After Mass

There it is, robed in white, the prefigurement of love about to go wrong.

I've a wedding to attend in May, so I'm worried about what I'm going to wear. The canary yellow dress that I'd used as a bridesmaid for my uncle's wedding last year? The lovely red slip I'd worn during Writer's Night, the one that makes me look like a trying-hard harlot, the proverbial whore without her joe? There's also that Betty Boop polka dot pink slip I'd used at a Christmas party last year, where four boys (of a certain age) hit on me, and my date and I got groped by the same drunk. All these options, yet I still feel I need a new summer wardrobe.

But that's not what I set out to write here - I'd wanted to write about relationships between men and women, damn it, about marriages and why people feel the itch to hitch (that rhymes) from ages 25 up.

When love is so tenuous, sometimes even more fleeting than fashion trends (Havaianas should die out by next year, and we'll all be glad to see capelets go the way of the dinosaurs), why even try to achieve permanence?

It's better to enjoy the moment, enjoy the sex, enjoy everything, because honey, it just won't last. Remember every little detail about him, from the way he ties his laces to the faint smell of unwashed soap behind his ears - keep them in a little file cabinet in your mind, far from the box of bad memories you're forever trying to forget.

Then again, if you're fully in the present, loving, loving being with each other, there's a solid chance it could actually last. And if it doesn't, well, you can at least say - yes, I know what love is - and you'll always have that file cabinet full of happy thoughts to keep you going til the next one comes along.

Maybe this time, you'll think, this is it.

That's because unlike love, our capacity for hope is infinite.

But don't listen to me.

I should be falling in love again ... right about now.