Intimacy and sex
Instead of showing sex as automatic intimacy, the stories show sex from a lot of angles, and then they zoom in on intimate moments between non-sexual relationships to contrast the intimacy and trust that comes from just doing life together. One of the most intimate relationships between a man and woman in the stories happens in "The unthinkable," when a panicking, desperate man on the brink of self-destruction has a meaningful conversation with a little girl who speaks to him from innocence. The height of intimacy in the story was the least sexual of all.
Death and loss
What is the reward of love in the stories? The answer can be found in two ways, in death and in the forward motion of time. The stories end on the note of nostalgia and longing; two women reminisce about high school in "The world with love." The stories start with time and loss as well, when in "Free Love," the title story, a young girl uses the freedom of travel to conquer her sexual repression, losing her innocence and having sex. The very next story is "A story of folding," where a man packs up the now-useless lingerie of his dead wife. The stories are point the reader to an irony: for all the desire and agony of love, the ultimate goal of love is more agony! The universality of death and loss makes the stories ghostly.
Alex's irony
In "College," we meet an ironic teenager. Her older sister went to college in the typical way, happy about the future and innocent; but when that sister dies, Alex shows the ironic opposite. Instead of happily obeying the commonly shared social narrative about life (going to college as she should), she rejects her family, the societal niceties of honor, and college itself. She literally runs away from it all, hitch-hiking away without telling a soul.
Tom's irony
In "Scary," Tom endures a very ironic situation. His girlfriend doesn't even want to go on this getaway, because Zoe is there, Tom's ex-girlfriend. Ironically, Tom is staying with both his girlfriend and his ex-girlfriend, but that isn't even the extent of the irony. The unintentional consequence of Tom's actions have put him in close proximity with Richard, Zoe's new boyfriend, so already there's tension, but then when Richard starts explaining his passion for River Phoenix, the evening takes a dark turn and Tom starts to suspect they might not even be safe. This is a slow release from dramatic irony.
Time and irony
The stories demonstrate an irony in their symbolic usage of school. The irony is that the stories where people are still in school are typically stories of overwhelming passion and immediate life. They are often perplexed by permanence, like in "Scary," where Tom is asked to understand loss and danger. In "Free Love," a young girl is succumbing to the future by freeing herself of the religious opinions of her parents to experiment with sex. But then, in later stories, older people reminisce about school. The irony is simply that time passes without anyone noticing it until one day, people are at a crisis, because what is time leading us toward? That is the "unthinkable" thing that happens to the man in "The unthinkable happens to people every day." The unthinkable thing is time passing, dragging us all one step toward death. He knows that, but the girl who helps give him hope doesn't know it.
