for love is not ours to command

June 1, 2007

To dislodge the details stored away in my brain, I started reading Harry's letters again. They break my heart. It's amazing the emotion he conveys in a few sentences. So boyish, so eager, so besotted.

And yet, we dance around the subject so clumsily in our presentation. As though it isn't obvious. As though… it isn't. I do get a maniacal amount of pleasure watching the light bulb flicker on in people's minds. He was an interior decorator? Uh huh. He lived with his mother? Yep. He never married? No, indeed. And his neighbor was hot. Lots of parties with young men. Liked Roman things. Hm… coincidence, surely. Those letters… some argue… don't prove a thing. People just simply wrote more expressively 100 years ago. Perhaps. But… really. Really.

I don't get it. Well, I suppose, I do. I understand there is much intolerance in this universe. I just don't understand why. Henry's unrequited love is what makes him real to me. I don't care that it was for Piatt… although my empathy is undoubtedly tripled because I would have been another hapless admirer for the Republican congressman. And my chances would have been much less than Henry's odds. His painstaking yearning drove Henry to build that amazing house, to impress his neighbor, to lure him back inside the house and to give him 20,000 reasons to come back again and again. It was the inspiration for genius, for some warped level of immortality… but in the end… it was what made him a man and made him real. Even to this 30-something history geek a century later.

He didn't hide it. Read the letters and… he has more expression and bravura than I have ever had in my life. So… why must we? Why must anyone? To love someone else and trust them with our hearts is the bravest thing anyone can do. And yet we make up such silly rules to dance around such an elementary truth…

Sadly, there is a movement in the state legislature afoot to make these silly rules a Constitutional amendment. How absurd. Really, really absurd. I would like to think that this attitude is as antiquated as the iron gas stove in the kitchen or the push button light switches at Beauport. Unfortunately, it is not.

So… if I don't convince you to come to Beauport to see the work inspired by Henry's heartache, I hope that you will at least be inspired to take action and not let this out of date attitude be legalized today. Call your legislator. Don't allow the vote to pass on June 14.

www.massequality.org.