“I don’t believe in love.”  Ezra says very confident while taking a sip of his dark rum and coke, made extra strong by the bartender who he has come to day after day the past three years.
“What do you mean you don’t believe in love.” Jill says shocked at the mans bold statement.
“I mean just that I don’t believe in love.” Ezra retorts sticking his nose in the air as if offended by Jill’s disbelief.
“So you don’t believe in any type of love.”
“Nope don’t believe in it at all.”
“Is it possible you have just never felt it yourself?”
“It’s possible, but believe me I have tried to love everything whether it be parents, pets, people, partners, every time I never felt anything. They came they went, but I never felt anything at all.”
“Do you believe that others cannot feel love as well.”
“Yes I believe love is a feeling forcibly created by others because the world around them tells them it exists. They form this fake bond with one another and believe that they feel all these certain ways about one another, but in actuality they have just distorted there minds. It is the same as the crazy man walking down the street thinking he’s on a rocket ship headed straight for Disney land. In his mind he believes that he is really on a rocket ship headed towards Disney land, but really he’s just walking down the middle of the road believing the cars passing by is his rocket ship and the police siren in the distance coming to get him is the sound of Disney land nearby. If you completely convince yourself that you are in love you will soon believe it yourself.”
“How do you explain those intense feelings of joy in a first kiss. The ecstasy that overcomes you when your around that certain person. The need to be with someone for a lifetime. They pain when someone leaves.”
“That’s not love that’s sexual response. You just want your sexual needs fulfilled. It’s biological, we are born to reproduce. When someone looks pleasing to you and you become attracted to them that’s not love, that’s your mind telling you that this person is a potential offspring generator. The alarm goes off in your head. Ding, Ding, Ding, we got one. I wouldn’t mind him being the provider of my kid. So your body creates these sensations to make you want to procreate with this person and keep your species alive and prospering. Would you kiss someone if there was no pleasure to it? Say you never felt any pleasure from a kiss, would you still kiss someone?”
“I don’t know. Where are you going with this?”
“Have you ever kissed someone and felt nothing?”
“Yes of course.”
“That person was just not subconsciously chosen by you to become the one to conceive a baby with you, probably because they were not attractive enough, or wasn’t prosperous for you. With time, doesn’t those feelings of joy around that person you claim to love start to disappear?”
“That’s meaningless though. Of course feelings disappear with time, but they do not become non existent. They just lessen. It is proven that people who have a life partner are happier throughout the course of a life span and they live longer. Why would biology make us more effective with someone else, but now want us to be with someone else?”
“People just want companionship. That’s still not love. You could live with guy, girl, dog, cat, sister, or brother and you are going to have a longer life longevity. it’s not love it’s companionship.”
“What is your definition of what love would be?”
“I can’t define something I don‘t believe exists.”
“What’s a lochness monster? You can define that can’t you. Do you believe that exists?”
“No I guess not.”
“If you had to define love, what would you define it as?”
“I would say it’s a feeling of attachment towards another person, an inseparable bond. A connection so great that you transforms into one whole. You no longer are individuals, but this bonded one and you would do anything for one another because you are one. This person would be everything you are not and together you would become one perfect inseparable couple.
“For a man that doesn’t believe that love exist you sure seem to have a good imagination for what you think it would be. I’m beginning to sense a past heart break.”
“I was once a victim of my imagination.”
“By that you mean, what?”
