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There Is No Free Love Left
So you’ll need to dig deep, Fellas

As a child of the Free Love Movement, it’s been disappointing for me, now in my early 60s, to learn there’d be such a tall price to pay for all that love and all that movement.
Because from where I sit in the Game of Love, albeit up here in the cheap seats, my fellow men borne from the Summer of all that Lovey-Dovey resonated with the Free and the Movement part, but the Love?
What’s love got to do with it? They ask.
And to that I say, If you have to ask, Junior—you don’t deserve to play the game.
It was just before 8am on a sunny Sunday in Sacramento.
I was enjoying my coffee, perched in front of my laptop, cruising through my email, a daily morning ritual. But Sundays are special. They’re Fundays, amirite?
Instead of scanning my inbox to answer convos from Etsy, downloading shipping labels from Chairish, or bird-dogging my bank balance for overdraft protection alerts—Sundays are for The New York Times, The Washington Post, ‘fun’ Medium articles I’d been stashing throughout the week and all the other newsletters, quirky sites, and recipes I’d been savoring for my Sunday morning read.
Then suddenly my laptop started ringing, snapping me out of my Sunday a.m. reverie.
What the f-bomb is going on, I wondered? Where is that sound coming from? And because I’m just old and not a moron, within seconds I could see I was getting a call via Facebook from an ‘old friend’.
So instead of ignoring the aggressive techno-ring machine-gunning from my laptop speakers, I answered.
The guy on the other end was an old fling.
Not an old Flame, mind you, and ty because there is a difference.
This fling became a thing the way a lot of flings do—booze, proximity, and a dance floor. And… he was the groom’s Best Man, and I was the bride’s Maid of Honor.
Need I say more?
I’d flown into Boston from California to be the Maid of Honor at my best friend's wedding, and for the next seven days and seven nights, we’d Wedding Party if you get my drift.