The Most Expensive Way to Be Alive

ChatGPT Image Apr 1, 2026, 01_34_53 PM

There is a quiet tax now, and it does not arrive in the mail. No government votes on it. No minister announces it. No one even has the honesty to call it what it is. It is the tax on being alone.

Not solitude in the poetic sense. Not the noble retreat of monks, writers, or the occasional sane person hiding from the species. I mean ordinary modern singleness: paying … Read the rest

Weltschmerz

By Eric Le Roy

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‘We have fallen in the dreams the ever living

Breathe on the tarnished mirror of the world

And then smooth out with ivory hands and sigh.”

(Yeats)

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My life at an advanced age vacillates between flashes of murderous rage and periods of unaccountable serenity. When I sense the futility of thinking that anything much is going to change during my ‘golden years’, I … Read the rest

When Love’s Kindness Crumbles

By Eric Le Roy

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       I might be giving the game away if I tell you I’ve been married five times and now present myself as an authority on the best way to sustain a happy ‘holy’ matrimony. You’ll be forgiven for asking: How can this chronic nuptial fuck-up possibly have anything to say besides “Here is some advice you should immediately ignore”? It probably wouldn’t help if … Read the rest

Who You Are And Who They Think You Are

By Eric Le Roy

.Content 18+ I remember working in a pub in Crawley, near Gatwick airport in London. Many years ago. I was by then probably in my early 30s. Yet, as they say, ‘everybody gets old, but you can stay immature forever.’ That would have been me back then.

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I had lived in Bath during the 1970s, returned to the US to do a Master’s degree Read the rest

Why I Say No (Well, Sort Of) To Polyamory

Content 21 + (Explicit Content )(published as is, blog owner may have different opinion from the author) I learned a new word today, just when I thought I had the basic Medium vocabulary under control. The term is: Polyamory. One can haggle over exact nuance-based definitions but the simplest one is the one I googled: “the practice of engaging in multiple sexual relationships with the consent of all … Read the rest