When I set out to learn about my mother's bridge club, the Jewish octogenarians behind the matching outfits and accessories, I never expected to fall in love with them. This is the story of the ladies, their game, their gen, and the ragged path that led me back to my mother.I love people, but I prefer being alone. I am my own puppet show. Strings, puppets, stage, Geppetto. The sound of air clanging in the pipes. An ambulance horn wailing in the night. Have you met my ribbon box? I am madly in love with myself. I have everything I want. I have nothing I want. You look up and three hours have passed. Sentences. Paragraphs. Days. Years. I once had a young writer tell me that she didn’t work on spec. Everything I’ve ever done I’ve done on spec. I am not going to lie.
Who do you love?
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Betsy Lerner 
I love the people in my stories. “God, if I could have met a girl like that when I was 22.”… Well, maybe I did, but I was 24 and we’ve been together for 54 years. That girl at 22 would have killed me… like I did to her at page 123.
I have loved all manner of whos in this lifetime, but my sweet baboo is the one I really love-love!
I love humanity both fictional and real. While I can love everybody, I don’t always like everybody. I think the liking is harder than the loving.
Who I love doesn’t really matter. The fact that I can love means everything.
“Who do you love?”
My entire life has been a quest for love. The relentless search fueled my every artistic endeavor, my fuck-around ways, my addictions, and my every neurosis. It’s why I’m here now, why I’m anywhere at any time. If you see me, you’ll know my game — “Look, it’s Mr. Love-Monkey, swinging from the trees.”
What is love, that I would know whom I do love? For whom would I walk those 47 miles on barbed wire? My wife? My son? How much of my love is duty? When does feeling cease to matter, and action be the only measure?
When does asking any of these questions cease to matter? It’s another working day. Love is out there. It’s on every horizon, in every shadow. It beckons. I follow.
The fucking sunlight. My books. My friends. My dogs. The spouse. The river.
Who do you love?
I love the stereotypical ‘who’. My gene partners and the ones who married into the pool.
And…I love all the readers who have taken precious time out of their lives to read the symbols on the page I so carefully scribed.
And…I love the strangers who saved my life three years ago.
And…yeah…the list goes on.
The ones who try. She who dances in the rain and those who would drink a goblet of crushed glass if it meant briefly seeing lost loved ones again.
Anyone who cares about animals.
Family.
Kindness, with nothing expected in return.
Food banks.
Teachers.
Nurses,
Artists
And the crystal clear sunrise of a 25 degrees below zero morning.
Oh yeah, I don’t know why, but I loved the sound of Meat Loaf’s voice.