Single Discrimination

I am discriminated against on a daily basis (for having to use righty-centric keypads at checkout registers), but now I'm being discriminated against for being single, too!

A friend just sent an invite out for her birthday. "Feel free to bring significant others," the last line read. Oh? And what if you don't have a significant other? Are you doomed to sit at the end of the table, since there are no seats for partnerless people? Is there a special, smaller table reserved for singletons, oh-so-slightly removed from the big one for "normal" people?

Even worse was the impromptu barbeque a bunch of wedding attendees (all staying at the same hotel) threw the night after our friends' Yosemite wedding. When I asked how much I could contribute, I was told "it's $25 per couple." Per couple? COUPLE? What if we're not part of a couple? What if we haven't been part of a couple for, hmm, let's say almost half a decade?! I ended up jokingly becoming a "couple" with another bridesmaid, who isn't even single (her boyfriend couldn't make it)!

Then there was the friend I was staying with, who told me of the unease he felt when first moving to the Bay Area. Before he got a girlfriend (and very quickly got engaged), he felt a huge gap. He was the only single person at activities -- or wasn't invited to them at all. Then *boom* he got a fiancee and a social life. Now it's a whirlwind of "couple's weekends" down to the beach, and he even has married female coworkers ask him to get lunch. Apparently being single doesn't allow smug marrieds to be comfortable around you.

My solution to the aforementioned "bring your s/o" dinner? I'm bringing a soon-to-be-divorced girlfriend. Now that's my kind of "couple."

An Imaginary Relationship

"If you had to describe my outfit, what words would you use?" I asked my roommate when I got home last night. Decked out in a black newsboy cap, black scarf, fuzz-covered black peacoat (missing a button), with loose grey wool trousers and shoes so beaten up by winter salt that they'll be getting pitched the instant it's warmer, I knew I wasn't looking my best.
"Newsies!" my roommate gleefully replied. "Hobo!!"
"What if I told you that I guy said I look 'great'?"
"Then I would say he wanted to get in your pants at any cost."
"Well, NJ was the one who said it. We ran into each other at the drugstore."
"What?!"

NJ and I have a complicated relationship that can be summed by one succinct phrase: Lead Theresa on. I've written about him before, since it provides such fodder for the kind of angsty why-does-my-lovelife-suck-so-much posts that you all seem to love. Nothing like living vicariously mixed with a little schaudenfreude, eh?

To reiterate, NJ and I have spent over a year running into each other -- and, for the past five months or so, writing one another on Facebook. Back and forth we'll go, occasionally sending half a dozen flirtatious messages in one day, then not emailing for a week. He's particularly adept at never attending anything I invite him to, usually disappearing till said event is over and then emerging to ask how it went. He did manage to drag himself to the free Drambuie night I put on in Oct. or Nov., but that was the last time I'd seen him. Perhaps because the final time we texted I'd said he was a jerk (for not deigning to reply to my email about Burns Night, to which he texted back "allergic to haggis"), we hadn't talked in a month. Then he wrote yesterday to see how my party went, which ticked me off because of the myriads of photos on Facebook. Obviously the party went well; there was no need to email to ask.

So there I am, looking at cards in the drugstore, when I see a guy with great hair. I bend a little backwards to see if his face lives up to the hirsute cuteness, and there's NJ, smiling back at me. We give each other a huge hug, and he asks how my housewarming party went.

"Didn't you see the pictures on Facebook?"
"Yes, just yours," he replied, "You looked hot."
"What can I say, I do trashy well..."

We had more repartee about him needing a hat, and he told me how "great" I looked. Then he grabbed my elbow and said, "I'm going to get my hat. Pick out your card and I'll be right back." More hat banter, and he tells me I'm rocking mine.
"Did you just say I'm 'Baracking' the hat?"
"Um, no."
"Because if you did, that would be kind of awesome."
Hehe.

