I’ve waded through the thick of it, watching the same tired play performed in a dozen different languages, but the script is always written in disappearing ink. It’s a contract that fades the exact second the check clears or the rent is paid. Love isn’t a feeling in this graveyard; it’s a tool, a wrench, a piece of social hardware used to keep the pipes from leaking. When they say “I love you,” they’re just saying they love the safety you provide or the way you make them feel like they aren’t drowning today.
First, there was the one I called the “Retart Trainer.” She was a professional in the art of the long-game routine. We spent an entire year “playing house”—mimicking the mundane, soul-crushing domesticity of a husband and wife—all in exchange for the “role.” She didn’t want my heart; she wanted the security of the stage I provided. We sat across from each other at dinner like two burned-out actors who had forgotten their lines but kept moving their lips anyway so the audience wouldn’t boo. It was a year of high-performance boredom, a commodity trade disguised as a sacred commitment. I provided the zip code; she provided the background noise. I was the guy holding the spotlight, and she had the script down to a science.
Then came the fire from the south—a Mexican woman who dropped the “L-word” on day one, before she even knew my middle name or how I take my coffee. She didn’t speak a lick of English, and I didn’t need her to. Our vocabulary was written in sweat and sheets. For eight weeks, we rampaged through hotel rooms like two animals trying to outrun the sunrise. She allowed every “husbandly” privilege, every dark whim, every moment of raw, unedited masculinity I had been told to bury back in the States.
We screamed “I love you” into the pillows like it was a secret code to unlock the next level of the game. But let’s be real—we were just two con artists trying to out-hustle each other in a room with no mirrors. She was selling a feeling she didn’t possess, and I was buying a lie because the cold, hard truth was too jagged to sleep next to. You have to listen to the silence after she says it; that’s where the truth actually lives. Don’t let that word get into your marrow, kid. It’ll make you soft, and soft men get eaten by the reality of the trade.
It’s a beautiful, jagged joke. You aren’t “falling in love”; you’re just the next guy in a line that stretches back to the beginning of time. You’re the 15th guy in a “monogamous” chain, and you won’t be the last. She’s the one being conned, you’re the one being conned, and we’re all just drawing and humping until the adrenaline runs dry and the bank account hits the floor. Enjoy the rampage, take the footage, and appreciate the craftsmanship of the performance, but never—and I mean never—mistake the actress for the person.
When the “L-word” is being exchanged like cheap snack cakes at a gas station, you have to ask: Who is actually the lunatic here? Is it the man who pays for the VIP treatment just to feel a pulse, or the woman who thinks her “love” is a fair trade for the mortgage?
In reality, it’s just a handshake in the dark. A moment in time before you move on to the next ZIP code, the next exchange, the next ghost in the smoke. It’s a “putt-tart” romance—sweet for a second, but it’ll rot your teeth if you try to live on it. The truth is starting to make me thirsty, and I’ve got a flight to Malaysia that doesn’t have room for baggage—emotional or otherwise. Stay sharp. The price of the lie is going up at dawn.
