I once met a cynic in a bar in Boston.
He sloppily drank a gin and tonic,
Burping loudly from his barstool that was next to mine.
“Love,” he said, “is for the fickle. It’s for those eighth grade girls who believe that Romeo and Juliet is happening to them every day.”
I shrugged at this stubble-faced lush.
“It’s not real. Love is NOT real. It is just some writers’ plot to make us believe we want to love and that the possibility to love is ... possible,” he told me, flagging down a bartender.
“Another for me too,” I said.
“So don’t fall for this notion that eternal lust and soulmates are real. It’s fiction. It’s fantasy. It’s untrue,” he told me.
I looked around, but he continued this awkward conversation.
“We’re not two souls’ split apart and placed in different bodies. That’s a myth, you know? And if love was real, how come romance novels are so impossible? Love like that doesn’t happen. My ex-wife lived by those books. They just forget to mention what happens after they have great sex,” he said.
When he paused, I thought he was done.
Whew. I can get out of here, I thought.
But as I got my purse, he began again.
“What happens to the romance when the baby is born and we’re up all night? Or when I work twelve hours and am tired when I come home to a woman who has been running non-stop since I left? How does love work when you’re picking toys off the floor and snoring by nine o’clock?”
He drank the rest of the liquid from his glass and sighed.
I stood and put my hand on his shoulder.
“Then why do people spend their entire lives looking for someone to spend the rest of their lives with?” I asked.
He looked at me.
“Are you talking to me?” he asked.
