One hundred against love

Dear Reader,

So, love. What’s it ever done for you? Made a quivering hole in your stomach the shape of a vase and filled it with fresh-cut daisies and champagne? Driven you to late nights of howling at the moon with Hank Williams (I, II or III), only to wake up with a guilty vise around your head? Prompted a spree of frivolous spending that led to a fight that led to making up and making dinner together and making out and making love and … well, we’re back at love, aren’t we?

The Reno News & Review has the nerve to throw a greenback Benjamin at me, in return for which they expect a professionally penned essay on love. Oh, but that convolutes the true complexity of the project. Not just an essay on love; no, our dear editor kindly requested a piece contra-love.

I think her words were, “We are an alternative paper.” For a Valentine’s issue no less. Bitter pill, here’s your water.

Bitter because I’m a believer. Drop the chiffon and turn down the Chuck Mangione, and what you have is the quizzical core of what makes us human. So, though I typically revel in contradictions, I’ve struggled with how to talk down love. Or how to talk about it at all.

Time for backup: For perspective, I look to Dante. Here’s what the great poet of the afterlife says about love in his Purgatorio: “Love must be/ the seed in you of every virtue and/ of every act that deserves punishment.”

This is an exceptional thought. At first the air of reason makes you suspicious: Who talks about love this way? Where’s the passion, the blistering, belt-tugging intensity that we associate with love? But then you let it sink in. What grabs you is a much subtler passion: truth.

This is not an attempt to exalt amor. Instead, Dante deals with the unsettling duality of love head-on. And it is unsettling, because we humans are frail, fraudulent creatures. And chocolate and sensual oils can only cover up this fact, maybe one day a year, maybe a couple hours a week. The remainder we spend wondering how to find love, how to know when love is real, how to keep love alive, how to love right, how to avoid guilt when you love another, how to let your children know you love them and how to love your neighbor as you love yourself. Dante says we’re right to do all this, just so long as there’s recognition that “neither Creator nor creature ever … was without love.”

So love really isn’t all you need. It’s all you are. It’s the prime mover that pushes you into good and bad, much bigger than just a romantic link between two or three or hundreds of people. Love gives way to desire for earthly pleasure, to be sure, but most would tell you it is also the key to transcendence. Like it or not, those 19 hijackers on Sept. 11 had just as much love—though directed toward a much different object—as the rescue workers who cleaned up after them. Whatever the end result, you’ve got to do something with love and hope for the best.

The fact that Dante spends so much time talking about love while in purgatory is telling. In the Catholic tradition, purgatory is where souls go to wait for entrance into heaven. It’s like going to the DMV without all your papers in order. Instead of receiving new plates, you get a return pass to jump the line. That is, once you get your shit together. The consolation is that you’re seven steps from heaven. You just don’t know when you’re going to get there.

With this in mind, here’s my plan this Valentine’s Day. When I look at the couple next to me drizzling truffle oil on each other’s fingers and sucking them clean, I’m not going to roll my eyes and mimic their adoring glances, squeezing food through my teeth. Instead, I’m going to ponder virtue and punishment and see if I can’t figure out a way to experience both in one night.

I already see my benevolent editor shaking her head: I’ve failed in my assignment. This article doesn’t even approach being an indictment of love. In fact, I’m not sure what it’s done but clear my head for a few hours. It’s a mess; love’s a mess. So, to atone, I go to my purgatory, the blackjack table, and lay down a crisp $100 bill, telling the dealer to play it. She shows an ace. Insurance? I wave it off. I’m holding 20, a black Jack and the Queen of Hearts. They make a handsome pair. And, just like with love, either way I win. Or lose. Most likely a little of both.

With love,

Rob Tocalino

P.S. I gathered a lot of mundane facts for this essay that I had no idea how to use. I put a couple here in hopes of providing something substantial for the more literal-minded reader:

1. The purported remains of St. Valentine are on display every Feb. 14 at Whitefriar Street Church in Dublin, Ireland. Seeing as how the Irish are renowned for their passionate, seductive ways.

2. It is believed that the symbol of the heart dates back to an Egyptian hieroglyph that is meant to represent the male genitalia, as well as castration. Draw a heart, turn it upside down, refer to your high school biology textbook. This is not a stretch.