And it was not about being alone. Sex is casual as a peck on the cheek, a means of raising body temperature, of passing time that otherwise might pass more heavily, slowly, alone. Characters are scrupulous about warning potential sexual partners just how little is at stake and how well aware they are of that fact. A pause that refreshes. Three is the norm, and not necessarily a crowd.
Romantic entanglements are like a game of musical chairs.
One place to sit, two or more wary persons circling, calculating, eying the desired object, anxiety and fear thickening the atmosphere because nobody knows when the music will stop. The question of how people should act is always connected in these stories to how people do act. Responses, perspectives that are not quite bizarre but definitely different, idiosyncratic, unique, reprieve Mr. Ford's characters. Those at the brink of falling apart man important outposts. They choose to survive in spite of their precarious condition.