Off into the snowy evening we went. When he told me the intersection where he lives, I remarked, "My girlfriend used to live right there!"
Teasing tone: "Girlfriend?"
"Friend that's a girl. Yeah, I'm totally a lesbian. Don't you wish…"
He asked in turn where I was headed, and I told him the name of the bar with no other explanation. (I was going on my first CrazyBlindDate.) A hug, a kiss on the cheek, and farewell.

So three compliments in 10 minutes, unnecessary touching, and (I flatter myself) a fun conversation. Why in God's green earth is it so impossible for him to hang out with me?

I rehashed the evening's events with several girlfriends, at last concluding that I should listen to what everyone has been saying for ages: He probably has a girlfriend. Heart in mouth, I texted to ask him. "Better to have it out in the open," my girlfriend counseled.

No response.

And as we all know, "no comment" means "yes."

Well, it was fun while it lasted. Farewell, adieu, auf wiedersehen.

How NOT To Get A Guy To Come Over

By using the phrase "relaxing kissing session."

Not that I would know by first-hand experience, of course.

(Uh, it was the night before he had a huge test for work... yeah.)

Reason #1367 Why Theresa Is Single

At various times I have crushes. I know, hard to believe, innit? One of my OOAs (Objects Of Affection) at the moment will likely never date me because:

1. I tried hooking him up with one of my friends.*
2. I continuously mention kissing guys at parties.**
3. When we were walking in a residential neighborhood, he spied three rabbits in a front lawn. "Ooooh, bunnies!" I cooed, crouching down for a better look and continuing, "When baby bunnies get killed they scream like small children." There was a pause as he looked at me in horror. "You should never live in the country again," he told me. "Stay in cities forever."***

This, my friends, is why I am perpetually single.

*Never fight over a guy, right?
**It's not like I'm running around kissing people. They are kissing me. Subtle semantical difference lost on most people, least of all my OOA.
***I have no defense. Other than that they do. My cat used to eat them all the time. Trama, what?

V-D

Thankfully it's on a Wednesday; how can it possibly be that big of a deal? Oh, but it is, it is. No matter how I attempt to not fall for the Hallmark rigamarole, it's inevitable I spend the month leading up to Valentine's Day in pure dread. Damn you, Victorians!

If I hadn't had so many failed attempts at dating perhaps I wouldn't be so sensitive. (Then again, unless it ends in marriage all relationships are arguably failures eventually. Let's not even discuss the divorce rate.) As I hear my friends' excitingly romantic plans for The Big Day, I grow envious. It's not that I don't want them to be happy, it's that I want the same for myself. I want my boyfriend to take me to a posh hotel for chocolate and martinis with friends, then whisk me off to a hotel room, which he's stocked with my favorite flowers, champagne, drawn a bubble bath, and has arranged with my roommates to pack a bag of clothes and necessities for work the next day. That's what one of my friends did last Valentine's Day. I sat at home and watched a sci-fi movie.
Most of my Valentine's Days haven't been too shabby: I usually arrange an evening with single friends and those whose significant others are long distance. My freshman year of college I threw a big party in my dorm for all of my friends, complete with gift exchange; in London, I decorated our flat's living room with hearts and anti-Valentine's I'd printed off this website. Americans and English alike: we devoured pastries from the local pâtisserie and played drinking games. My one conceit was buying myself perfume from a friend who managed the Notting Hill Agent Provocateur. Walking home, I imagined everyone thinking I had something far more exotic inside my bag. Nope.

Far and away, my favorite Valentine's Day was in 2005. My friends Marissa and Michelle and I were taking the train from Hungary to Slovenia, so we spent most of the day staring out the window at the bucolic Croatian countryside. Lulled to sleep in our private cabin, I would wake up for the cute passport inspectors and snap a few photos, then flip through our guidebooks while snacking on mysterious junk food we'd bought that morning in Budapest. Our only nod to Valentine's Day was wearing pink and red, although that evening we glimpsed a few Slovenian teenagers strolling hand-in-hand near the Ljubljanica River. We couldn't tell if this was in celebration of our American holiday, or merely because Ljubljana is an inherently romantic city.

