Free The Nothing by Kenneth Horowitz

who they were. Those family members assumed so because they believed he was too old to not have had any relationships.
    Yet James dreamed of finding someone all the time. He craved to be held, kissed and touched. Having a close emotional bond along with the physical joy that would come during marriage. He dreamed of a marriage where you couldn’t live without touching each other. Soon he decided that it was too difficult to wait for and it probably wasn’t going to happen. Thoughts of God also became less as time went on. James was reaching his breaking point. Why can’t I be happy like everyone else? Why should I try to be so different? Why should I try to please God when all it does is make me miserable and lonely?
    The catalyst was wh en he was twenty-eight and his mother was in a car accident. She was in the hospital for three weeks because her skull had cracked open on the steering wheel. James had never been more scared or upset in his life. His brother and other family members would drop by the hospital for a few minutes here and there. But it was more like someone visiting a friend in the hospital and leaving without lending a helping hand. The entire burden was on James and would lead to him resenting his mother and the family that didn’t care about the sacrifices James was making. It was as if everyone assumed James would take care of everything and they could go out and party without worrying. Stress from taking care of taking care of his mother, the house, and neglecting his schoolwork broke something in him.
    On the seventh night of her hospitalization, he had come home to check on the dogs and eat a snack. Days and nights had been spent at the hospital leading him to eventually drop all of his college classes. James spread out on his bed for a few minutes relaxation and looked for a dating website he had read about. It was a hookup site for people only looking for sex. Match.com and E-harmony had already run their courses with James. There was also the Hook’em app that would work on his mother’s smart phone, which uses the GPS location of users hoping to hook up for sex at that moment. An urge to have sex hit him fiercely. Tonight, he was going to go for any girl that would bite. James had reached a turning point. This wasn’t about losing his virginity or achieving something. James wanted to be touched, fulfilled and to feel good for once. On this evening he believed that the emotional bond he had always wanted was further from his reach than he could handle. There were several ads on the Hook’em app that looked promising. James didn’t message the prettiest or even the ones that exhibited confidence. He was still easily intimidated. Instead he wrote women that were somewhat attractive or not at all. Hoping they might have the same esteem level as himself. He avoided the ones seeking for long-term relationships or marriage. James was ready to get laid.
    In the end, all the endeavors James embarked on with the sex dating websites proved fruitless. Most of the women turned out to be prostitutes or scams tricking you into sending money. There were a few that were legitimate women looking to have sex with no strings attached. But James was no match for the competition. With a female to Male ratio of one to ten, he would lose out to suave rich guys or ones who had muscles and six pack abs. And many were fake or doctored pictures. Until the day when the internet died, he was still trying.
     
    ***
     
    James sat waiting for Dr. Cando on her stairwell, thinking of the casual sex ads he had written and replied to over the years. Many times he was ready and willing for a woman to come over when he had the house to himself. With more time alone than he preferred, he had developed a type of self-centered egotism. The frequent isolation, socially and physically, gave him a feeling of being different. James had grown to believe he had something in him that others didn’t; a type of superiority. Though his