New Rule: The more human beings try to deny themselves the love they really want, with who they want, whether that love is straight or gay -- or in Lady GaGa's case, miscellaneous -- the dumber they always look in the end.
Tomorrow is the first day of Spring, and this is the time of year when we're reminded that love is like a Toyota -- it can't be stopped. And if you don't believe me, consider that there is now a video of John Edwards performing oral sex on Rielle Hunter while she was six months pregnant. Because who doesn't love watching a politician kiss a baby.
I believe it was Meatloaf who said, "I would do anything for love, but I won't do that." Look, I was a big fan of John Edwards, and not just because he once got me a five million dollar settlement when my hot tub disemboweled a neighbor. But I'm now one of the people asking the question: Why did this brilliant man... Ok, not brilliant, but really smart... Ok, maybe not that smart, but very cute... Why did this very cute man do something so not cute? And more importantly, why did he do it with a woman for whom Photoshop was invented? Love! True love is like a salesman at Home Depot: it only comes along once or twice in a lifetime, so you gotta grab it. Fighting it just makes it worse, like arguing with an airline employee.
If you try to fight the power of love, you end up making a fool of yourself. Think of Bill Clinton asking what the definition of "is" is. Larry Craig's "I just have a wide stance," Mark Sanford's "I was hiking the Appalachian Trail."
It's so tragic -- here's a guy, Mark Sanford, who was deeply and truly in love with his mistress -- wrote her the kind of letters any woman would treasure, especially if English was her second language. But then he blew her off so he could stay the governor of North Carolina... or South Carolina, who cares what Carolina? He could be on a beach in Rio right now, watching the love of his life bossa nova in a thong, but instead he's at some town hall meeting in Cletusville taking shit from hillbillies. Plus his wife dumped him and wrote a book about what an asshole he is. Well played, sir!
Acknowledging the power of love doesn't make me less of a rationalist -- it makes me more of one. It's the rational in me that accepts that the evidence of love's endurance is settled science. Money will make a man betray his brother. Hate will make a man kill. But only love will make a turtle hump a shoe.
Time and again we see that the people who choose love over their careers, and even over the values of society, seem to be the people who find actual happiness. I ridiculed Woody Allen at the time he took up with Soon-Yi, but mea culpa -- it's lasted 17 years. I hated Yoko Ono for breaking up the Beatles, but the lesson there is the same: Asian chicks are obviously irresistible.
So I'll conclude tonight by telling you all something I've never told anyone else: when I was a young man, I once knew true love and I let it slip away when he was transferred to another parish.