You'd hold hands here, too.

Of course I was still hung up on some guy at the time, which normally occurs during Valentine season. (Let's be honest: when am I not hung up on some guy?) Only twice I've been dating people on the day itself. Sophomore year of college I was surprised to receive a box of chocolates at my dorm's front desk from a very cute guy I'd been on a few dates with. Of course, a week later he broke things off, and months after that started dating his friend -- but hey, I got expensive chocolates and his new love, Jeff, did not. Senior year of college my two roommates and I all had boyfriends, but for some reason the three of us were at home at the start of the night. We made raspberry hot chocolate, being all classy by microwaving milk instead of using hot water. Later that night the roommate and I who shared skim milk discovered our distraught stomach gurglings were due to the milk having expired; our roommate who drank whole milk was gleeful, having spent the prior semester trying to convert us to drinking something that has the consitency of partially diluted heavy whipping cream.

So the one and only time I got chocolates from a guy I ended up gaying him; the one and only time I had a boyfriend I got sick. Is the universe telling me I'm meant to be perpetually single? Only last week my brother was teasing me about the French physisict I'd been dating. "So you got up to two months before it fizzled out?" he asked. "Is that your longest relationship in the past three-and-a-half years?" Why yes, yes it is, thank you for pointing that out. Embarrassing, it is. And annoying, like when a new guy friend recently told me I don't come off as the 'type' to have a boyfriend. So do I come off as the 'type' to own lots of cats and talk to my plants? My only saving grace is that I'm allergic to cats; instead, I shall die alone and be found "three weeks later half-eaten by an Alsatian", a la Bridget Jones.
Hyperbole is the name of the game, of course, and I don't actual mean half of what I just wrote. I'm usually not conscious of just how long it is I've been single; when I hang out with friends they're usually not all couples, so it's not rubbed in my face. Still, being single on Valentine's Day reinforces my utter and abject failure to get anyone interested in me longer than two months, which is never a happy thought. I imagine myself laying in bed, drinking a bottle of Riesling and eating raw cookie dough while listening to the Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs my friend gave me for Christmas. (Gee, thanks, Seamus.) By the third and final album I'll be silently crying as I relive every failed date I've ever been on.

Actually, I won't. I'll be too busy enjoying myself with my single friends, 26 who are as single as myself (not that I just counted). That is, if they don't all run out and get significant others in the next month. C'mon guys, don't leave me!

Dating Dilemma

There are the rules. And then there are the rules. And no one seems to know what they are.

I'm talking about dating in America, and why it's so goddamned difficult.

In Switzerland, my friend keeps telling me, there is no dating. You hang out, you hang out some more, and if you both like each other you somehow effortlessly amalgamize into a couple. We have endless arguments about this, with me petulantly bringing up examples: "Say you go out to dinner with a girl you like--that would be a date, now wouldn't it? Admit it--you'd be on a date!" My friend steadfastly denies this, stubbornly responding that it would just be dinner with someone you're trying to get to know.

I suppose this could be a good thing, for it would take the pressure and guessing away (although I still don't understand how you go from mere friendly hanging out to kissing, since I can't fathom hooking up with any of my guy friends). I usually become so nervous before a date that my Russian roommate forces me to do a shot of vodka with her. If she's not around for the alcoholic support, I've taken to downing a glass of Irish cream. There's so much pressure before a date, the energy is so built up from an hour's worth of wardrobe ransacking and makeup application, that without a bit of booze in me I'm a wreck. No doubt the alcohol isn't a big help, although it's such a tradition I feel it provides a mental boost. Dating is hard, people. Especially if you're a melodramatic American girl comme moi.

