Chapter 1: If I Look Up

I knew I did not love Bette Porter nor had any idea of loving her.

Okay, so sometimes I read stuff. The above is a modified Ernest Hemingway quote – actually, it’s about this Catherine Barkley girl, I don’t know, I never read it. I just thought it applied pretty well to the whole “me and Bette” thing. I’m sure she’d say the same thing, like “I knew I did not love Alice Pieszecki nor had any idea of loving her”

The rest of the quote goes something like, “This was a game, like bridge, in which you said things instead of playing cards. Like bridge you had to pretend you were playing for money or playing for some stakes. Nobody had mentioned what the stakes were. It was all right with me.” I think it applies pretty nicely, too. I just don’t need it – the quote, I mean, although I guess it could come in useful someday when someone asks “So what happened with you and Bette?” and I could reply “I knew I did not love Bette Porter”

Anyway, the quote was useless because I was writing an article for LA Magazine about a generational viewpoint on love and I wanted a really good, recognizable classic lit quote to sort of bridge the gap between contemporary and erstwhile culture. I wanted to be ironic or something. I don’t really read classic lit, though (except 1984; that’s good stuff), so I figured I’d call up Bette, who I won’t say is my girlfriend, and ask her, because I’ve always thought her to be really smart, having gone to Yale and all that (which is one reason why I’m glad I didn’t know her in high school because I can just imagine my hatred of her during yearbook rounds when I would’ve asked “So where you going to college, Porter?” and have to hear her smug answer of “Yale,” because even though she’s not smug now, she definitely was then, you can just tell).

So I called her up and asked if she knew any good classic lit quotes about love and she first was all sarcastic and like, “You could try reading something, Al,” and then when she realized that no one was laughing at that, she changed tactics and was all, “I don’t know – look up some Hemingway. He always has something interesting to say about love.”