Love? Love? I Got Yer Love Right Here

Henry “Hank” McCoy Finds Love’s Remaining Teeth and Kicks Them, Too

Henry “Hank” McCoy

Gonna talk about love right here, and don’t mind if I do. Love as we know is spurious, specious, spineless, and downright spongy as a concept, because check it out: if you say you don’t believe in it, then those who do believe in it say, “well that’s because you’re just not in love, if you were in love, you’d believe in it.” So you can’t disprove it, which means you can’t really prove it either. So there.

I’ll tell you about love. Love is Angelique B. dumping me in seventh grade after one day. One day. Love is Faith D. dumping me for Rich J. in high school but not wanting to tell me that that was the reason so letting me take her to the dance anyway and then making everything perfectly clear so that I ended up feeling like ten sacks of shit on a football field. (Got back at her though by requesting “You Dropped a Bomb on Me” and then making her dance to it with me. Yeah, like she cared.) And later, love was dropping unexpectedly in on Laurie G. and learning that she was still seeing her coke dealer ex-boyfriend because he was there in her apartment. That’s love.

Oh, and love was me dissing Cary M. for Laurie G. in the first place. And love was me knowing full well that Wanda P. liked me way more then she should have and still keeping that flame alive in her heart by calling her all the time and being all vulnerable. And love was definitely the whole Lauren S. incident. This, still, I cannot write about except to say that the words “infamous” and “cad” can both be adequately used to describe my own conduct under the rubric of “love.”

Love is something in a pop song. Love is something Walt Disney invented. When William Burroughs came here from outer space, he brought with him a virus called love that retroactively infected the greatest minds of the world and turned them all stupid. Nietzche died of syphilis, didn’t he? At least that’s what Gib says in The Sure Thing before – get this – choosing Daphne Zuniga over Nicole Sheridan. What the hell was he thinking? I’ll tell you what he was thinking: he was thinking about LOVE. Come on, dude – at that point Zuniga loved you so much you could have lured her into a threesome.

This is the point in the piece where I’m supposed to twist it all up and say “but despite it all I still believe there’s love out there somewhere for me,” or “and yet I’ve been married for nine years and have three beautiful children and the love I always sought,” or some shinola like that. Guess what, ain’t gonna. No backing down, no sell out. Love is the stuff on the end of your nose when you sneeze, love is the dirty underwear on the bathroom floor of life, love is the venti coffee of the day you spill on yourself while you’re waiting in the waiting room before your Yale interview. That’s what I’m talking about.

Cynical? Intelligent. Bitter? Undeluded. Love? Anti-. ◼