Sex is Love.

 Isaac had never seen so many homeless people in one place, but I guess that’s what happens when a rich old man hangs signs out over half the city claiming to start handing out free food once a week at this very park at this very time. Not that Isaac was the rich old man. Now that would have been a dream come true. No, he was one of the hundreds of people crowded in the park waiting, hoping for the food to come.

Isaac had known wealth once until Irene had destroyed him. Love does crazy things to people. Love isn’t the sweet, fluffy feeling that is portrayed in children’s movies. Love is like a hurricane: terrible and intense and crazy and horrifying and beautiful all at the same time. Isaac loved Irene, but he also hated her. Because Irene had ruined his life.

And for what? Because he had slept with a couple of dozen girls behind her back? So what? She had her hobbies. He had his. She ran a multi-million-dollar company and he pleased her when she got back home late at night. He had thought that they both new that had only gotten married so that she could get the sex that she so longingly desired without the scandal. It wouldn’t look very good if a very successful business woman was just sleeping with random men.

But, Isaac had no such worries for himself. For the first few weeks of their marriage he had just aimlessly wandered around their gigantic house while Irene was at work or sat in his room and gorged on food and watched mindless football games. But that wasn’t what Isaac wanted for his life. He had married Irene for her, not for himself. He had always viewed marriage as an optional affair, an artificial sign of love. But he married Irene anyways because it was a way to stay close to her. She had offered him two options: #1. Marry her and continue to have the best sex of both of their lives. Or… #2. Have Irene walk out of his life forever.

And so, Isaac married Irene and, for those first few weeks, everything was great. Irene was enough again for a little while. Until it wasn’t. Until it wasn’t enough anymore just like it was never enough before he had met Irene.

Then the other girls started coming. Rich girls with overprotective parents, girls who wanted a man, but no commitment, girls who were craved attention and what felt like love so much that they were willing to pay almost anything to get it. First one, then two, then five, and then finally eight a day. Sex all day, every day. He paid the servants with the money he received from the girls. Not like he needed it. He was married to Irene: the millionaire girl, woman, who’s sex had made him happy enough to believe that this was what he wanted, that she was enough, that he loved her. Until he realized that she wasn’t enough and that maybe love wasn’t the right word for their relationship.

But now, shivering here in the cold, he was again wondering if maybe what they had had been love, at least on his end anyways. But she has thrown him out. He had lost her because she was selfish and refused to share his body with others. He wasn’t a “one girl only” type of man. He needed, he craved, more.

He remembered it like it was yesterday, the day that she had thrown him out. She had come home early that day so that they could go out to dinner together with some rich couple who she wanted to partner with. She had called home to inform him, but Isaac had threatened decreases in salary to anyone who ever interrupted him while he was with one of his “lady friends”. To make a long story short, Irene barged into the bedroom where a pretty naked red-head with pale white skin and freckles lay draped over Isaac’s shirtless form.

He didn’t even get the chance to explain himself. She threw the girl out and demanded the story from the butler who told her the whole story. Isaac was thrown out like the red-head girl like he was nothing in under an hour.

Isaac knew what love does to a person. It makes them evil. Makes them turn against you. Love is weakness. Love is darkness. Love is agony. Love is nothing.

If Irene had only been able to accept that this is just who Isaac was, something that he is not able to help being, they could have kept having a healthy relationship. But she was too closed-minded and shut him out. So, Isaac went back to getting his fix with girls who mean nothing, with girls who are nothing.

Love is nothing.

The crowd starts to move forward again. The promise of food seems more and more real every second. Isaac inches forward, rubbing shoulders with hundreds of people who look just as ragged and hungry as he does. He is about 50 yards from the assembly line of food when he feels a firm hand on his shoulder and is roughly turned around. In front of him is a very large man with a ski mask pulled over his face. He glares at Isaac for a moment, and then pulls out a knife. In terror, Isaac tries to back up, to get away, but there is nowhere to go. The people are pressing in all around him, pushing and shoving him in their frantic attempt to make it to the food.

The masked man raises the knife and pauses, staring right into Isaac’s eyes.

“This is for Irene,” he says.

Then the knife plunges into Isaac’s stomach and there is nothing more.