And maybe even use your real name and be available for coffee, perhaps also be single, because your truth is so hot that people will want to be your best friend, your lover, and even your partner. Nobody wants processed food. They want home cooked meals and down-to-earth conversations, sharing, and true intimacy. I will never seek the services of a prostitute. I am looking for real love. OK, I will admit it, I am fond of infatuation and unrequited love. Inevitably, I like to flirt with someone better and seemingly more interesting, but I am often embarrassed by it. I am afraid of my truth. Can’t sleep, can’t run, cannot hide the fact that I am afraid of what’s happening to my body and mind. Someone’s piece on Medium talked about how the system related to student debt and work sets us up to fail. I live for my days off, but then I still have to do things for other people. I just want to finish my place so that I can enjoy it. I want to be attractive to who I am attractive to, but I get it. I wouldn’t date me. I am a train wreck looking for a junk yard. I am the man your mother warned you about. I have passed my expiration date and I have already loved four people, and none loved me. I know that it’s not true that if you can make it, it will make you stronger. You bounce back lower and lower. Watching TV all day in a nursing home isn’t really fun. It’s murder. Hospice is a code word for hopeless. And the worst thing is I read books because I wanted to be a better person. But, it turns out I never lived like others. I am Proust in a metal poster bed with the black out drapes closed. I can hear the traffic on the freeway. It’s finally warm enough that I can crack open the windows. The clock ticks, and there is a sound like distant crickets, maybe birds, but I doubt it. It’s that hum. The sound of electricity coursing through our brains and making us crazy. White light from our cellphones upsetting our circadian rhythms. Unabated hunger because we eat too much sugar. We are starving for love and intimacy, for the truth. We are dying by a fire that burns eternally for you. At least until the truth hurts. And it does. It’s filled with disappointments and we are hedonistic, the most embarrassing point. We consume and we take, and we don’t really love anyone but ourselves. My mother died in August and she’s becoming a memory. How do you deal with that? I can’t introduce you to her. I can show you pictures, but it’s not the same. And all the women I have loved or ever will love will be like her. I think life is about repeating ourselves, to make mini-me’s, extend the genetic code. I haven’t had the chance. I am trying to protect the world from people like me.