"Do they think it's a date?" my American friends and I often wonder. I've seen friends reschedule one-on-one outings or invite more people along, merely on the off chance the person arranging the evening might perhaps, in some teensy part of their soul, have thought it a date. A pal was recently asked to coffee by a Continental European. "Coffee is totally a date in Europe," we decided, so they put it off until a group outing was set up. At one point last spring, during my brief "I'm not dating anyone till I get a job" interlude, I dragged a girlfriend along for happy hour with a guy. Why? So I could pretend it wasn't a date. Dumb? Yes. But making for a less nerve-wracking time? Also yes.

This is where the British, not being Continentals, might have the right thinking. Now, I only have firsthand experience at the university level, but when at uni you happen to repeatedly end up in bed with the same person, chances are you'll eventually morph into a couple. Why bother going out on a traditional date? Enough random drunken snogs and hookups and one weekend you just don't leave the person's room. There. You're together now!

But of course this isn't how Americans do it. No no--we have all sorts of hoops to jump through of varying heights, sizes, and invisibilty. My European friends comment on this mysterious "dating" I seem to do. A lot of it has to do with perception, of course: does a date consist simply of two mutually attracted people going out? Or does a date have to contain an outing or event? The fact I'm analyzing this shows what my friends and I spend an inordinate amount of time pondering. Be that as it may, there are times when you can categorically say "it's a date." This usually involves a traditional activity: going to see a movie, having drinks, or getting dinner. All one-on-one, of course. That's where the shot of vodka beforehand can really help.

And here is where the rules--or rather, the rules--come in. Many of these are considered basic etiquette. But since we modern types don't have coming out parties--and we've never learned things like how a man should always walk on the outside of a sidewalk when escorting a lady--this collection of unwritten activities is, at best, amorphous and ill-defined. Needless to say, this causes problems. No one is operating by the same set of rules, and in fact, we might not know we even know a rule until it's is transgressed.

I should mention that this post was inspired by a conversation I had on a date with a foreign guy. He commented that Americans make it very difficult for themselves to date--and I agree. Seeing it from an outsider's perspective, dating in the U.S. seems not only trite and arbitrary, but also a cause for a great deal of inadvertently hurt feelings. Let's take our last date for an example:

1.) he pays for drinks (good job)
2.) he opens the car door (again, good job, but this was only after I mentioned it during our earlier conversation, and he didn't do it on the second date)
3.) he drives off before I've unlocked my front door (very, very bad)

So was he a rude asshole, or was he merely unaware of American etiquette? Does #1 cancel out #3, with #2 giving him just enough brownie points that it's okay to go out again? Am I being a completely trivial beeyotch? Okay, we don't need to answer that last one.

It's hard not to trivialize matters, because it's in the trivial etiquette that you can extrapolate the potential for the rest of the date (or heck, potential for a relationship). It works for both genders: does he or she have manners? Chances are they'll be excellent in bed! Okay, maybe not.

One famously bad date I went on began with him giving me flowers, which would be a good thing in most people's perspectives. But then he made me go Dutch at dinner. What little romance survived in a comatose state was immediately taken off life support when he forced me to pay for the cab ride back. If only he'd saved his money on the trite bouquet of roses...

I don't have enough time or energy at the moment to discuss the other points of dating: when it's okay to have sex if it's not just a random hookup; when, if ever, you need to talk about how many partners you've had; how the new 'Let's be monogamous' talk has suddenly become 'So I got tested last week; I'm clean'. There are things to consider, such as if it's appropriate to date several people simultaneously (and what the optimum number is--two? three?), and how long you can continue to do this (can you sleep with all of them as long as you're safe, or do you have to whittle things down to one person before you can fool around?). Does your booty call or long-distance lover count as one of those people you're dating? If the woman is more traditional, how many dates does it take before you go Dutch? And how many dates does it take before you're 'dating'--and how long after that are you 'together'?

Oh my god--I'm making myself ill. Not really, but enough so that I have to end this post. And any and all dating. Ever again. Obviously I'm not cut out for it. How can anyone in this country possibly be?

I'm going to move to Switzerland.