyric from a verse, while looking through just now, particularly caught my eye to make this case, "Hey girl it's now or never, it's now or never | Don't overthink, just let it go." This lyric clearly says, "Hey, love me! What's that you're trying to decide? Well, too bad! If you wait any longer, you'll die and miss your chance! [And I thought it was rude to call a girl old] Just act now and don't miss out on this limited offer to be in love with the great and marvelous me!"

This shows that this method of attempting to convince someone to love you through the

"YOLO Method" does work because 8-14-year-old girls around the world who think this song was written for them immediately fall in love with all 5 of these guys upon thinking they hear the song.