None of these stories has anything to do with Zohran Mamdani, the Nepo Baby Hamas loving idiot that is currently running for mayor. I'd actually agree with most of his positions if he didn't have a history of "Globalize the Intifada" bullshit.

I just thought that the title was funny.

Romeo & Juliet is a love story; it's not a romance. People die. Tybalt kills Mercutio and sets in motion a series of events that culminate in a double suicide. Still a love story. Modern Romance is all about happy endings and nice fantasies about everything working out. Even when you stop talking, there's a point in the future where you will end up together. Love stories are about love.

A combination of childhood trauma and ADHD has been a bad combination for my love life. Recently, I've been hit with a memory of writing “I'm sick of your bullshit” to a girl that I thought I was in love with. She wasn't doing anything wrong, but I was so badly adjusted that I thought living in a perpetual state of being “in love” was ideal. I wanted to highs and lows without the emotional stability, because frankly, I had no experience with emotional stability. She was a friend, a pretty good friend in retrospect. I didn't want that. I still have her letters, her stressed out letters dealing with my bullshit.

Of course, when I got a nice stable girlfriend, I felt uncomfortable because reality is so much less interesting than the fantasy. I wasn't desperately in love until she was leaving me. There was also the emotionally abusive girlfriend that made me confront the fact that many of my relationships were exercises in self-loathing, especially the hopeless crushes.

So these love stories are cynical, depressing and honest. At least as honest as one can get when one is reflecting on a stupid love life. Some are hopeful; one is a fantasy about an ideal breakup. One was my first sale. I got a dollar for it. Truly, that is the financial windfall that people dream about when they say “I should write a book.”