It didn’t matter how wretched a person was, how false, how unctuously ugly or how ugly underneath a pretty wrapper, how dishonest, or how greedy. It didn’t matter how low they’d sunk or what harm they’d done to others. There was always someone who would take them, some stained-soul bum, who’d stumbled off the highway of morality into the shit-washed drainage ditches, but who would want to call them theirs, if only to be able to say it, to pretend it were true, really wanted. It was why no one ever had to face their iniquities, their bad faith reflections, because they could always hide behind someone just as horrible as themselves and bury their transgression as bad dreams, someone who would always want someone else, someone better but couldn’t earn their love, for they had nothing real to give in exchange. It was why solipsism prevailed and narcissism was deemed normal, expected, and why every succeeding generation was more tainted than the last, as the vulgar reproduced and sullied the core fiber of humanity. 

Do not mistake them for the downtrodden, the poor, the unwanted, not for the kind souls with nothing who never received a fair shake. They are those seen every day, those called upstanding and caring, those with the “dream” the television sells, those with privilege and expensive toys. Those who deem themselves “good people” and people of faith, for truly good people, truly faithful, have no need to convince anyone of it and do not believe that their god loves only them, as they wallow in their continued sins, abetted by sleaze so filthy that could not find anyone else and merely took what was available. That is their definition of love.