Buying love

The fat raindrops break on the windshield into something that looks like asteroid craters. I travel at snail speed, caught in the stop-and-go traffic. My mind drifts away, just like the red car inching into the other lane without the blond, teenage driver noticing because she is text-messaging someone.
Why do we try to buy love? Most of us do it – direct and indirect, visible or not. I just realized – with shame – that this is what I have been trying to do. For a very, very long time. I would say 38 years but it would be too melodramatic since I didn’t start until I was a teenager.
The shame I feel has nothing to do with the fact that it is stupid to attempt anything like this – and we all know it or we should. It derives from the fact that I criticized this behavior in others many times. Until now, though, I never realized I did the very same thing. Agreed, I was not trying to buy love with fur coats, cars, diamonds or expensive vacations. I was doing it in a more subtle way… trying to show off, trying to overachieve, trying to be the first. Be first or go home. Be a fighter or you are nothing.
I used to be hard on others and I considered it fair because I was even harder on myself. It wasn’t. I know it is corny but in my simple, skewed way I just wanted to buy love.
I reach again a full stop, holding the clutch then I release gently and I move ahead a little bit. My leg is tired and it trembles. It’s like my strength drains together with the rain.
I’m not going to write you love song” plays onto the radio. Why not? If you love him and that is what you do – write songs – why not write it? Just because he wants it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t offer it to him. He wants love, he needs love and if you would just give him his damn love song maybe everything would be all right and the both of you won’t end up caught in a crowded solitude.
I chuckle because I remember the Seinfeld episode where he was dating the massage therapist and he was eager to get a good massage… and she would refuse to understand his hints.
Right! Buying love. Why do we do that? My mind knows that there is no way love can be purchased. True one, in any case. Not with jewelry, not with a social status, not with a successful career. No, love is rand… It dawns to me. If we stop trying to buy love, we have to admit that love is random. That it doesn’t matter what you do, who you are, how beautiful or ugly you are – it’s all a happening over which you have no control. Love comes and goes as it pleases. Not only “money can’t buy love” but “nothing can buy love” – yes, some things can be done – voluntarily or involuntarily – to maintain it or have it fade.
And its random factor also means that it could never happen… or never happen again… It’s scary. And that is why I have to change gears… radio stations… memories…