Legal Commentary

The Final Form Of Love

By Kevin Funnell

Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime,
Therefore, we are saved by hope.
Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history;
Therefore, we are saved by faith.
Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone.
Therefore, we are saved by love.
No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own;
Therefore, we are saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.
---Reinhold Niebuhr

July 1968: An eighteen year-old soon-to-be college sophomore was out with two close friends for a warm summer night of what-would-come in Leatherstocking country in upstate New York. They stop in a bar on the outskirts of Hamilton, a college town now empty of the Colgate college crowd and happy to see some local boys of drinking age flush with their first paychecks of summer jobs. The three see two of their high school buddies banking pool balls off the side rails and the night gets better. After only two beers, the night's promise blossoms when in the door waltz three just-graduated lovelies from our hero's high school, one of whom has the hots for your storyteller.

She's the girl in the back row of the color guard whose hips have been mesmerizing him with their symmetrical swaying since he assumed right guide, front rank of the marching band in his sophomore year, the girl with the high cheekbones, the cascade of light brown hair, the skintight jeans, and the superstructure worthy of Rubens. She's the girl the color guard captain, one of the trio, is now telling him has had a crush on him for years ("Didn't you know?"). Of course he didn't know. He's a guy.

Two and one-half hours later, after consuming an amount of beer only the young can guzzle and remain upright, there are three couples taking turns swinging naked from a rope over the Lebanon Reservoir and crashing through beer cans that litter the surface of the water. A full moon pulls hard as the naked, wet couples pair off on blankets and (in one case at least) make a memory that lasts for decades.

Three months later, the boy has returned to his hometown for the homecoming football game, and brought his roommate, a handsome lad from Boston who had, and would, break many a female heart, home with him for the weekend. As they stand watching the Friday night bonfire, listening to the pep band, cheerleaders, and fans do what they do on such crisp October nights, the boy's love of that July night appears at his shoulder.

"Linda," he says half with shock, the other half with shame.

"You never called me," she says simply with eyes that are not angry, but sad. Without another word, she turns and walks away.

The former color guard captain walks up and stares him full in the face.

"You are SUCH an asshole," she declares. Her eyes are appropriately angry. She follows Linda into the darkness.

My older sister, also home for the weekend (although from a school she never ceases to remind me, has much higher entrace requirements than mine) suddenly appears, apparently having witnessed the entire episode, and concurs, "You ARE an asshole."

My roommate takes this all in stride. He watches my sister walk away (appreciating her ass, I notice and file away for future ammunition), then turns to me, grins, and declares, "It's unanimous: You're an asshole."

I manage a grin, although I'm feeling a mixture of regret and desire I've not yet matured sufficiently to realize is the permanent human condition. Since then, like Edith Wharton's Archer in The Age of Innocence, I've  learned that it is sometimes difficult "to deal all at once with the packed regrets and stifled memories of an inarticulate lifetime."

Full post as published by Counseling Kevin on February 13, 2011 (boomark / email).