“I believed I was in love once. I got on such a high. Life was great, everything was perfect, nothing could ever go wrong. I let my emotions shoot up to a high I had never felt before. I was floating on a cloud as they say. When I was with her, I felt like a real person again. I had always been a self conscious person my whole life. Always feeling as though something about me wasn’t quite right. I was a fucking mess, but when I was with her I was this perfect real human again, capable of feeling good about myself, capable of feeling real emotions again. It seemed as though everything was going perfect for us, but then one day I woke up and she was gone. I didn’t think anything of it. She probably had to be somewhere and didn’t want to wake me. I tried calling her a few times that day to no response. I left a message and got no response back. I waited a day thinking something had happened to her. Worried sick.. I didn’t sleep at all that night. The next morning I heard the phone ringing and no one was on the other end. A couple more times throughout the course of the day I would hear the phone ring and when I would answer it I would just hear the phone on the other end click. A day went by of this and the next day when I got home from work I saw a message on my answering machine. I was worried sick to check it. I felt my stomach drop with each step over to the table. The play button seemed to take so much force to get to click in. I remember the whole message like one of my relatives had died. She was on the phone. Sorrow filled her voice, she talked with a stutter and paused to sniffle. ‘I’m sorry I left this way, but I had to go. The time we spent together was incredible, but I’m sorry I just can’t do this anymore. I’m sorry’. and then the phone clicked and she was gone. I questioned myself everyday. What did I do wrong? I felt ugly, I felt stupid, boring, just plain useless to the world. I questioned why I was even here. I would never find love. I never knew love for anything my whole life. At first I thought a life without love was a life not worth living at all. I considered ending it all, but I was too afraid of where I would end up and what people would think of me. A couple of times on my way home from work I considered just letting go of the wheel and pounding down the accelerator  to make the whole thing seem like an accident. I wouldn’t be that guy who killed himself, but that guy that died in that tragic car accident. I started taking lots of drugs again. Whatever I could get my hands on at the time, just trying to feel those momentary feelings of pleasure again. I never knew what I was taking until I lay face first in the toilet drinking the water I had just projected my waste into, praying to any god to save me from death that night and claiming I would change. I would get better, but once the sickness disappeared and that momentary joy of survival from what seemed a certain death disappeared, I would find myself right back on that same toilet praying again to any god that would still listen to me. I began to wonder if the pain would ever disappear. I felt so alone in this world. One night as I was walking down the street staring at all the cars driving by so fast, so envious that they all had some place they were looking forward to getting to, I saw a homeless man skipping and singing down the street. I stopped the man and asked him how he could feel so much happiness when he was in such a low place. He had no shelter, no clean clothes, no food, and no lover, but he found happiness. I asked the man How do you live without love? The homeless man replied ‘Son you don’t need love to be happy, you just need to appreciate all that is given to you. If love happens to fall in your lap, appreciate it, but don’t live in sorrow because you are without it.’ ‘I can’t seem to find peace and happiness in my mind any more and soon I believe I will die if I do not change something quickly. I said with tears filling my eyes. I was at my lowest. I had felt nothing but pain and tears for the two weeks prior and I felt as though nothing was worth living for anymore. The homeless man seeing me on the verge of tears pulled something out of his bag and told me to open my mouth. He placed a something in my mouth and told me that soon I would feel strange, but that was completely normal. He told me to go home and lay in bed and reflect on my life and really concentrate on what was bothering me. I did as I was told. As I began walking home my legs seemed to keep twitching and then soon I started feeling shots of electricity from my legs shoot up my spine and tingle the back of my mouth. I began to get scared of what was happening and began running for my house wanting to be secluded as soon as possible. I stared ahead at the path growing longer and narrower and looked down at my legs running one leg leaving the ground and jumping feet ahead of me landing and the other foot would follow. I felt as though I was floating, moving faster than a car and going nowhere all at the same time. In what seemed to be an eternity I finally arrived home and I ran up to my bed and lay in the darkness staring at the ceiling. The ceiling tiles began to pulse and close in on me. I stood up and they immediately returned to normal position, so I lay down again and the tiles start pulsing again inclosing in on me. I’m imagination this I thought. This can’t be real. I slowly lay waiting to be fully enclosed by the tiles wondering what would happen to me if I were to be trapped in. As the tiles grew closer I felt a strong breeze from the window which now lay fallen on the floor next to me. The moon was right outside my window smiling at me and then it blew another strong breeze and the ceiling tiles were swept away crashing into the wall tumbling and breaking as they fell onto the floor. A projector turned on next to me and I heard the spinning of the film reel cueing up to play. Then images of a happy young boy appeared on the screen in front of me. I recognized  this boy from somewhere because he was me. All these images clicked past so fast, but I couldn’t make out all these images. With every image that clicked past a memory was brought back and with that memory a feeling was brought out of me. I’d start laughing then, crying, then my heart would start racing and I would start screaming, all my emotions came pouring out of me as I lay completely at a loss of control for my own body. You’ve probably heard people say they saw their life flash before their eyes. Well I saw and felt my life flash before my eyes. I lay in bed that whole night stuck to my mattress watching photos, film reels, and audio clips played out before my eyes. The next day I awoke trying to figure out what had just happened to me. I felt happy again. I couldn’t understand, or comprehend what I was feeling. I was alone, but I was free. I saw the world from a whole new perspective. It was no longer that death trap I had seen once before, but this play pen. I was free and able to do and say whatever I wanted and no longer cared about what anyone else in this world thought. The world was revealed to me and all of it’s secrets were exposed. I lost all sense of emotion that day, but gained a complete sense of what reality really is.”
“So you did a bunch of acid and lost your mind.”
“No it’s not like that I learned the deep secrets of the world.”
“Deep secrets as in what?”
“You wouldn’t believe anything I told you, so there is no point in me even bothering trying.”
“Come on I’m listening.”
“Well good, but I’m leaving. It was nice meeting you Jill.”

“What was that mad man talking to you about?” Comes a voice from over Jill’s shoulder, as Ezra stands up and walks out the door.
“I’m really not sure. He never finished his story.” Jill says without turning around. Watching Ezra walk down away from the bar down the street.