A Symphony of Regret

"A girl I went on one date with just pocket dialed me. When we first met things seemed promising, but on the first date, inexplicably, the chemistry just wasn't there. I haven't seen her since. Anyways, I answered her call, but on the other end there was only the sound of the phone rustling against her jeans. Truly this is the allegory of sexual happiness, of its impossibility." - Archbishop Timothy Dolan

“At first I thought, what crap. This is just like Young Adult: a woman is punished for failing at motherhood, cities are no place for families, choose between raising children and having a career, et cetera. Gradually, it became clear that We Need to Talk About Kevin is not another ‘bad mom’ movie, but a movie about ‘bad mom’ movies. The whole community shuns Tilda Swinton because she gave birth to a killer. But she was the only one who tried to warn them, the only one who ever saw her son for the monster he was. Male authority figures—her husband, her doctor—dismissed her concerns and told her that the problem lay not with her son but with herself, with her inadequacy as a mother. (This point would have been even more powerfully made if, instead of getting killed, John C. Reilly had simply left her.) At the end, when Tilda Swinton hugs her son, she is motherhood incarnate: despite everything—and this child has done everything—she loves him unconditionally. Society has no obligation to love monsters, and yet it would dehumanize us all if no one did. Who else can we ask to carry this burden but Mom?” – Casey Anthony

“Yeah, it’s a bummer, I thought I’d get to know you better, but, you know, can one person ever truly know another?” – Brian Williams, Soi Cowboy, Bangkok

"Once upon a time I was dating a virgin. I really cared for her, but I was getting frustrated with her refusals and tried pressuring her into sex. Tearfully she asked why having sex was so important to me. I could have said a lot of things. For example, I could have said that according to the theories of the 20th century, sex 'so important' to everyone, that the drive to sexual expression is perhaps the single most powerful force behind all human activity, the reason, at least from a management perspective, that your organism keeps getting out of bed in the morning even long after any trace of desire for the act itself is gone. I should have said that sex is like a language—no, it's like speech itself—a whole unique medium of human interaction, something you can express affection and seal bonds with, sure, but also something you can create friendships with, tell jokes with, say you’re sorry with, conduct economic exchanges with, hurt feelings and warp personalities with. And, as with speech, if you go long enough deprived of someone to ‘talk’ to, you go crazy. I could have said that for two lonely young people so powerfully drawn to each other not to have sex would be like two people stranded on opposite ends of a huge desert island finally running into each other and refusing to speak. But no. Instead I said the worst possible thing. The stupidest possible thing. Something that, even if it had been true—which it wasn't—would still have been wrong. 'Why is sex so important?' 'Because I love you.'" - Susan G. Komen